MEDIA WATCH: Comment and Analysis [Article Re-Print]
The political and media response to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, has provided the inspiration for some very good writing, thought and analysis by Deaf people and their Hearing colleagues. The Stop Eugenics site is replete with articles and links, of which the following editorial Disability Now Coverage by Disability Now, blew me away. That I just had to re-publish it, in its entirety.
It is short and pithy, where the mainstream media talks our of its collective arse.
As Complex As Life and Death [published March 25, 2008]
Once again the general media have got it completely wrong. Previously they’ve turned the whole welfare to work debate into an exposé on what a bunch of work- shy malingerers we disabled people are. Now they’re using the passage of the human fertilisation and embryology bill (HFEB) through Parliament to express astonishment, indignation or rage at deaf couples wanting designer babies. This is a complete red herring which confuses and takes focus and attention away from the real issues.
It is possible to find deaf people who actively do want to have a deaf baby. But this is most often for cultural reasons rather than to perpetuate deafness as an empowering disabling state.
Equally it’s possible to find deaf people who are so shocked by that idea as to find it repugnant. It is probably somewhat easier to find people with a congenital impairment or condition who would welcome having a child who shared the impairment just as much and in just the same way as they would welcome, love and cherish a child who didn’t.
And therein lies the real reason for the objections of deaf and other congenitally-disabled individuals and groups to one clause (14.4.9) in HFEB. That clause states that when embryos are being selected for IVF, if there is a choice between those carrying the possibility of inherited impairment and those with no such possibility, the ones carrying no risk will always, automatically and incontrovertibly be preferred.
What this represents in principle is a value judgement: an embryo carrying the possibility of an impairment is always, automatically and incontrovertibly less desirable than one which doesn’t.
What it represents in practice is nothing short of eugenics, or at least the thin end of a eugenics wedge. It’s clearly a move to engineer out congenital impairment.
What it also represents is the abolition of choice.
This doesn’t negate the fact that you should be reading all the other stuff on Stop Eugenics. Read the Good Doctor and get educated!
Readings Of Note:
MEDIA WATCH: The Certainty Principle
Hearing Beethoven
The Right To Remain Silent
Telegraph on ‘deaf babies’ we are still failing to get the message across
Stop Eugenics
ANALYSIS: The HFEB & Clause 14(4)(9) Media Feeding and Talkback Frenzy: Part 4
ANALYSIS: The HFEB & Clause 14(4)(9) Media Feeding and Talkback Frenzy: Part Three
ANALYSIS: The HFEB & Clause 14(4)(9) Media Feeding and Talkback Frenzy: Part Two
ANALYSIS: The HFEB & Clause 14(4)(9) Media Feeding and Talkback Frenzy
Deaf People & Genetics: Media Coverage, Part 2
Deaf People & Genetics: Media Coverage
MEDIA WATCH: A Cacophonous Din of Ignorance & A Sane Voice [More Linx]