The conflict between the improvement of health through genetic technologies and the social and moral implications involved is a rather difficult issue to resolve. The first race-based pharmaceutical, BiDil, has created a very interesting debate. After reading this article, it seems to me as if the introduction of this medicine was driven more by the prospect of “market exclusivity and the potential for huge profits on sales of the drug” than anything else (Roberts 63). If there is in fact “more genetic variation within so called races than between them” than the usefulness of this drug would seemingly be debunked right there (Roberts 64). However, “African American activists with ties to the pharmaceutical industry” quickly stifle those who contest the effectiveness of the drug by claiming their opponents are obstructing African American’s access to life saving medicine (Roberts 66). The issue regarding the morality and social justice of genetic selection technologies is extremely controversial as well. Roberts provides the argument that genetic selection technologies will increase discrimination against the disabled and hinder their social rights. I don’t agree with this claim, and I think these technologies have to be the future for the medical field regarding reproduction. I think advocating against these technologies and the benefits they can provide is just delaying the inevitable, which will ultimately result in a higher percentage of healthy babies and consequently healthier families as well.
Dorothy Roberts argues that "genetic science provides valuable tools for biocitizens to better understand and treat illness. But we should be against a conception of biocitizenship that promotes individual health as a way of ignoring larger social inequalities" (page 69). Her concern is that these biotechnological advances will cause (or are causing) social inequality. I agree with Jim on the fact that this issue is a difficult one to resolve. What bothers me is that Roberts claims towards the end of her article that "social hierarchy is the single most important determinant of health". Perhaps she should have gone more into detail with that argument because it was cut off too short. She did provide some evidence but not enough to completely cancel out the importance of biotechnological advances and genetic research.
Robert's argument about biocitizenship can cause or has caused social inequality was interesting. I think that her arguement was very strong in the beginning, but I could kind of sense she was against biocitizenship from the beginning as well, and confirmed it in the third paragraph. The most uncomfortable topic for me was the Race and Personalized Medicine because I would hope that pills I have received or will receive will be based solely on my race, but because its medical advances. It was very controversial for me but she provided information from the FDA so it did help her ethos, but I'm still unsure about the whole thing. On the gender topic she mentions that "As a result of such pressure many pregnant women now view genetic testing as an important element of responsible mothering" (67) I remember when my mother was pregnant with my little brother I went with her and they offered her the genetic testing, and not "pressured" her. She did take it because obviously we have these medical advances for health purposes to have healthier babies. I have to agree with Jim and Michelle that the issue is difficult to resolve, but these technologies are for medical purposes in the end.
I found Roberts' article really interesting. First, because she went deeper into the consequences of reprogenetics and personalized medicine that I had never thought of. Second, because the more I read the more I was reminded of the movie Gattaca. For those who haven't seen Gattaca, it's basically about a future where genetic testing and selection for embryos is done ALL the time. And those who were born without their parents having chosen which traits for them to have, etc, are considered inferior. Anyway, I think that personalized medicine based upon one's genetic make-up is a great idea, but the way that it seems to be going right now by dividing up races while there's "more genetic variation within so called races than between them" is not leading us in the right direction (64). And I do agree with Roberts that reprogenetics can lead to discrimination against disabilities; she furthered that argument when she quoted women that had selective abortion yet they stated they wanted their babies. It brings me back to class on Monday when Alexandria said that if someone is thinking about having a child, they should be prepared to accept the risk that comes with it. If you really wanted your kid, you wouldn't have aborted it right? I don't think it's leading to healthy babies, so much as preventing babies with disabilities from coming into the world. It's avoiding how to solve these issues and cure them or whatever. It's just cutting them out.
This article made me think a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and its misuse of health. According to Robert, this industry is using specific races as profitable markets in its search for new drugs. She argues that the biocitizenship that promotes individual health creates a false division between health and social justice, "weighs them against each other and declares health the winner" (69).I totally understand and agree with Robert's position and believe that the pharmaceutical industry needs to be controlled more. However, I don't have any knowledge about the research done in this field and can't confidently say that people like Sally Satel, who believe that racial differences are real at the molecular level, are wrong. Also, I don't quite understand the disability rights that the article mentions. If there is a way to prevent a certain disease or disability in humans, then I believe the ones who get the treatment WILL live a life of higher quality. This doesn't mean that implantation genetic diagnosis reinforces that being disabled is wrong. I am not saying that I am for or against this technology; however, I don't understand why the disabled ones should be offended by it.
People with disabilities could be offended by the use of PGD in eliminating people like themselves. This could be seen as offensive since eliminating people like them is seen as the solution to creating a "healthier" society. Roberts argues that a more just society is a healthier one, not that a society that has less people with disabilities is a healthier one. Roberts argues that the social discrimination against people with disabilities is what needs to be fixed. This is not accomplished by selecting for embryos without genetic disabilities.
Roberts does not say anything about higher quality of life for that individual embryo, he instead just looks at PGD's affect on the health of society as a whole.
I thought that the strategies Roberts used when discussing her position on reprogenetics and disability rights were effective. In particular, her use of pathos when discussing the women using genetic selection by way of abortion stood out to me. I know that the woman cited should not be representative of all women who use prenatal diagnoses but the woman who aborted her fetus with Down syndrome who says “I don’t look at it as though I had an abortion, even though that is technically what it is. There’s a difference. I wanted this baby.” upset me (Roberts, 68). She says that she wanted a baby, so why would she throw this life away? I don’t believe that people should be placing value on life based on mental capability. People with Down syndrome can lead meaningful lives. I can see Roberts’ point that reprogenetic technology can impede the rights of disabled people. She points out that prenatal genetic diagnosis reinforces the view that “disability itself, not societal discrimination against people with disabilities, is the problem to be solved (66).” I can also see that if these genetic selection technologies are not widely available to everyone, which they most likely will not be, the result could be a reinforcement of social hierarchies.
The article "Social Immorality of Health in the Gene Age" was fairly interesting to read. The author Dorothy Roberts suggested several controversial issues such as race-specific medications and the conflict between social justice and health. In my opinion, first of all, I think her argument that reprogenetics, which is a combination of reproductive technologies and genetic selections, can further develop the discrimination against disabled people is flawed. It is true that there are disabled and impaired people who are having difficulties in ordinary lives and it is partly true that they are treated differently from people without any disabilities. However, at some point, they(people with handicaps) should acknowledge that if they didn't have certain impairments, they could enjoy a little bit more of freedom at least physically. I admit that it is inhumane to abort fetuses when it is detected that they have disabled factors. However, if the technologies further develop and can just eliminate disabling factors in the fetuses without abortion, that will be a technological breakthrough. There are numerous debates and conflicts concerning reprogenetics, and I am not in favor of it neither, but somehow in this article, I found some points that I didn't agree on. Second of all, about the race-specific drugs, I think it is rather a more of a marketing strategy of drug companies. Maybe it is because of my shallow knowledge in medical field, but I don't see a neccessity to put emphasis and focus on race when it comes to diseases and their symptoms. I think, those race-specific medications will only spur further cognition of racial differences when it's high time that the world becomes a melting pot. To sum up, the issue that this article is dealing with is such a morally and socially controversial so it cannot be resolved in any methods yet, but I think it was very interesting to think how the author thought about this issue.
This article mentions the point that health has evolved from a state matter to a more individual, family and marketing matter. It is a fact that in the past decades ever since technology has jumped leaps and bounds that the health of citizens have also improved and people are always trying to find ways to cure this disease, mitigate that disease, or eradicate another altogether. Roberts claim that parents given the choice to screen their embryos and choose one with the desirable traits are wrong in the aspect that it seems to solve the issue of disability discrimination at the roots of the problem. The problem is the societal view of this group of people and the solution to the problem should be societal, not by screening the embryos. This just perpetuates the discrimination because the parents don’t want their kids to be disabled in the first place, and this just worsens the plight of people who are disabled.
I agree with Thao and Robert's comment about the debates of the ethics of biotechnologies. If i were a disabled person currently living and I learned that they were trying to eliminate the people like me, I would be upset because disabled people did not make that personal choice to live that way, and yes, it would make them feel inadequate as human beings. I think that trying to prevent disease is a good thing, but choosing a person before they are born seems wrong to me. I believe that you should be naturally born and your parents should love you no matter how you come into the world. I agreed with Alexandria's comment last class that if a parent is this picky about what their child is going to be, then maybe they shouldn't have children at all. I agree that society's view of disabled people as a burden rather than an asset to the world can seem unethical and hurtful to this group of people. I know if they were trying to eliminate tall people from the world, I would feel hurt and inadequate as a human.
I thought Roberts' article was very interesting and brought up an interesting argument about race and health that I had never considered before. I was unaware that there were medications being marketed towards specific races but the idea of these medications makes sense to me. As it was said in the article, "disease is not color blind so why should doctors be." To me it is an of injustice to ignore a factor of a patients' health for the sake of being politically correct. If there is a product that will specifically help health issues of a certain race, I see no problem with it being prescribed.
The conflict between the improvement of health through genetic technologies and the social and moral implications involved is a rather difficult issue to resolve. The first race-based pharmaceutical, BiDil, has created a very interesting debate. After reading this article, it seems to me as if the introduction of this medicine was driven more by the prospect of “market exclusivity and the potential for huge profits on sales of the drug” than anything else (Roberts 63). If there is in fact “more genetic variation within so called races than between them” than the usefulness of this drug would seemingly be debunked right there (Roberts 64). However, “African American activists with ties to the pharmaceutical industry” quickly stifle those who contest the effectiveness of the drug by claiming their opponents are obstructing African American’s access to life saving medicine (Roberts 66).
ReplyDeleteThe issue regarding the morality and social justice of genetic selection technologies is extremely controversial as well. Roberts provides the argument that genetic selection technologies will increase discrimination against the disabled and hinder their social rights. I don’t agree with this claim, and I think these technologies have to be the future for the medical field regarding reproduction. I think advocating against these technologies and the benefits they can provide is just delaying the inevitable, which will ultimately result in a higher percentage of healthy babies and consequently healthier families as well.
Dorothy Roberts argues that "genetic science provides valuable tools for biocitizens to better understand and treat illness. But we should be against a conception of biocitizenship that promotes individual health as a way of ignoring larger social inequalities" (page 69). Her concern is that these biotechnological advances will cause (or are causing) social inequality.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jim on the fact that this issue is a difficult one to resolve.
What bothers me is that Roberts claims towards the end of her article that "social hierarchy is the single most important determinant of health". Perhaps she should have gone more into detail with that argument because it was cut off too short. She did provide some evidence but not enough to completely cancel out the importance of biotechnological advances and genetic research.
Robert's argument about biocitizenship can cause or has caused social inequality was interesting. I think that her arguement was very strong in the beginning, but I could kind of sense she was against biocitizenship from the beginning as well, and confirmed it in the third paragraph. The most uncomfortable topic for me was the Race and Personalized Medicine because I would hope that pills I have received or will receive will be based solely on my race, but because its medical advances. It was very controversial for me but she provided information from the FDA so it did help her ethos, but I'm still unsure about the whole thing. On the gender topic she mentions that "As a result of such pressure many pregnant women now view genetic testing as an important element of responsible mothering" (67) I remember when my mother was pregnant with my little brother I went with her and they offered her the genetic testing, and not "pressured" her. She did take it because obviously we have these medical advances for health purposes to have healthier babies. I have to agree with Jim and Michelle that the issue is difficult to resolve, but these technologies are for medical purposes in the end.
ReplyDeleteI found Roberts' article really interesting. First, because she went deeper into the consequences of reprogenetics and personalized medicine that I had never thought of. Second, because the more I read the more I was reminded of the movie Gattaca. For those who haven't seen Gattaca, it's basically about a future where genetic testing and selection for embryos is done ALL the time. And those who were born without their parents having chosen which traits for them to have, etc, are considered inferior. Anyway, I think that personalized medicine based upon one's genetic make-up is a great idea, but the way that it seems to be going right now by dividing up races while there's "more genetic variation within so called races than between them" is not leading us in the right direction (64). And I do agree with Roberts that reprogenetics can lead to discrimination against disabilities; she furthered that argument when she quoted women that had selective abortion yet they stated they wanted their babies. It brings me back to class on Monday when Alexandria said that if someone is thinking about having a child, they should be prepared to accept the risk that comes with it. If you really wanted your kid, you wouldn't have aborted it right? I don't think it's leading to healthy babies, so much as preventing babies with disabilities from coming into the world. It's avoiding how to solve these issues and cure them or whatever. It's just cutting them out.
ReplyDeleteThis article made me think a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and its misuse of health. According to Robert, this industry is using specific races as profitable markets in its search for new drugs. She argues that the biocitizenship that promotes individual health creates a false division between health and social justice, "weighs them against each other and declares health the winner" (69).I totally understand and agree with Robert's position and believe that the pharmaceutical industry needs to be controlled more. However, I don't have any knowledge about the research done in this field and can't confidently say that people like Sally Satel, who believe that racial differences are real at the molecular level, are wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't quite understand the disability rights that the article mentions. If there is a way to prevent a certain disease or disability in humans, then I believe the ones who get the treatment WILL live a life of higher quality. This doesn't mean that implantation genetic diagnosis reinforces that being disabled is wrong. I am not saying that I am for or against this technology; however, I don't understand why the disabled ones should be offended by it.
People with disabilities could be offended by the use of PGD in eliminating people like themselves. This could be seen as offensive since eliminating people like them is seen as the solution to creating a "healthier" society. Roberts argues that a more just society is a healthier one, not that a society that has less people with disabilities is a healthier one. Roberts argues that the social discrimination against people with disabilities is what needs to be fixed. This is not accomplished by selecting for embryos without genetic disabilities.
DeleteRoberts does not say anything about higher quality of life for that individual embryo, he instead just looks at PGD's affect on the health of society as a whole.
I thought that the strategies Roberts used when discussing her position on reprogenetics and disability rights were effective. In particular, her use of pathos when discussing the women using genetic selection by way of abortion stood out to me. I know that the woman cited should not be representative of all women who use prenatal diagnoses but the woman who aborted her fetus with Down syndrome who says “I don’t look at it as though I had an abortion, even though that is technically what it is. There’s a difference. I wanted this baby.” upset me (Roberts, 68). She says that she wanted a baby, so why would she throw this life away? I don’t believe that people should be placing value on life based on mental capability. People with Down syndrome can lead meaningful lives. I can see Roberts’ point that reprogenetic technology can impede the rights of disabled people. She points out that prenatal genetic diagnosis reinforces the view that “disability itself, not societal discrimination against people with disabilities, is the problem to be solved (66).” I can also see that if these genetic selection technologies are not widely available to everyone, which they most likely will not be, the result could be a reinforcement of social hierarchies.
ReplyDeleteThe article "Social Immorality of Health in the Gene Age" was fairly interesting to read. The author Dorothy Roberts suggested several controversial issues such as race-specific medications and the conflict between social justice and health. In my opinion, first of all, I think her argument that reprogenetics, which is a combination of reproductive technologies and genetic selections, can further develop the discrimination against disabled people is flawed. It is true that there are disabled and impaired people who are having difficulties in ordinary lives and it is partly true that they are treated differently from people without any disabilities. However, at some point, they(people with handicaps) should acknowledge that if they didn't have certain impairments, they could enjoy a little bit more of freedom at least physically. I admit that it is inhumane to abort fetuses when it is detected that they have disabled factors. However, if the technologies further develop and can just eliminate disabling factors in the fetuses without abortion, that will be a technological breakthrough. There are numerous debates and conflicts concerning reprogenetics, and I am not in favor of it neither, but somehow in this article, I found some points that I didn't agree on. Second of all, about the race-specific drugs, I think it is rather a more of a marketing strategy of drug companies. Maybe it is because of my shallow knowledge in medical field, but I don't see a neccessity to put emphasis and focus on race when it comes to diseases and their symptoms. I think, those race-specific medications will only spur further cognition of racial differences when it's high time that the world becomes a melting pot. To sum up, the issue that this article is dealing with is such a morally and socially controversial so it cannot be resolved in any methods yet, but I think it was very interesting to think how the author thought about this issue.
ReplyDeleteThis article mentions the point that health has evolved from a state matter to a more individual, family and marketing matter. It is a fact that in the past decades ever since technology has jumped leaps and bounds that the health of citizens have also improved and people are always trying to find ways to cure this disease, mitigate that disease, or eradicate another altogether. Roberts claim that parents given the choice to screen their embryos and choose one with the desirable traits are wrong in the aspect that it seems to solve the issue of disability discrimination at the roots of the problem. The problem is the societal view of this group of people and the solution to the problem should be societal, not by screening the embryos. This just perpetuates the discrimination because the parents don’t want their kids to be disabled in the first place, and this just worsens the plight of people who are disabled.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Thao and Robert's comment about the debates of the ethics of biotechnologies. If i were a disabled person currently living and I learned that they were trying to eliminate the people like me, I would be upset because disabled people did not make that personal choice to live that way, and yes, it would make them feel inadequate as human beings. I think that trying to prevent disease is a good thing, but choosing a person before they are born seems wrong to me. I believe that you should be naturally born and your parents should love you no matter how you come into the world. I agreed with Alexandria's comment last class that if a parent is this picky about what their child is going to be, then maybe they shouldn't have children at all. I agree that society's view of disabled people as a burden rather than an asset to the world can seem unethical and hurtful to this group of people. I know if they were trying to eliminate tall people from the world, I would feel hurt and inadequate as a human.
ReplyDeleteI thought Roberts' article was very interesting and brought up an interesting argument about race and health that I had never considered before. I was unaware that there were medications being marketed towards specific races but the idea of these medications makes sense to me. As it was said in the article, "disease is not color blind so why should doctors be." To me it is an of injustice to ignore a factor of a patients' health for the sake of being politically correct. If there is a product that will specifically help health issues of a certain race, I see no problem with it being prescribed.
ReplyDelete