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Lawrence Hrubes

Passing My Disability On to My Children - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ability-on-to-my-children.html

ethics biology health genetics family disability

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 07 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Occasionally, I come across the term “designer baby,” and I am reminded that some parents now have the option to screen or modify the genes of their unborn children to ensure or avoid certain traits. It always gives me a feeling of unease. Obviously, I did not take this route — partly because, at least with my son, I never had to actually make the decision. My third child, Eliza, was a late midlife accident. I chose to have her despite the possibility she would have XLH, but would I have made the same decision in a planned pregnancy or if given a choice much earlier in the process? I can’t help suspecting that because of advances in genetic mapping, genetic testing, the sheer range of prenatal choices, chances are that in a generation or two, there will be no one in the world who has XLH, no one who looks like me or my children — at least not in the so-called developed world — and I don’t know how to feel about that.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Forum, Advantage - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01ksh9h

TOK science SocialScience biology disability education success

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Nov 13
     
    "We explore what can confer advantage. Bridget Kendall talks to best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell about whether the power of the underdog has been under-estimated; psychologist Kathryn Asbury on why some kids start school with a biological advantage over their peers, and globalisation professor Ian Goldin on ensuring future generations' advantage now."
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - Are humans getting cleverer? - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-31556802

human sciences IQ intelligence quantification measurement psychology

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The researchers - Peera Wongupparaj, Veena Kumari and Robin Morris at Kings College London - did not themselves ask anyone to sit an IQ test, but they analysed data from 405 previous studies. Altogether, they harvested IQ test data from more than 200,000 participants, captured over 64 years and from 48 countries. Focusing on one part of the IQ test, the Raven's Progressive Matrices, they found that on average intelligence has risen the equivalent of 20 IQ points since 1950. IQ tests are designed to ensure that the average result is always 100, so this is a significant jump.
  • The new research is further confirmation of a trend that scientists have been aware of for some time. In 1982, James Flynn, a philosopher and psychologist based at the University of Otago in New Zealand, was looking through old American test manuals for IQ tests. He noticed that when tests were revised every 25 years or so, the test-setters would get a panel to sit both the old test and the new one. "And I noticed in all the test manuals, in every instance, those who took the old test got a higher score than they did on the new test," says Flynn. In other words, the tests were becoming harder. This became known as the Flynn Effect, though Flynn stresses he was not the first to notice the pattern, and did not come up with the name. But if the tests were getting harder, and the average score was steady at 100, people must have been getting better at them. It would seem they were getting more intelligent. If Americans today took the tests from a century ago, Flynn says, they would have an extraordinarily high average IQ of 130. And if the Americans of 100 years ago took today's tests, they would have an average IQ of 70 - the recognised cut-off for people with intellectual disabilities. To put it another way, IQ has been rising at roughly three points per decade.
Lawrence Hrubes

A Pioneer for Death With Dignity - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...pioneer-for-death-with-dignity

ethics science medicine health law death

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • More than two decades before Brittany Maynard’s public advocacy for death with dignity inspired lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and at least 16 states to introduce legislation authorizing the medical practice of aid in dying for the terminally ill, Senator Frank Roberts of Oregon sponsored one of the nation’s first death-with-dignity bills.
  • Medical aid in dying has always had enormous public support. Recent polls by Gallup and Harris show that 69 to 74 percent of people believe terminally ill adults should have access to medical means to bring about a peaceful death. This belief is strong throughout the nation and across all demographic categories, including age, disability, religion and political party.
  • First, the phenomenon of Brittany Maynard has transformed the movement for end-of-life-choice into an unstoppable force. Ms. Maynard was the 29-year-old woman dying of brain cancer, who moved, with her family, from her home in California to establish residency in Oregon and gain access to aid in dying. As her pain and seizures escalated and as inevitable paralysis, blindness and stupor approached, she drank medication obtained under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act and died quietly in a circle of her loved ones last fall. Her family vows to fulfill her legacy of legal reform in her native California and beyond. Young and old alike identify with Brittany Maynard. Her experience as a refugee for dignity sparks the “aha!” moment when people understand the grave injustice of government’s withholding from a competent, dying adult the elements of choice and control over suffering.
markfrankel18

Ethics Questions Arise as Genetic Testing of Embryos Increases - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...ting-of-embryos-increases.html

TOK ethics genetics science biology

shared by markfrankel18 on 04 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Genetic testing of embryos has been around for more than a decade, but its use has soared in recent years as methods have improved and more disease-causing genes have been discovered.
  • But the procedure also raises unsettling ethical questions that trouble advocates for the disabled and have left some doctors struggling with what they should tell their patients. When are prospective parents justified in discarding embryos? Is it acceptable, for example, for diseases like GSS, that develop in adulthood? What if a gene only increases the risk of a disease? And should people be able to use it to pick whether they have a boy or girl?
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