{"id":28532,"date":"2013-01-09T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/?p=28532"},"modified":"2013-01-08T20:24:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T03:24:23","slug":"science-can-both-solve-and-add-to-our-moral-conundrums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2013\/01\/science-can-both-solve-and-add-to-our-moral-conundrums\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Can Both Solve and Add to Our Moral Conundrums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

Ah, good ol\u2019 science\u2026 With it, we make incredible advances that aid and benefit our lives immeasurably even as we wander into one moral quagmire after another. We increase our understanding of the world around us even as we are tempted to play God in ways that ought to make us shudder. Two recent articles serve as a perfect showcase for that particular dichotomy.<\/p>\n

First, the good<\/strong>: 2013 could be the year that the\u00a0stem cell controversy\u00a0goes away<\/a>. Though stem cell research has been touted by many as one of the great medical breakthroughs of our time, it has been fraught with controversy and ethical dilemmas. Specifically, embryonic stem cell research has been considered by many to be tantamount to murder because it involves\u00a0the destruction of human embryos. (There are other types of stem cell research, but it\u2019s pretty safe to say that when most people mention stem cell research, it is embryonic<\/strong> stem cell research that they have in mind.)<\/p>\n

In 2012, however, two teams of scientists discovered a way to transform ordinary adult skin cells into neural cells<\/a>, a breakthrough that promises to completely sidestep any such controversies. Because adult cells are used, no embryos need to be sacrificed, and because skin cells are so plentiful \u2014 your body sheds about a million of them a day<\/a> \u2014 it means a large pool of material with which to work. So what are some of the possibilities that we\u2019re looking at here?<\/p>\n

Access to large numbers of specialized cells could change how doctors study disease and how pharmacologists test drugs, which could in turn bring about new treatments tailored to individuals. It could even lead to that holy grail of medical science: the ability to grow new tissue and organs from the patient\u2019s own cells, virtually eliminating the possibility of rejection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, huge medical breakthroughs and life improvements without any ethical dilemmas. Sounds like a win-win to me.<\/p>\n

And now, the bad<\/strong> (or at least, the troubling and potentially-not-so-good<\/strong>): What if, instead of undergoing a risky procedure like\u00a0amniocentesis to determine your unborn child\u2019s risk for birth defects, you could find that out via a simple blood draw<\/a>? On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer, especially if such a test doesn\u2019t carry with it the risk of miscarriage. After all, pregnancy is a time already full of uncertainty, and more information about your unborn child\u2019s condition is good, right? But what happens if the test comes back positive, and your unborn child has Down syndrome?<\/p>\n

In Candace Weiss\u2019s case, she and her husband decided to have an abortion.<\/p>\n

Weiss terminated the pregnancy last fall at 12 and a half weeks. She and her husband hadn\u2019t told very many people that she was pregnant, and the procedure at that stage is mercifully swift and relatively simple. Some women do not find out their babies have serious medical problems until much later in their pregnancies. At that point, many doctors don\u2019t even perform abortions, obliging patients to travel to distant cities to get one. \u201cIt\u2019s huge to know early on,\u201d Weiss says. \u201cNot that what we went through wasn\u2019t heartbreaking, but we were able to put it behind us faster. We get to start over sooner.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The blood draw test, called \u201ccell-free fetal DNA testing,\u201d is still in its early stages, but it holds great potential. As Wired<\/em>\u2018s Erin Biba puts it:<\/p>\n

They presage a future when we can easily scan for a range of genetic defects, from the truly devastating to the not-so-serious, allowing parents and doctors to look past a baby\u2019s organs, beyond its cells, and down into its very DNA. Based on a small sample of a woman\u2019s blood, the cell-free fetal DNA test gives expectant mothers an earlier (and safer) look than ever at just who it is that\u2019s growing inside them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, this seems like a good thing \u2014 at first. But what if, as in Weiss\u2019s case, the information you receive is less-than-ideal? What do you do with such knowledge, especially if that knowledge gives you the opportunity to take steps to \u201cstart over sooner\u201d? In some areas of America,\u00a0as many as 90% of Down syndrome pregnancies already end in abortion<\/a>.\u00a0Which is something that even abortion advocate\u00a0Alison Piepmeier, herself a mother of a child with Down syndrome, finds troubling. She\u00a0writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The message that sometimes accompanies positive prenatal testing for Down syndrome is: \u201cYou have a defective fetus. Let\u2019s get rid of it so you can try again.\u201d One mother I interviewed was told by her obstetrician, \u201cthe quickest, cheapest way to solve this problem is to terminate the pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t have to be the case. The prenatal testing is not what we should question, but the assumptions that accompany it. I agree with Ms. Rapp\u2019s call for \u201ca more nuanced discussion.\u201d All disabilities are not the same. If our culture assumes that across the board, a child with a disability is defective, and a problem best avoided, then we\u2019re encouraging people who want to be parents to make a decision based on bad information. And having an abortion because of bad information is a preventable tragedy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the test improves and expands to look for more birth defects beyond just the \u201cmajor\u201d ones like Down syndrome, what will that lead to? Imagine being able to discover your child\u2019s entire genetic future in a matter of days. What would you do with that sort of nigh-godlike awareness? How are you supposed to adequately and wisely process that amount of information?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to paint an overly grim or dystopic picture here. Biba points out that some people will keep babies even after prenatal testing reveals birth defects: the earlier heads-up gives them additional time to prepare for a child with special needs. In this case, early detection of birth defects can be a very good thing as it allows people to become better educated as to how to best care for such a child.<\/p>\n

But, as the aforementioned Down syndrome\/abortion stat shows, prenatal testing is<\/strong> often being used as a reason to \u201copt out,\u201d if you will, of raising a \u201cdefective\u201d child. Upon receiving the knowledge, many people are making the decision,\u00a0difficult and heart-wrenching though it may be, to end the child\u2019s life because of what they\u2019ve learned. (Such testing has caused quite a bit of controversy\u00a0in Europe<\/a> precisely for that reason.)<\/p>\n

Knowledge is a powerful thing, especially when it involves helpless human beings who are utterly at our mercy. And as science allows us to acquire better, more accurate knowledge, our challenge and responsibility to use it wisely becomes all the more difficult and pressing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, good ol\u2019 science\u2026 With it, we make incredible advances that aid and benefit our lives immeasurably even as we wander into one moral quagmire after another. We increase our understanding of the world around us even as we are tempted to play God in ways that ought to make us shudder. Two recent articles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1223,"featured_media":28537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1484,18],"tags":[44,1764,989,1119,1186],"class_list":["post-28532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ofthemoment","category-technology","tag-abortion","tag-down-syndrome","tag-pregnancy","tag-science","tag-stem-cell-research"],"yoast_head":"\nScience Can Both Solve and Add to Our Moral Conundrums<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ah, good ol' science... 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