I have received in the mail two small vials and two buccal swabs. I must swab the inside of each cheek and insert and seal each swab into each vial. My brother tested positive for a gene mutation that indicates he does indeed have the heart condition that brought the implantation of a pace maker, but which he thought he may not actually have, because of the fact that he has never had to change the pace maker battery. Now I must undergo such test. My two questions for my mother: 1: Why should we do this? and 2: What are the implications of this new scientific knowledge?
Her responses: If it turns out I do not have it, I can stop taking the tiny nibbles of atenolol pills I take every night, in the case of arrhythmia. If it turns out I do have it, I will continue to take the pill, and in the case that I should become pregnant I could have a genetic test done for that fetus to see if it too would have such gene presumably allowing for preventative measures for the resulting child.
Or alternatively, if I wanted to have a child, I could have in vitro fertilization in which several embryos would be created and then tested to see which have the mutation and which don't and then one without the mutation could be implanted in my uterus.
I responded that we live in different worlds, I don't even go to the doctor and the idea of paying a million dollars for a child seems kind of crazy. She said it's ten thousand dollars a child, her friend had two children that way to avoid the cystic fibrosis gene, and that one side of the family paid for one, and one side of the family paid for the other, and what a wonderful gift.
I don't know what to do with this new knowledge. While I do not want to be stubbornly regressive in opposition to my family of scientists/science heads, I also feel like getting involved in this sort of thing leads to further dependency on my parents- they justify all the things that I need to do medically, but then they must pay for it because I don't have the kind of lifestyle that can support genetic testing and in vitro fertilization. I'm going to do the test, I got the things in the mail, I guess it's good to know what my risk is for syncope and such things, but I am also wary of the outcomes of this process. I am also however, very close to whole heartedly embracing this process of building our genetic knowledge, at least in theory; my immediate family is already half cyborg, and improved in that manner by science, and with my current plan to compose a child with non relationship derived sperm, I could just go ahead and get that embryo engineered and tested.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
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2 comments:
i am thinking about this. more later.
i am thinking about this and your voice is lucid your voice is lucid
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