at about one and a half times average, to have a gauge of how undramatic this difference might be. People with Down's Syndrome tend to be more vulnerable to various medical conditions and their life expectancy is reduced to middle-age, although some people with Down's have very serious heart problems and can die very early on indeed.
No life better than that kind of life? Well, you'd have to speak to someone with Down's Syndrome. I have known people with learning impairments who are largely contented and others who, for all sorts of reasons, aren't very happy at all. Like the rest of us, it depends on all sorts of things but chiefly the quality of the relationships a person enjoys with other people.
Around 90% of pregnancies where Down's Syndrome is diagnosed end in termination.
I recently came across the following paragraph whilst researching an unrelated matter on the Health Technology Assessment website (the research wing of the UK Department of Health), about antenatal screening for Downs Syndrome;
In general, serum screening is more cost-effective than screening based on maternal age alone at detection rates of about 50% or greater. As the number of screening markers increases, the cost per pregnancy screened increases but, if an extra marker is sufficiently discriminatory, the cost per Down's syndrome birth avoided may decline. For example, the estimated cost per pregnancy screened and the cost per Down's syndrome birth avoided is: £8.90 and £25,600 for the double test; £9.60 and £22,700 for the triple test, and £11.60 and £23,100 for the quadruple test.Prospective parents in the UK are very unlikely to have a life or death decision on how many Reichmarks it might cost the NHS to have that child. However, this does raise questions about the influences bearing down upon these complicated, personal and painful decisions. Especially given the pretty appalling detection rate of the non-invasive tests available just now (amniocentesis is far more reliable, but far more dangerous to the foetus).
And I find myself very confused about the logic. To be honest, I find it a little sickening that I can even get my hands on a calculated cost per Down's Syndrome birth avoided because the screening and abortion is purported to be all about quality of life, health outcomes and informed choices. But as well as this, these calculations aren't real. Create new human beings and you create disabled people.
So you have a thousand foetuses. One or two of those foetuses will have Down's Syndrome, so you terminate them and save the taxpayer some money. Even if your women take their folic acid, at least another foetus will probably develop Spina Bifida, which if we accurately detect it, we can get shot of too.
Two or three children will be born with Cerebral Palsy. But by the time we know this, or about any congenital sensory impairment, it is too late. And the awful truth is that eighty percent of disabled people make it into the world free of impairment.
Perhaps a slightly smaller proportion in the UK - that's a UN statistic which includes a significant proportion of impairments caused by malnutrition. But it's still going to be most of us who refrained from stating our intention to have a car accident, catch an infectious disease or experience a psychological breakdown at the point of birth.
I suppose the point I am trying to make - perhaps pretty badly because I have been pushing through significant fatigue to make it - is that vaccination, improved hygiene, education, the reduction of poverty and safer living and working environments are all effective ways of reducing our number. It is a reasonable principle that where people can avoid illness, injury and impairment, it makes sense to do so.
However, I suggest that the prevention of impairment through antenatal elimination is both entirely ineffective and ethically misguided. It is far better to be disabled than to not to exist at all.
I've struggled quite a bit with this post. I should have given up but it kept churning round my head and wouldn't leave me alone. I do hope it made some