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Thread: Government Adviser: Killing Children With Defects

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    Government adviser: killing children with defects acceptable

    NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN


    A GOVERNMENT adviser on genetics has sparked fury by suggesting it might be acceptable to destroy children with ‘defects’ soon after they are born.

    John Harris, a member of the Human Genetics Commission, told a meeting at Westminster he did not see any distinction between aborting a fully grown unborn baby at 40 weeks and killing a child after it had been born.

    Harris, who is a professor of bioethics at Manchester University, would not be drawn on which defects or problems might be used as grounds for ending a baby’s life, or how old a child might be while it could still be destroyed.

    Harris was reported to have said that he did not believe that killing a child was always inexcusable.

    In addition, it was claimed that he did not believe that there was any ‘moral change’ that occurred between when the baby was in the womb and when it had been brought into the world.



    He did not say how old a child might be while it could still be destroyed


    Harris, who also gives advice to doctors as a member of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association (BMA), is understood to have argued that there was no moral distinction between aborting a foetus found by tests to have defects and disposing of a child where the parents discovered the problems at birth.

    The words drew a furious response from anti-abortion campaigners. The Pro-Life lobby group, who had members present at the meeting, noted what Harris had said and condemned his words.

    Julia Millington, the group’s spokeswoman, said: "It is frightening to think that university students are being educated by somebody who endorses the killing of new-born babies, and equally worrying to discover that such a person is the establishment’s ‘preferred’ bioethicist."

    However, Michael Wilkes, the chairman of the BMA’s ethics committee, claimed that Harris was simply trying to encourage debate and consistent thinking.

    He said: "There are many who might concur that there is no difference between a full-term foetus and a new-born baby, although the majority would see there is a substantial difference. Abortion is legal, but termination after birth is killing."

    In the past, Harris has spoken of the need to allow people to buy and sell human organs as a means of increasing supplies for transplant operations.

    He also recently expressed support for the sex selection of babies for social reasons.

    He said: "If it isn’t wrong to wish for a bonny bouncing baby girl, why would it be wrong to make use of technology to play fairy godmother?"

    http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=93982004

  2. The Drawing Room   -   #2


    SMILING FROM THE WOMB
    Headline news from Sky News
    UK, Friday September 12, 2003

    http://www.dadi.org/wombsmil.htm


    Pioneering scanning techniques have produced astonishing images from inside the womb which show babies apparently smiling and crying.

  3. The Drawing Room   -   #3
    j2k4's Avatar en(un)lightened
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    I've been waiting for this.

    It was inevitable.

    If such a thing is ever looked upon as "right", what will ever be "wrong" again?
    "Researchers have already cast much darkness on the subject, and if they continue their investigations, we shall soon know nothing at all about it."

    -Mark Twain

  4. The Drawing Room   -   #4
    Busyman's Avatar Use Logic Or STFU!!!
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    Originally posted by j2k4@26 January 2004 - 06:47
    I've been waiting for this.

    It was inevitable.

    If such a thing is ever looked upon as "right", what will ever be "wrong" again?
    I agree, that is frigging ridiculous.

    Hopefully this is just that rantings of one government advisor who won't have a job advising the government much longer.
    Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me. Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, Bitchhhh!

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  5. The Drawing Room   -   #5
    100%'s Avatar ╚════╩═╬════╝
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    Evolution & the survival of the most beautiful

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    Busyman's Avatar Use Logic Or STFU!!!
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    I just saw Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and there is a guy who was born amputated. The thing is, this guy wrestles in high school and so far this season has won 23 and lost 8. He is the top wrestler in his county.

    So fuck this so called advisor and his culling of the "defective".
    Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me. Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, Bitchhhh!

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  7. The Drawing Room   -   #7
    Barbarossa's Avatar mostly harmless
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    Originally posted by Busyman@26 January 2004 - 07:13
    I just saw Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and there is a guy who was born amputated.
    What - they can amputate limbs in utero now???

  8. The Drawing Room   -   #8
    Busyman's Avatar Use Logic Or STFU!!!
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    Originally posted by barbarossa+26 January 2004 - 12:48--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (barbarossa @ 26 January 2004 - 12:48)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Busyman@26 January 2004 - 07:13
    I just saw Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and there is a guy who was born amputated.
    What - they can amputate limbs in utero now??? [/b][/quote]
    No the guy said the doctor's call it something like genetic amputation; not quite sure.
    He definitely said the doctor's had to give it a name with the amputation in it. An "amputation" was not actually "performed".
    Last edited by Barbarossa; 04-03-2007 at 10:16 AM.
    Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me. Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, Bitchhhh!

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  9. The Drawing Room   -   #9
    Biggles's Avatar Looking for loopholes
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    The question is, did he advocate this policy or was he simply asking people to consider the rational implications of very late abortions? 40 weeks is after all a full term pregnancy. I suspect the gentleman was presenting complex arguments in a debate on ethics - those with a fixed lobby like Pro-Life or Pro Choice tend to be too focused on their own message to participate productively in such academic nicities.

    With regards to such policies, they have been tried and found wanting. The 19th century Eugenics thinking was a direct precurser to some fairly wild social policies in a surprisingly diverse number of countries. In some States in the US in the 1920s it was not uncommon for criminals to be sterilised - especially if they were somewhat dusky in orientation. Eugenics thinking crept into a number of social policies in the UK and, of course, in Nazi Germany, where they were taken to (some would say) their logical extreme. In an effort to improve racial stock a slow policy of exterminiation of the disabled took place and enforced sterilisation of those whose gene pool produced the defects. Not a pretty policy which ever way one cuts it.

    I do not believe we are on the brink or anywhere near such lunacy.
    Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum


  10. The Drawing Room   -   #10
    MagicNakor's Avatar On the Peripheral
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    Sounds to me that he was trying to get people to think on the "other side" of the issue; he is an ethics professor after all.

    things are quiet until hitler decides he'd like to invade russia
    so, he does
    the russians are like "OMG WTF D00DZ, STOP TKING"
    and the germans are still like "omg ph34r n00bz"
    the russians fall back, all the way to moscow
    and then they all begin h4xing, which brings on the russian winter
    the germans are like "wtf, h4x"
    -- WW2 for the l33t

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