Perfect People
Imperfection may soon get you killed. The British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has released a report suggesting euthenasia of the 'sickest of newborns'. Obviously they think life would be too hard for them and their families. But this logic doesn't stop there. The tendency for people to view imperfection as making life not worth living will move from serious deformity, to mild deformity (just look at babies aborted for cleft palletes) to anything you don't like.

Notice also the progression from unborn, to newborn....that progression can also keep going.

Real Clear Politics looks at some of the people who would not make the cut...

The list of accomplished people with birth defects, meanwhile, is long. Two born with clubfeet are Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic champion figure skater, and U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), who helped draft the 14th Amendment and the Reconstruction Act.

Imagine what our cultural conversation would have been without Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist philosopher - a hunchback with uneven legs. Or Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, the 17th century Mexican dramatist, who also was a hunchback and wrote some 20 dramas including "La Verdad Sospechosa."

Quality of life really means conformity. It's ironic how we can get to conformity from rampant individualism.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, November 10, 2006