Comparing child sacrifice in Peru from over 500 years ago and prenatal screening today is not quite the way we like to think about this, is it:
The findings lend credence to the accounts of Spanish conquistadors that described how children were selected for sacrifice from all across the empire, based on their physical perfection. We shudder at such brutal backwardness. Today, using prenatal screening, we scour the empire for children with physical imperfections and sacrifice them to ourselves.
I think this is a painful and offensive comparison. Also that he makes a valid point. We ain’t all as civilized as we’d like to believe.
by 
Why offensive if it is a truthful comparison?
I can see why you are asking that, Julie. I guess I am using the word as in “it’s an offensive concept” (child sacrifice, prenatal screening to get rid of “imperfect” kids) and not as in “I am offended because that is not accurate.” Perhaps I should have used a different word.
Prenatal screening isn’t used to detect a fetus with some tiny defect. It’s used to find the fetus that’s going to go on to spend the rest of it’s life drooling in a wheelchair and unable to so much as wipe it’s own ass without help.
If you get a bad roll of the die, just pick them up and roll again.
@Suricou – “It’s used to find the fetus that’s going to go on to spend the rest of it’s life drooling in a wheelchair and unable to so much as wipe it’s own ass without help.”
Shame on you Suricou. You are being blatantly disingenuous.
Yes – Prenatal screening is used to detect conditions which lead to lives which you consider to be unworthy of living. But it is also commonly used to detect conditions that are “potential” problems…conditions which allow an individual to live many happy, worthwhile and unaffected years. Ones that neither involve drooling nor the inability to maintain ones own hygeine.
Prenatal screening can be used to detect (and thereafter to abort) a fetus with Hemophilia – I guess you consider actor Richard Burton to have lived a life not worth living?
Prenatal screening can and is used to detect (and thereafter to abort) Huntington’s individuals. Thus preventing the life of someone who would have lived 40+ unaffected years as a healthy, worthwhile, loving individual. Woody Guthrie (musician with Huntington’s) wrote one of North America’s most beloved folk songs (This Land is Your Land). I am glad he had that chance.
Jazz Musician, Miles Davis, was affected with sickle cell anemia – This is yet another condition that can and is screened prenatally.
So Suricou, although there are lifelong debilitating conditions which can be detected by prenatal screening, there are many, many more screened for (and acted upon) than just those.
And to be perfectly honest, although he has certainly been known to drool, and spends most of his life in a wheelchair with someone else having to do the wiping for him, I would suggest that Stephen Hawking has lived a life worth living. Yet you believe that an individual with his prognosis for “quality of life” is of little worth and should be denied existence. It is believed that ALS may have a genetic component so research is ongoing to find a responsible gene (and therefore a prenatal screening tool).
Too bad for any future potential Stephen Hawkings. Or Richard Burtons or Miles Davis or Woody Guthries for that matter.
What was that blanket statement you were making about what prenatal screening is used for?
I wonder if Suricou actually believes the irrational fluff she spouts. Perhaps she is just trolling.