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New York Times Ads Offer Designer Babies Austin Ruse Over the past few months, the New York Times has repeatedly printed advertisements for the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF), a Virginia-based clinic that promises parents the ability to choose the sex of their babies. This marks the first time that a eugenics procedure has been marketed openly in a mainstream American publication. GIVF claims that its sperm-sorting sex-selection technique, called Microsort, is currently offered for two reasons, as a method of "balancing" the composition of a family's offspring, as well as to avoid conceiving babies with gender-linked diseases. GIVF charges $2,300 for its services. However, some observers worry that the advertisements signal an increasingly widespread acceptance of eugenics, of efforts to improve the human race through breeding and genetic manipulation. In this regard, GIVF's Web site also allows customers to shop for human eggs based upon race, eye and hair color, and education level of the donors, raising the prospect of a future of "designer babies." In the United Kingdom, there have been recent reports that women carrying babies with Down syndrome, or even surgically correctable defects, have been pressured by public health service doctors to abort their babies for the greater good of society. Bill Albert, of the Council of Disabled People, has said that we need to "face up to what's going on and not say this is about choice, this is about elimination. You're talking about eradicating a whole section of the population – it's state-sanctified eugenics." Some prominent scientists explicitly support eugenics-based sex selection and abortion of disabled individuals, as well as the redesigning of the human race. The Nobel laureate James Watson has said that "If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we? What's wrong with it?" Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics and Management at M.I.T., agrees, saying, "Biotechnology is inevitably leading to a world in which human beings are going to be partly man-made. Suppose parents could add 30 points to their children's IQ. Wouldn't you want to do it? And if you don't, your child will be the stupidest child in the neighborhood." Perhaps most troubling, Richard Lynn, a professor at the University of Ulster, has spoken in an interview about "phasing out" "incompetent" people, saying, "Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent." In addition, he says that "genetic improvement is likely to evolve spontaneously through the technique of embryo selection in which women will use IVF to grow a number of embryos, have them genetically assessed and will select for implantation those with genetically desirable qualities." Even the long-discredited racial theories behind much of 20th century support for eugenics appear to be enjoying a resurgence. In a 2002 journal article, Lynn says that he "presents new evidence showing conclusively for the first time that lighter skinned blacks have higher IQs than darker skinned blacks. This supports the theory that the proportion of white ancestry is a determinant of the intelligence of African Americans." Lynn also states: "In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment." Copyright Culture of Life Foundation. Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Culture of Life Foundation
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