Fox gives McCain an 82% win over Obama in the latest debate

[Mulu]

Man, the blood is in the water. Conservative columnists attack!

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her--her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations--were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

Emphasis added.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

[ç i p h é r]

The risk of malpractice claims (and possible punitive awards) has to be factored into medical services somewhere.

Sure, but it's miniscule.

What's miniscule? I saw a verdict a few days ago handed down by a jury (in New York?) in a medical malpractice suit that awarded $11M. That hardly seems miniscule and it's just one case. The rate of malpractice suits has increased exponentially.

So, you treat him, then send him a bill that he can't and doesn't pay because he's broke, or makes himself broke to avoid the cost. That's pretty much the system we have now, you know. Folks have a right to emergency medical treatment even if they can't afford it, and the highly overpriced bills ($500.00 for a bottle of Tylenol type of nonsense) largely go uncollected, though the patient's credit is trashed by collection agencies. Oftentimes people with very serious medical problems will purposefully dispose of their assets so the hospitals don't take everything they have.

Which comes back to the cost of those services and their root causes. It shouldn't cost me $20K to fix a broken leg, but it does. Doesn't that seem wildly out of whack to you?

You sure are subsidizing Wall Street, and not for the first time or the last time. You're also subsidizing an auto industry that invested heavily in gas guzzling SUV's, and Bush's bad choice to invade Iraq, and you are going to reward that same party with another vote, despite that McCain supported the bad choice of the invasion. So really, you do willingly subsidize other people's bad choices all the time, and support them for their bad decisions.

But that assumes I had or have a choice. I didn't and don't. So the last thing I want is for even less control (ie government deciding for me) because as we have seen and as you point out, they don't always make good decisions.

Back to Mr. Twinkie, at the end of the day, what matters is the totality of the outcome. We *do* bail people out when it betters all of us. Vindictiveness and moralizing make for lousy public policy on their own. What matters is results. If punishing people for their lifestyles actually worked, then it would be the way to go, but it doesn't. Heck, alcoholics punish themselves plenty for their lifestyle choices. The way to solve irresponsibility is to try to prevent it by making systems that make it less likely, in the case of Mr. Twinkie that means banning fatty fast foods and food items like Twinkies and encouraging nutritional education in our schools. Not as satisfying perhaps as hounding Mr. Twinkie with multi-million dollar medical bills he can never pay, but far more effective.

But you're off on a tangent now. This has nothing to do with nationalizing health care. You're also agreeing with me to some extent that we would be better served by addressing root causes.

How much prevention are you willing to engage in? Can we do germ line genetic engineering to end these deleterious genetic mutations once and for all? It would save us a fortune if everyone was born healthy, with good genes.

Absolutely.

[Mulu]

The rate of malpractice suits has increased exponentially.

Prove it. This is just you being tricked by right-wing demagoguery.

You're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry. A few million dollars here and there is a rounding error.

Which comes back to the cost of those services and their root causes. It shouldn't cost me $20K to fix a broken leg, but it does. Doesn't that seem wildly out of whack to you?

Yes, and the *cause* is the fact that it's a free market. Treat medicine as a commodity and it gets very expensive. It doesn't *cost* $20k to fix a broken leg, that's just what they *charge.* It's not like you're going to say, "Doc, before you start treating me, I want to know what the total cost is going to be. What? $20,000.00! Well, screw that, I'm going over to Mercy. They charge $25,000.00! I want a taxi to Canada!"

You pay the bill they submit, or try to anyway. Now, insurance companies do negotiate and pay less, but even then the charges are quite high. Does a surgeon really deserve $50,000.00 for a single one hour surgery? Does a hospital really need $2000.00 to change a single bandage? We don't have the best medical care in the world, but we do have the most expensive medical care in the world. Socializing medicine would change that. Nationalizing could change that, if the government set the rates chargeable, and they *should* though they didn't with Medicare prescriptions.

But you're off on a tangent now. This has nothing to do with nationalizing health care. You're also agreeing with me to some extent that we would be better served by addressing root causes.

Well, we should do both. Obviously nationalizing health care without adding Public Health and additional prevention would be ungodly expensive. My point regarding Mr. Twinkie is that at the end of the day all you can do is try to encourage the right behavior, and live with whatever actually happens. Enforcement really isn't a practical option. The whole point of insurance Nationalizing or socializing medicine is you diffuse cost and risk.

How much prevention are you willing to engage in? Can we do germ line genetic engineering to end these deleterious genetic mutations once and for all? It would save us a fortune if everyone was born healthy, with good genes.

Absolutely.

Well, if you are being serious, we agree, but it scares the bejeesus out of the science is evil crowd. Good luck getting the Sarah Palin's of the world to consent.

[Zelknolf]

How much prevention are you willing to engage in? Can we do germ line genetic engineering to end these deleterious genetic mutations once and for all? It would save us a fortune if everyone was born healthy, with good genes.

Absolutely.

Well, if you are being serious, we agree, but it scares the bejeesus out of the science is evil crowd. Good luck getting the Sarah Palin's of the world to consent.

Well, for me, it's more that we had a program to try to alter patterns of reproduction in order to produce healthy good-gene'd babies back in WWII, in ye olde American eugenics program, and it failed miserably along with serving as inspiration for some pretty heinous war crimes back then. Don't need to be scared so much as to point to the attempt and say "It failed, and it was pretty damn shady, too." I'll grant that retroviruses would probably shoo away the "it was pretty damn shady" half of that, pwning the face off of strategies a la ganking people with disabilities and tieing their tubes, but it doesn't do a whole lot for the "it doesn't work" part.

[ç i p h é r]

Prove it. This is just you being tricked by right-wing demagoguery.

It's hard to find data on the aggregate, however, here's an interesting article from NYT in 2005 which seems to talk about the subject and report some statistics:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/busin ... gewanted=3

There's no definitive conclusion, which always seems to be where this issue ends up. The high rates of insurance (upwards of 50% of income) on surgeons is verifiable, though. Just ask them.

You're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry. A few million dollars here and there is a rounding error.

More like a few billion. But as I've said, it's one of many sources of cost.

Yes, and the *cause* is the fact that it's a free market. Treat medicine as a commodity and it gets very expensive. It doesn't *cost* $20k to fix a broken leg, that's just what they *charge.* It's not like you're going to say, "Doc, before you start treating me, I want to know what the total cost is going to be. What? $20,000.00! Well, screw that, I'm going over to Mercy. They charge $25,000.00! I want a taxi to Canada!"

Actually, that's one of the things I've discussed before. People accept care from a provider without ever knowing the cost of that care. The costs are obfuscated and you only get a statement after the fact (unless you have an HMO - I envy you bastards) from your insurance.

Now in an emergency situation, costs are pretty irrelevant to accepting care. You need it and you need it now! But non-emergency care (which is substantially more common I think) suffers from the same problem. Cost obfuscation. Consumers ought to know what the price is of the services they receive before they accept that care.

Well, if you are being serious, we agree, but it scares the bejeesus out of the science is evil crowd. Good luck getting the Sarah Palin's of the world to consent.

I was being serious, but that's not to suggest there aren't any legitimate concerns about the use of that kind of science.

[Mulu]

It's hard to find data on the aggregate, however, here's an interesting article from NYT in 2005 which seems to talk about the subject and report some statistics:

Your article seems to agree with me. There has been no "exponential increase," in fact it meanders up and down over time. As for rewards getting higher, there are two factors: First, people were starting to make more money, and income loss is a major component of damages in many cases. Second, the plaintiff's bar is getting better at prosecuting these cases.

The high rates of insurance (upwards of 50% of income) on surgeons is verifiable, though. Just ask them.

I've heard the rumor too, but I've never seen it verified. At any rate it's a tax deductible cost of business.

You're talking about a multi-trillion dollar industry. A few million dollars here and there is a rounding error.

More like a few billion. But as I've said, it's one of many sources of cost.

It's like saying, "Wow, I pay $20.00 a month in parking meters. We need to get rid of those meters, that's a big part of my budget!" Really?

Actually, that's one of the things I've discussed before. People accept care from a provider without ever knowing the cost of that care. The costs are obfuscated and you only get a statement after the fact (unless you have an HMO - I envy you bastards) from your insurance.

Now in an emergency situation, costs are pretty irrelevant to accepting care. You need it and you need it now! But non-emergency care (which is substantially more common I think) suffers from the same problem. Cost obfuscation. Consumers ought to know what the price is of the services they receive before they accept that care.

Well, the free market will never do that on its own. It would take consumer protection laws or nationalizing/socializing medicine. Most low income folk I talk to want socialized medicine like they have in Canada. They're tired of not having access to affordable healthcare for themselves and their kids. I don't blame them.

I was being serious, but that's not to suggest there aren't any legitimate concerns about the use of that kind of science.

Sure, but it's not the legitimate concerns that will prevent it from happening. It'll be the irrational, ignorance based fear. Old eugenics programs were in no way scientific, they were just an application of racism. Allowing a medical option to prevent birth defects and medical frailties through genetic engineering would be the holy grail of health. I'd do it for any future children or grandchildren of mine, so long as the technology was safe.

I doubt the human race will evolve out of its irrational fears soon enough to see it happen in my lifetime.

Back to politics and on a related note, No Child Left Behind Screws the Disabled.

School Attendance Law 'Gone Awry'
'No Child' Rule Vexes Md. Special-Ed Center That Raised Test Scores

Stephen Knolls School suffered the ignominy of failure under federal law in 2006 and 2007 for low test scores. This year, the Kensington school finally made the grade in reading and math -- only to be sanctioned for poor attendance.

The challenge in this case is not truancy. Stephen Knolls serves medically fragile children with severe physical and cognitive disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida and Rett syndrome.

One student missed 119 days of school last year because of illness. An eighth-grade boy logged more than 80 absences before dying in January. When school health aides call home for routine matters, they take pains to begin each conversation by saying, "This is not an emergency," because parents generally prepare for the worst.

"We know that there are legitimate reasons for [students] to be home," said Tina Shrewsbury, school coordinator. "They're going to [medical] specialists. . . . They're having lab tests done. They're being hospitalized."

Stephen Knolls faces the stigma of three consecutive years on a state watch list of underperforming schools, due for release in coming weeks. Its dilemma highlights how students with disabilities can get caught in the politics of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Under the law, schools must show annual progress in test scores, attendance and graduation rates for all students and groups of students, including those who receive special education.
/
Last school year, 27 of 1,145 Maryland elementary and middle schools failed to make "adequate progress" under the law because of attendance. Repeated failures plunge a school ever deeper into the machinery of accountability and trigger escalating sanctions.
/
In 2007, four of 16 Stephen Knolls students passed the state reading test. This year, 18 of 18 passed. But because of low attendance, the school failed to make adequate progress for a third year. State rules dictate that the school must prepare "a detailed plan to solve problems in student achievement." After several more years of failure, the school could theoretically reach the end of the accountability process: "restructuring," a top-to-bottom shakeup.

Susan "Sam" Campbell, mother of a 10-year-old Stephen Knolls student, said it is unfair to sanction the school for low attendance. Her son, like many at Stephen Knolls, misses school from time to time for visits to medical specialists.

"I think the fact that these kids are in school as much as they are is a minor miracle," she said.

Obama is going to be so busy undoing the Bush legacy he won't have time to make one of his own.

[Killthorne]

Special education schools are not the only ones suffering from the No Child Left Behind Act. Just take a look at all the urban racially segregated schools that are falling apart, physically and academically. Poor wages, poor maintenance, crappy funding, and ridiculous teaching methods... just to keep up with that Act.

It's no wonder there's a high drop-out rate for these schools given the number of children being subjected to a horrible learning environment.

And not to mention classes in hair-braiding....

The crazy thing is most people will tell you that this whole No Child Left Behind Act is a great thing and that there is no such thing as racial segregation in our school systems. Perhaps if they had to send their children to inner-city public schools, they'd take more of a closer look at the destructive division of education amongst those in poverty and of ethnicity, and those that can afford private schools.


~Killy~

[Zelknolf]

Sure, but it's not the legitimate concerns that will prevent it from happening. It'll be the irrational, ignorance based fear. Old eugenics programs were in no way scientific, they were just an application of racism. Allowing a medical option to prevent birth defects and medical frailties through genetic engineering would be the holy grail of health. I'd do it for any future children or grandchildren of mine, so long as the technology was safe.

I doubt the human race will evolve out of its irrational fears soon enough to see it happen in my lifetime.

American eugenics programs specifically targeted people with disabilities. The Nazi party's (mis)application of the concept doesn't really seem on topic; the point is more that the issues you're speaking of either aren't hereditary (Down syndrome), aren't genetic (mental retardation), or are too complicated, even at the genetic level, to make a retrovirus to fix (heart disease and cancer), unless we come up with a variety of tweaking that doesn't involve killing off a lot of tissue (so the modified stuff can grow in to take its place) -- might be possible, not really my specialty -- I doubt we've got an achievable goal there. At best, we'll offend, abuse, and discriminate with such an undertaking.

Seems unfair to try to boil it down to irrational fear, frankly. We've historical precedent that specifically tried to alter the genetic makeup of the next generation to decrease the incidence of disability, and it failed.

[Mulu]

American eugenics programs specifically targeted people with disabilities.

Among others. They also tried to target the poor and the criminal, which they considered hereditary traits. But their mistakes need not be repeated.

The Nazi party's (mis)application of the concept doesn't really seem on topic; the point is more that the issues you're speaking of either aren't hereditary (Down syndrome), aren't genetic (mental retardation), or are too complicated, even at the genetic level, to make a retrovirus to fix

Well, Down's syndrome isn't hereditary because they are born sterile, but it is a genetic condition subject to prevention by genetically engineering your offspring. Mental retardation may or may not be genetic in any given case, there are *many* causes. As for complication, I'm not talking about retroviruses, I'm talking about germ line engineering, as in take my DNA and clean it up and then pair it with cleaned up DNA from my wife to make our kid. In vitro fertilization taken to its logical extreme. It's Gattica, preferably without the stark underclass. The technology is achievable, but scares most people.

I suspect it will ultimately be available, but only to the very wealthy.

[Mayhem]

It's Gattica,

Gattaca.

No initial "I" in DNA, just G,A,T and C

[Mulu]

Fine....

It was a great movie. And on the topic of hotties... Uma Thurman is hot.

[Zelknolf]

Among others. They also tried to target the poor and the criminal, which they considered hereditary traits. But their mistakes need not be repeated.

I did/do acknowledge the potential for the concept to be implemented without these mistakes. I also mean to say that dismissing it as a horrible thing the Nazis did, which we never would/could repeat or to say that we've never used such strategies to respond to conditions that place a financial burden on society - and thus attribute opposition to fear - isn't fair. I think the past failures of the attempt remind of the extreme complexity of the "bad" genes contributing to the health problems meant to be shooed away.

Well, Down's syndrome isn't hereditary because they are born sterile, but it is a genetic condition subject to prevention by genetically engineering your offspring. Mental retardation may or may not be genetic in any given case, there are *many* causes. As for complication, I'm not talking about retroviruses, I'm talking about germ line engineering, as in take my DNA and clean it up and then pair it with cleaned up DNA from my wife to make our kid. In vitro fertilization taken to its logical extreme. It's Gattica, preferably without the stark underclass. The technology is achievable, but scares most people.

I suspect it will ultimately be available, but only to the very wealthy.

In the cases of Down syndrome and mental retardation, how would germline engineering help with that? Altering the genetics capable of being passed on wouldn't do much for the mutations or quirks that produce the former, and to the latter, indeed there are many causes (very broad definition: 2 std devs less "intelligent" than average; it covers lots of ground) but I would think that you'd not curb the population of people in need of extensive support services with such a strategy, quite precisely because it's a collection of causes rather than a definitive cause.

I don't think the points on genetic factors to heart disease or cancer are much addressed in your suggestion, either. More tweaks - and there would have to be more tweaks - mean higher rates of failure. I suppose I could see a case being made for taking the next dozenish generations and pick on those genetic factors one at a time, but I doubt we'll see any results in either of our lifetimes (and I, similarly, doubt that there would be funding enough to actually do it, even for the ridiculously wealthy.) I do again acknowledge that I'm not a geneticist (and if there's one reading this post, he/she can surely correct me), but it doesn't seem to be achievable enough for any of us to talk about using it on any scale that would bring about social change.

[Mulu]

Well, there are over 10,000 specifically identified mutations that cause what are called genetic diseases. Trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome) is one of them. A genetic screening can allow you to see what problems an embryo already has, but a genetically engineered zygote would presumably have none of them, having had it's code essentially written from scratch.

That technology doesn't exist yet, though we are getting closer. We can do it for a bacterium.

As for intelligence, hair color, etc., well that is the slippery slope, isn't it? It's very easy to say yes to medical conditions, still pretty easy to say yes for high intelligence and general physical ability, but when you start getting to height and eye color and propensities of behavior, it admittedly starts to get a little disconcerting.

The most typical deontological argument against genetic engineering is that the decision to change the genetic traits of some potential person must be based upon some image of a perfect person. Implicit in such a supposition, the argument goes, is a statement that some human lives are more valuable than others, and our decision to act on such value judgments is immoral. And yet who would rationally choose to allow their child to have spina bifida or cerebral palsy? And if the technology exists to prevent it, and you don't avail yourself of that technology, aren't you choosing to risk that outcome for your child? Is that really moral? There is also a significant cost to society involved.

Modern medicine itself, without genetic science, has trait selection effects, whether intentional or not. At a cost of around $150,000.00 a year, hemophiliacs can use a medicine derived from blood to give their own blood clotting qualities; thus they live, reproduce, and pass their trait. In a society where people are encouraged to reproduce no matter what genetic defects they may have, and such technologies as invitro fertilization and gamete donors are looked on as last resorts, hemophiliacs and others with dangerous and costly genetic disorders are encouraged to pass their traits to future generations. I've seen this happen in my own family in regard to childhood leukemia. My aunt knew she had it, had kids anyway, and one died of it finally at the age of 20.

Well, this is an issue unto itself, obviously, and probably deserves its own thread if you really want to discuss it.

[Vaelahr]

Sure, but it's not the legitimate concerns that will prevent it from happening. It'll be the irrational, ignorance based fear. Old eugenics programs were in no way scientific, they were just an application of racism. Allowing a medical option to prevent birth defects and medical frailties through genetic engineering would be the holy grail of health. I'd do it for any future children or grandchildren of mine, so long as the technology was safe.

I doubt the human race will evolve out of its irrational fears soon enough to see it happen in my lifetime.

American eugenics programs specifically targeted people with disabilities. The Nazi party's (mis)application of the concept doesn't really seem on topic...

Yeah, the Nazis were all about socialized medicine, gun control, getting the youth involved, stamping out religion......

Sorry, what was the topic?

[Zelknolf]

Well, there are over 10,000 specifically identified mutations that cause what are called genetic diseases. Trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome) is one of them. A genetic screening can allow you to see what problems an embryo already has, but a genetically engineered zygote would presumably have none of them, having had it's code essentially written from scratch.

Tisomy 21 is the presence of an additional chromisone (namely, three of #21). They are, individually, unmutated.

<snip>

Well, this is an issue unto itself, obviously, and probably deserves its own thread if you really want to discuss it.

I was responding mostly to the suggestion that such strategies are a valid solution to our health care problems, and my response is indeed acknowledging the facts you present as valid: it's not an option right now. The technology we do have can't do it and can't be used on a scale appropriate to the problem, as well as having the actual application being largely problematic and given high (I would say unrealistic) expectations.

//edited to fix those damnable BBCode tags