Down Syndrome in Aussie: Get it Early, Get it All

Well, well.

Sibling rivalry in the old Empire has just been raised a notch.

The Brits are hell-bent on assisted suicide show-and-tell. Some Scots are proposing legislation to make available assisted suicide for children. Baroness Warnock charges around the isle hooting about “putting people down.”

Not to be outdone, the Aussies are falling over themselves to do us all a favor and rid their corner of the planet of those pesky people with Down syndrome.

It was the Aussie government, you’ll recall, that refused Dr. Bernard Moeller a permanent residence visa because his son. Lukas, has DS. Those DS kids cost the heath care system lots of money, you know. The powers that be eventually backtracked, but only after a public furor.

I’ll guarantee there won’t be a similar outcry over their latest proposal of eugenic discrimination.

Same syndrome, different tactic.

Problem: Once there are Aussies with DS walking around, they are somewhat protected, even if only by public outrage.

Solution?

Change tactics: Get ‘em really early. 

Sorry, sorry!! I mean the Aussies are proposing a “National Screening Policy for Down Syndrome.”

The get -‘em-early policy is to institute universal in-utero screening  for DS. That way, DS can be destroyed before seeing the light of day.

Think of it. Proposals for an official, legal, government policy to eradicate people who are genetically different.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s 1930s Nazi Germany all over again. Trust me.

Australian Government to Residents with Down Syndrome: Get Out, You Cost Too Much

It’s spreading like wildfire. Every continent, almost every country.

Discrimination against people with Down Syndrome, that is.

If you don’t think we’re back to Useless Eaters, you’re wrong.

Just plain old wrong.

Useless Eaters is the term the Nazis used for people who were in some way disabled and who therefore couldn’t contribute to the economy. If you consume more resources than you can produce, we need to dispose of you. Just an economic decision, that’s all. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that we need to use our finite resources for people who will produce. 

You are using too many of our resources. You are not producing. Goodbye.

Now, eugenic discrimination against people with Down Syndrome is hardly new. We already terminate the vast majority of pregnancies where the genetic disorder is discovered. In that regard, I predict that we’ll soon move on to openly eugenic euthanasia for those who are genetically different and inconveniently alive.

Here’s the latest in Governments Gone Wild:

German-born Dr. Bernard Moeller lives with his family in Australia on a temporary resident visa. He helps reduce the government-acknowledged shortage of physicians. He’s applied for permanent residency.

No can do. Sorry.

Why?

Because his 13-year old son, Lukas, has Down Syndrome.

I kid you not.

Here’s what Australia’s news.com reported:

. . .the Immigration Department has rejected his application for permanent residency because his youngest son, Lukas, 13, does not meet the health requirement.

Health requirement? Not sure what this apparatchik euphemism means?

Here’s what it means:

The Immigration Department wrote to Dr Moeller saying his son had been assessed as a burden on Australian taxpayers and could not be granted permanent residency . . . . A copy of the decision said care for Lukas was "likely to result in significant costs to the Australian community in health care and community services".

Not only is this nakedly eugenic, it’s official, government-sanctioned eugenics.

If you have a disability, you are a burden to the government and to society.

If you have a disability, you are not welcome here.

If you have a disability you cost too much.

If you have a disability go away.

It’s a very short skip from this line of thinking to the Australian versions of Brandenburg, Sonnerstein, Bernburg, Hadamar, Grafeneck, and Hartheim, institutions which cared for people with disabilities and which were turned into the first gas chambers the Nazis ever used.

Australians with disabilities need to be afraid – very afraid. Their government is coming after them using the exact same logic as did the Nazis.

1930s: German useless eaters.

2008: Australian useless eaters.

Coming soon to a country near you.

Eugenic Researchers, Genetic Testing, and Eugenic Discrimination

Yesterday’s Washington Post ran a story that should give us great pause.

The piece reported on advances in genetic testing that make it easier to detect many more anomalies at earlier stages of pregnancy. I think we should be very aware that a primary aim of genetic testing is eugenic.

First, what the tests mean in the real world: Medical tests, including all genetic tests, are not perfect. 

At the level of the family, what this means is that for a percentage of those tested, the results will be wrong. That is, a percentage of terminations will be of children who actually do not have Down Syndrome, or any other genetic defect, for that matter.

Second, what the tests mean at a societal level: Genetic in-utero testing unambiguously seeks to separate the genetically normal from the genetically defective. As the tests become more sophisticated, more subtle genetic differences will become apparent.

That means, inevitably, that we will increasingly separate a larger and larger group of people into a variety of genetically defective categories. Furthermore, the genetically different will be increasingly segregated, in whatever way, from those who are genetically similar.

Genetic discrimination. Genetic segregation. For more pregnant mothers, destruction of their pregnancies based on genetic makeup, nothing more, nothing less.

It’s already happening.

Example: Genetic discrimination of Down Syndrome children. The vast majority of Down Syndrome pregnancies are terminated, exclusively and only because they are (a) genetically different, and (b) because that difference is overwhelmingly seen as negative and undesirable. Parents are heavily, and routinely, pressured to terminate the pregnancy. There’s very little evidence that the doom and gloom is balanced by other realistic, but not necessarily negative information. 

Who are the people making the case for genetic difference being negative, undesirable, and therefore worthy or termination?

Why, the medical professionals and genetic researchers of course.

Enter Arthur L. Beaudet, of Baylor's Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, who opined in the Post article that these tests are “ready for prime time:”

For people who want the best possible prenatal diagnosis and want the maximum information, this is the best option.

Here’s what we can be sure of: What Beaudet is saying is that these tests provide the most accurate test for rooting out genetic anomalies.

Because that’s exactly what they want to do – get rid of the genetically different.

Don’t believe me? Listen to the good Dr. Beaudet:

Some of these disorders are quite burdensome. They require lifelong nursing care. In some cases these children never walk, never talk, never feed themselves . . . It can have a major impact on the family. People say, 'I wish you had given me the opportunity to know ahead of time. It's really destroyed our lives.' That's why women want to know.

This is a nakedly eugenic position.

Not even a show of pretense.

If you are genetically different, then you are a burden. Your quality of life will be bad. Your family will have to deal with you, what a hassle. You will have destroyed your family’s lives by you, yourself, being alive.

The good doctor is, I’m sure a distinguished professional in his field. Here’s a list of some other people distinguished in their fields, who thought eugenics was just fine:

Helen Keller, Alfred Nobel, Margaret Sanger, Adolf Hitler, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, H. G. Wells, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw.

Just to name a few. 

Ah, the Brave New World. I can’t wait . . .

End Discrimination Against People with Down Syndrome - Now

I really don’t care what new Republican Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s political views are.

But here’s what I do care very much about: She refused to discriminate against her unborn child when the Down Syndrome diagnosis came in.

As a society, we prattle on and on about equality, diversity, and "access.” The notion of inclusiveness-everything rules the day. Well, almost everything - as long as we’re not talking about people with an extra chromosome.

The evidence is irrefutable that those with Down Syndrome have been deliberately left out. When Down Syndrome is thrown into the equation, suddenly our high-mindedness sags. Inexcusably, I think.

For years advocates fought to have people with Down Syndrome brought from the shadows of institutionalization to their rightful place in our communities and lives.

Lately, though, there are fewer and fewer of them around.

Why? Because the vast majority of in-utero Down Syndrome diagnoses result in abortion. The numbers don’t lie: When it comes to people with Down Syndrome, they’re considered defective.

The message is clear - we’d rather just not have them around.

Good for Palin for standing up to the pressure from the medical community, which almost always recommends termination of the pregnancy.

Good for Palin for making the statement that needs to be made much more often:

Genetic discrimination against people with Down Syndrome must stop.

Now. No excuses.

David Cameron wants to be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, so it’s tricky to judge whether his latest pronouncement Monday in London’s Daily Mail about people with disabilities is a political move or whether he really believes that people with disabilities, in his words, are defective.

Here’s what he said: Generally my approach is I want to improve the process of dealing with the genetic defects and diseases that cause so much suffering…When you have been for genetic counselling and had the answer it could be this or that it could be that, the idea of medical science advancing is not without its attractions.

At last, a new euphemism for getting rid of so-called imperfect people: improving the process of dealing with genetic defects, something which Cameron sees as an advance of medical science.

Two questions seem relevant to me.

First, why would Cameron go the defective route when his son, Ivan, has severe cerebral palsy and suffers from seizures? Ivan’s CP isn’t genetic, and was probably caused by any number of factors before or during birth. So, is Cameron making a distinction between genetic defects, which he thinks need to be “improved,” via attractive medical science advancement, and Ivan’s condition, which is not? Or, even worse, is Cameron implying that Ivan shouldn’t have been born?

Second, I think Cameron is throwing around the word defective too easily. Defective to whom? Many people Cameron would consider defective are, in other cultures, considered precious. Who decides the norms of defectiveness? Trying to reach a consensus on what is and is not a defect holds the potential for making distinctions I’d rather not consider. What other forms of defect might we invent to go along with people with disabilities? The Nazis considered Jews defective, as they did people with disabilities, including those, like Ivan, with CP and seizures. Might we, sometime in the future, consider brown eyes defective? Blond hair? Females?

Of course, we are far down the road of eliminating people with disabilities. We seem to have learned very little from the past.

Eugenics is alive and well in a country that not too many decades ago helped end the same idea and subsequent genocidal behavior that the loyal leader of the opposition now seems to support.