EUGENICS MAKING A COMEBACK

Discredited After Hitler, It Now Finds Support in Medicine and Law

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PARIS, NOV. 25, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- The highest French appeal court has

endorsed the idea of selective abortion for handicapped children.

The BBC reported Nov. 17 the case of Nicolas Perruche, who was born deaf,

partially blind and mentally disabled in 1983 after a doctor and a medical

laboratory failed to realize that his mother had caught German measles

during her pregnancy.

His parents, Josette and Christian Perruche, said the failure to diagnose

the disease damaged their child in the womb and stopped them from opting

for abortion. The courts had already decided doctors were at fault; medical

staff incorrectly believed that she had already been immunized against

rubella.

Now, the parents have won a fresh appeal for compensation on the grounds

that doctors and the medical laboratory should have prevented the birth.

The BBC quoted the boy's mother as saying: "Would my son really have wanted

to live if he'd known he had all these disabilities?"

Among those who have expressed concern about the decision is Segolene Ayme,

a geneticist who works closely with couples with congenital illnesses.

"This will push my colleagues to decide more often to terminate pregnancies

when they are unsure about the health status of the child," she said. "And

this is a very common situation."

The ruling was denounced by France's main anti-abortion group as a

dangerous precedent that created "institutional eugenics." The court was

"implying to all handicapped people that their life is worth less than

their death," the Alliance for the Right to Life said, The Times reported

Nov. 18.

Planned Parenthood's founder

The term eugenics is used to describe the movement that seeks to improve

the human race by encouraging the healthy and materially well-off to have

children, while at the same time pressuring others to have few or no

offspring. The term was coined by the English scientist Francis Galton

toward the end of the 19th century and the eugenics ideology quickly spread.

From the start, racial bias formed an integral part of the eugenics

mentality. It also was a key element in the programs of those who pioneered

family planning and legalized abortion, such as Planned Parenthood founder

Margaret Sanger.

Although the reaction against Hitler temporarily discredited eugenics, it

has enjoyed a comeback in recent times. A demonstration of this came in a

recent declaration by Dan Wilder, an ethicist with the World Health

Organization. Wilder was quoted Oct. 13 by The Age newspaper of Australia

as saying that the state of a nation's gene pool should be subject to

government policies rather than left to the whim of individuals.

It is not only poorer countries that are at risk. The development of

test-tube babies and genetic testing have made it possible in Western

nations to eliminate those unborn children who are seen as "inferior."

A case in point is a French woman who recently gave birth to the nation's

first genetically screened baby, after she lost two other children to a

deadly genetic disease. Associated Press reported Nov. 15 that the baby

boy, known only by his first name, Valentin, was born two days earlier at

Antoine-Beclere Hospital in Clamart, outside Paris.

The couple, who have no trouble conceiving naturally, underwent in vitro

fertilization and a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or

PGD, in an effort to ensure their baby would not have the gene defect.

Using this method doctors implant only those fertilized ova that are

healthy, while the others are destroyed.

"Superhuman"

Britain is also practicing these methods, BBC reported Nov. 18. A recent

BBC television series, "Superhuman," highlighted the use of PGD in the case

of Susan and Chris Paget. Their first son died from cystic fibrosis at the

age of four months.

Cystic fibrosis is the most common genetic defect in northern Europe, and

the gene is carried by one-in-20 of the population. The odds rise to

one-in-four if both parents carry the gene.

The BBC program explained that at London's Hammersmith Hospital

pre-implantation genetic diagnosis allows doctors to select a healthy

embryo to implant in the womb of the mother. Although the BBC noted that

new treatments mean that many people with cystic fibrosis live into

adulthood, it seems that doctors are now concentrating on means to

eliminate those embryos diagnosed with this defect.

The report explained how a large number of eggs are needed for

fertilization for PGD; consequently, Susan's ovaries were stimulated with a

drug. Afterward, 15 eggs were collected in the operating room before being

fertilized with sperm from her husband and placed in an incubator for three

days.

Six embryos were produced and, from the embryos, one cell was removed for

testing. On the second attempt, the doctors determined that there were two

healthy embryos free from cystic fibrosis. The embryos were placed in

Susan's uterus, although only one baby was eventually born (the report does

not explain what happened to the other embryo).

Condoms for poorer people

Eugenics is not limited to abortion and PGD. Reports have surfaced of a

campaign by Planned Parenthood in the U.S. state of Ohio to give away

condoms to people living in poor areas. Planned Parenthood was offering a

coupon redeemable at its offices in three Ohio counties for a dozen condoms

and a $5 McDonald's gift certificate, according to a July 31 report in The

Washington Times.

An associate of the pro-life group Human Life International, Malia Blom,

found the promotional bag with a bright yellow coupon while visiting

friends in a poor black neighborhood in Akron, Ohio, in June.

Aided by a grant from Planned Parenthood headquarters in New York, the

Akron affiliate bought the certificates and held them for redemption at

their local offices. Each bag came with literature on sexually transmitted

disease prevention, gynecology exams and contraception, a pen, mirror,

notepad and condom-case key chain containing a bright green condom. All the

items printed with Planned Parenthood phone numbers.

Pope's warning

In his encyclical "Evangelium Vitae" (No. 14) Pope John Paul II warns that

techniques of artificial reproduction open the door to new threats against

life. Apart from other moral objections, the Pope noted that embryos are

placed at a high risk of death and that so-called spare embryos are then

destroyed or used for research. In this way human life is reduced "to the

level of simple 'biological material' to be freely disposed of," he wrote.

Eugenic abortions, the encyclical continues, are justified on the basis of

a mentality "which accepts life only under certain conditions "and rejects

it when it is affected by any limitation, handicap or illness."

John Paul II explains that one of the sources of this reasoning is a notion

of freedom which "gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and

service of them" (No. 19). The encyclical notes that this attitude, while

it can have elements of altruism or human compassion, when taken as a whole

"betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by

becoming the freedom of 'the strong' against the weak who have no choice

but to submit."

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