Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
Support for the argument that preimplantation genetic diagnosis followed by selection and implantation of an embryo with a trait that many consider a disability, e.g., deafness, achondroplasia, does not harm the child that develops from the implanted embryo.
Two bioethicists argue that prenatal disability screening promotes negativity toward the disabled and gives parents the ability to selectively form families.
A philosophy professor argues that prenatal genetic testing allows potentially painful afflictions to be discovered prior to birth and does not unjustly discriminate against disabled people.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Some disability advocates take issue with the “normalization” goals of the medical model of rehabilitation, but expressions of that position can be dismissive of rehabilitationists’ efforts to remediate oppressive functional deficits.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):562-567. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.msoc1-1506.