Eye on DNA Links for 10 July 2007

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted July 10, 2007 in Eye on DNA Headlines

• Tara hosts Grand Rounds 3.42 at Aetiology.
• Laura at CFS Squared looks at 35 genes for chronic fatigue syndrome.
• Fertility experts are up in arms over recent data showing a lack of benefit from preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in improving pregnancy success in older women. They cite “the authors’ poor embryo biopsy technique, the failure of the test in a large percentage of the embryos, and the exclusion of two key chromosomes from testing.”
• DNA testing of pets is becoming more common. In the San Diego area, a father tracks down the dog that mauled his 7-year-old son and a woman hunts down the dog that killed her cat. What is up with these dogs?! (KGTV San Diego)
• Congratulations to University of Washington Maynard Olson who has been awarded the 2007 Gruber Genetic Prize!
• William Saletan reviews Michael Sandel’s new book, The Case Against Perfection. I wrote about Sandel’s Atlantic article of the same title when I first started genetics blogging in 2005 and made the following parenting pledge. (See below the fold.)

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Parenting Genetically Engineered Children
May 4, 2005

Biotechnology is allowing us to control our parenting experience in ways that have never been available before the discovery of DNA. Parents can already choose the sex of their children and screen for genetic diseases both pre-implantation and in utero. In the future, they may even be able to custom design traits such as stronger muscles for athletic kids, faster metabolism and height for supermodel kids, or melodic vocal chords for pop star kids.

In The Case Against Perfection, Michael J. Sandel lays out what’s wrong with this scenario:

Bioengineering gives us reason to question the low-tech, high-pressure child-rearing practices we commonly accept. The hyperparenting familiar in our time represents an anxious excess of mastery and dominion that misses the sense of life as a gift. This draws it disturbingly close to eugenics.
…..
Parents become responsible for choosing, or failing to choose, the right traits for their children.
…..
In a social world that prizes mastery and control, parenthood is a school for humility. That we care deeply about our children and yet cannot choose the kind we want teaches parents to be open to the unbidden. Such openness is a disposition worth affirming, not only within families but in the wider world as well. It invites us to abide the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to rein in the impulse to control. A Gattaca-like world in which parents became accustomed to specifying the sex and genetic traits of their children would be a world inhospitable to the unbidden, a gated community writ large. The awareness that our talents and abilities are not wholly our own doing restrains our tendency toward hubris.

As for our family, we are making the following pledge to our son:

• We are your parents. We gave you life but we are not your life.
• You are our son. You expand our world but you are not our world.
• We accept you without indulging or neglecting you.
• We cultivate you without badgering or rejecting you.
• We are open to the unbidden.

Tags: genetics, genes, dna, parenting, children, pgd, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, genome

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