How Did We Get Into This Mess? Down Syndrome is "Hell on Earth."
http://www.thismess.net/2015/01/down-syndrome-is-hell-on-earth.htmlIn Austen Heinz’s vision of the future, customers tinker with the genetic codes of plants and animals and even design new creatures on a computer. Then his startup, Cambrian Genomics, prints that DNA quickly, accurately and cheaply....
Heinz and other scientists have years of technical hurdles to clear before they can create living, breathing humans from a plate of printed DNA. Such an act is not possible right now. But he doesn’t hide his enthusiasm about the possibility.
Is he essentially enabling eugenics? He rejects that term, which to him means government interference with reproductive rights. He insists that it differs from his approach, which he describes as allowing individuals to eliminate future suffering in a more humane way than abortion, “which is pretty barbaric.” “A decent percentage of people have really nasty mutations that cause really bad, horrible things,” like Down syndrome and cystic fibrosis, he said. “These are basically like hell on Earth, and I think it’s smart to be able to avoid those things.”
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Tay Sachs, and a host of other miserable diseases.
This just turned up in my FB feed. What exquisite timing!
http://themighty.com/2015/01/dear-new-parents-of-a-baby-with-down-syndrome-i-feel-compelled-to-tell-you-this/
What’s done is done. Down syndrome has entered your life and that will never change, no matter what happens down the road. For that, I consider us connected. No matter what the future holds, what twists and turns your life follows, we will always have that in common. You are not alone.
My baby was in my arms when I discovered his Down syndrome. In a flash, all I thought I ever knew fell away. I didn’t know how to continue. No one had written me a script. No one had told me what lay ahead. I thought I stood at the edge of a vast, terrifying wilderness with nothing. I was so wrong.
Instead, it felt more like shedding a skin. I shed old ideas, thoughts, assumptions that I’d accepted as truth, only to emerge a truer, clearer self. Shedding that skin was intense and painful for me yet so necessary to reveal the next person I would become. I had no script because I wasn’t meant to have one. I was writing it as I went along, and each time I shed a new skin, I add to my narrative. I’ve only been at this for a short time so far; I have a lot of work ahead of me, that I know.
so beautiful, and so true. 
much like "Well, bless your li'l ole heart!" down South.
Example: Someone who just came back to work is discussing her stomach flu symptoms in the lunchroom. "Thank you for sharing that!"
Certainly not my intention! 
Funny that the same people who would never deny a woman her "right to choose" think it so awful that someone would develop a technique that would avoid genetic defects and reduce the need for future abortions.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe they'd rather women have abortions than have healthier embryos in the first place.
Did you know? Some transplant centers refuse to accept patients with Down's, citing some BS about how "they can't follow the complicated aftercare regimen". 
That is the kind of mentality this whole thread is about, and it seems to be rampant within the medical profession.
Unless, of course, you believe that life begins at conception, which I sincerely doubt.
which many of us view as a natural part of the human experience.
Who gets to decide what traits get selected out? What next after disability? 
Response to KamaAina (Original post)
But many of us in the Autistic community (no, that is not an oxymoron ) fear that these eugenics tools will be wielded against us, especially given the rhetoric coming from Autism $peaks.
in which a woman was seeking the perfect sperm donor. She settled on a decorated astronaut.
All was well, until she met the astronaut's brother, Johnny. "This is Johnny. Johnny likes flowers."
Yup, Johnny had an obvious intellectual disability. What is a poor girl to do?
