4 ms·

"If one of your parents has Huntington's disease, there's a 50% chance that you will inherit the altered gene and will eventually develop Huntington's too." Ha

"If one of your parents has Huntington's disease, there's a 50% chance that you will inherit the altered gene and will eventually develop Huntington's too." Have they never heard of genetic diagnostics? For example with a combination of preimplantation generic testing and in-vitro fertilization you can prevent passing on known genetic mutations to the next generation.

kennywinker 1y ago
While technically possible, that option isn’t really available to most people. Tho I suppose 17 hour brain surgery with gene therapy is also not available to most people, so fair enough. Anyway, they’re just describing the heritability of the disease there.
- senkora 1y ago
  An optimal society would provide no-cost embryo screening and IVF to couples with the gene for HD, because that cost is certainly far <50% of the lifetime cost of living with HD in treatment costs, lost income, and lost QALY's. I hope that we can work towards such a society. (And of course this research is still worth doing to help the population who already have the illness)
  - software-is-art 1y ago
    Thats actually the case in New Zealand
jawns 1y ago
There is an ethical component here. The process you describe involves bringing new human lives into existence, then culling the embryos that carry the gene. For those of us who believe that directly ending human lives at any stage is wrong, this is problematic. Keep in mind that this isn't a so-called "incompatible with life" genetic issue. People with the defective gene can live asymptomatically into middle age. I've lost multiple family members to HD, and have multiple living with HD today. I would give just about anything to spare them from the effects of the disease. But should we decide, moments into a human being's life, that because they carry this gene, it invalidates their entire existence?
- trallnag 1y ago
  I'd say that as long as we allow abortions for personal reasons weeks into a pregnancy and sometimes describe even fetuses as bundles of cells, it's fine to kill blastocystes consisting out of a few hundred cells as they are evaluated for IVF

kennywinker 1y ago

While technically possible, that option isn’t really available to most people. Tho I suppose 17 hour brain surgery with gene therapy is also not available to most people, so fair enough. Anyway, they’re just describing the heritability of the disease there.

senkora 1y ago
An optimal society would provide no-cost embryo screening and IVF to couples with the gene for HD, because that cost is certainly far <50% of the lifetime cost of living with HD in treatment costs, lost income, and lost QALY's. I hope that we can work towards such a society. (And of course this research is still worth doing to help the population who already have the illness)
- software-is-art 1y ago
  Thats actually the case in New Zealand

jawns 1y ago

There is an ethical component here. The process you describe involves bringing new human lives into existence, then culling the embryos that carry the gene. For those of us who believe that directly ending human lives at any stage is wrong, this is problematic. Keep in mind that this isn't a so-called "incompatible with life" genetic issue. People with the defective gene can live asymptomatically into middle age. I've lost multiple family members to HD, and have multiple living with HD today. I would give just about anything to spare them from the effects of the disease. But should we decide, moments into a human being's life, that because they carry this gene, it invalidates their entire existence?

trallnag 1y ago
I'd say that as long as we allow abortions for personal reasons weeks into a pregnancy and sometimes describe even fetuses as bundles of cells, it's fine to kill blastocystes consisting out of a few hundred cells as they are evaluated for IVF