Don’t tell the geneticists. Down Syndrome is a condition that could be “eliminated” in our lifetime. You know how.

#1: How?

#2 With the current practice of aborting a child who has the down’s symdrome gene, eventually no one would be born with the gene.

A bizarre news release.  What is it in the water in Rome that makes news handling so desperately bad?  We are told in the article that Today the vast majority of Down syndrome babies are killed before birth.  Then we hear that a Vatican approved geneticist has said he has no regrets that the gene was identified.  The outcome is there before your eyes:  compared with yesteryear, few Downs Syndrome young people around to cheer us up with their smiles and infectious good humour.  And those few that you do see will almost certainly be the children of Catholics or evangelicals.

But the answer isn’t “not knowing” something so readily knowable.  We don’t have to drop atom bombs, we don’t have to gas people in concentration camps, and we don’t have to abort just because we’ve figured out nuclear fission, biochemistry, and prenatal medicine.  That’s where faith and worldview and morality walk into the public square.

The fact that those three are ostracized and ignored in the public square doesn’t mean the answer is to bar science and technology from the marketplace, it means we need to preach in the Agora all the more.

Down’s Syndrome isn’t caused by a gene.  It’s caused by an error in chromosome seperation at the time that the egg or sperm is created.  In the vast majority of cases, it’s caused by a defective egg, rather than a defective sperm, so I will say “egg” here, but you could substitute “sperm.”

We all have two copies of each chromosome.  When an egg is made, the chromosomes in the cell that generates the egg seperate, so that two eggs are made from one cell—each egg containing only ONE copy of each chromosome in the genome.  When the egg is fertilized by a sperm (which also contains only ONE copy of each chromosome) a new organism (zygote) is made which contains two copies of each chromosome.  This becomes a genetically unique human being.

In Down’s Syndrome (aka “Trisomy 21”) the 21st chromosome fails to seperate when the eggs are being created, so that both chromosomes go into one egg.  When that egg is fertilized and becomes a zygote, it then has THREE copies of the 21st chromosome (rather than two).  This zygote will develop into a baby with Down’s Syndrome.

This is typically a defect seen in eggs produced by older women—which is which Down’s Syndrome is much more prevalent in women giving birth after 40, as, for example, with Sarah Palin.

As of this time, there is no way that Down’s Syndrome can be “eliminated.”  It could be greatly reduced if women over 40 didn’t have children, but it still occasionally occurs in younger women.

egg or the sperm.  Then when the egg is fertilized (or the sperm fertilizes an egg) the newly formed zygote (combination of egg and sperm) has, once again, two copies of each chromosome (one copy from the egg, one from the sperm).

In Down’s Syndrome, also called “Trisomy 21” the two copies of the 21st chromosome do not seperate but BOTH copies

Delete all blub afer “occasionally occurs in younger women.”  Defective cut and paste chromosome!

BTW, it really wouldn’t have mattered now what this scientist did then, anyway.  During an amniocentesis the karyotype of the fetus is determined—that is, the chromosomes are counted and paired.  Any defect in any chromosome (too many chromosomes, or a piece of a chromosome missing) will be detected at that time.  Since chromosomal defects involve, by definition, hundreds of genes, most babies with chromosomal defects die or are born with defects in many different body systems.  As a result, we know pretty well what are the various outcomes for all of the most typical chromosomal defects.