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British Researchers: No Male Children For Families With History of Autism

By Hilary White

LONDON, August 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Researchers at the University College Hospital London have applied for permission to begin using pre-implantation diagnosis (PGD) to screen IVF embryos for possible autism, even though there is no reliable test for the condition.

Opting for what one commentator called a "close enough solution," the reasoning goes that since 90% of autism sufferers are males, the answer is to allow only embryonic girls to be implanted in families with a medical history of autism. This, they say, will allow families with autistic children "to have a daughter free from the condition."

Simone Aspis of the British Council of Disabled People pointed to the inherent eugenic principles behind the application. "Screening for autism would create a society where only perfection is valued." In the brave new world of the researchers, it is reasonable to fear "that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted," Aspis said.

Bioethicist Ben Mitchell said, "If unborn children are being eliminated for a genetic disposition to autism, no one is safe . . . Today autism, tomorrow intelligence below 70 I.Q., the next day male pattern baldness. When will this madness stop?"

US columnist Chuck Colson, writing in Townhall about the British Researchers' application for the PGD screening, quotes Business Week saying, "the social cost of accommodating [their] birth is increasingly being seen as exceeding [their] worth."

This rhetoric from Business Week of the "social costs" of allowing the unfit to live and reproduce is identical to that of the early 20th century eugenics movement, led by abortion and contraception zealots such as Planned Parenthood foundress Margaret Sanger.

Colson makes the point, "Oh my! This utilitarian view of life inevitably leads us exactly where the Nazis were creating a master race. Can’t we see it?"

See Colson's Article in Townhall:

The eliminators
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ChuckColson/2006/08/03/the_eliminators

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