Dormammu, you mentioned "If a couple knows they have the ressesive genes for a harmful disease they might take steps to make shure that their children don't inherit the disease"..what kind of "steps" are you referring to? I'm not sure if you mean PREVENTIVE steps or simply a "heads up" so treatments can be arrranged.
Also, how successful are we at this time in detecting likelyhood of illnesses/diseases in ones later life?
Well there are a great deal of steps one could take depending on their attitudes towards different reproductive tecnologies. One obvious step a couple with heritable diseases, (expressed or not) could take is to decide not to have children at all. Steven Hawking (you know that, "wheelchair guy") and his wife chose this route.
Something else you could do is use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to make shure that any embryo you implant can be screened for the disease.
A third option exists as well. After a woman is already pregnant she can use amniocentesis to detect any genetic diseases and may choose to abort if the child has a disease.
All 3 of these practices, if widely used, would decrease the frequency of heritable diseases and hence have a "eugenic effect".
In answer to you question about the accuracy of the testing, it depends on the disease. With some genetic dieseses, if you have the gene you will most certainly have the Illness, while with others it's more iffy, and lots of diseases are simply not genetic.
I know that some see an ethical problem with this form of eugenics but I do not, provided it is not coerced. It should be noted that I am way outside of the mainstream on this issue but I cannot see any problem even with "designer babies".
This message has been edited by The Dread Dormammu, 11-10-2004 05:47 AM
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