22: Velvet Eugenics and Parenting Kids with Down Syndrome

Pete and Susannah speak with Emory bioethicist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson about her ongoing philosophical journey into bioethical questions, and her critique of market-and-autonomy based ideas about human worth. Might an ethic of caution, care, and doing no harm provide a path forward for disagreement about personhood in the case of abortion? They also discuss Denmark’s famed “eradication” of Down syndrome, and its cost: the eradication of people with Down syndrome. Then, they speak with J. D. Flynn about a recent Times piece exposing the extreme unreliability of prenatal genetic testing, and the assumptions that the piece makes (by implication) about the value of human selves. Flynn also describes his and his wife’s own experiences as parents of two adopted children with Down syndrome and one biological child without it: how can we receive all children, adopted and not, of all “kinds,” as gifts?

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