PHLB09H3 Chap.10 Genetic Screening and Disability
Genetic Screening and Disability
The week and the exam question
Week eleven covers genetic screening through Jeff McMahan's paper on the morality of screening for disability, Dena Davis's paper on genetic choices and a child's claim to an open future, and a news feature on a country where Down syndrome births have become rare.
Oral exam question five asks about two models of disability, Davis's argument and its main objection, and McMahan's argument and its implication.
Two models of disability
On a welfare model, a disability is in itself bad for the person who has it. On a mere-difference model, it makes a person different but not, in itself, worse off.
McMahan notes that many disabled people reject the assumption that they are worse off and describe disabilities as neutral traits.
McMahan's challenge
McMahan tests four objections to screening: discrimination, harm to existing disabled people, loss of diversity and the expressive objection.
He argues that if they showed screening is wrong, they would also make it permissible to cause oneself to have a disabled child, which most people reject. For critics who hold the mere-difference view, the problem is sharper still, since transition costs do not apply to congenital disability.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Welfare Model of Disability
- 02
Mere-Difference Model
- 03
Child's Right to an Open Future
- 04
Expressive Objection
- 05
Non-Identity and Selection
- 06
Transition Costs
Worked example · free
Use transition costs to test a critic's position
- 2Explain how the mere-difference view can still condemn becoming disabled.
- 2Show why that explanation fails for prenatal injury.
- 2State the conclusion McMahan draws about the critic's position.
Key terms
- Mere-Difference Model
- The mere-difference model holds that being disabled makes a person different but not, in itself, worse off.
- Transition Costs
- Transition costs are the losses, discontinuities and abandoned plans that come with becoming disabled, which McMahan distinguishes from being disabled.
- Open Future
- An open future is the range of life options a child should have available as an adult, the idea at the centre of Davis's assigned paper.
Genetic Screening and Disability FAQ
What is the difference between the welfare and mere-difference models of disability?
On the welfare model, a disability is in itself bad for the person who has it, lowering their well-being other things equal. On the mere-difference model, a disability makes a person different without, in itself, making them worse off. McMahan's paper discusses disabled writers, such as Harriet McBryde Johnson, who reject the assumption that disabled people are worse off.
What is McMahan's main argument about screening?
He argues that the standard objections to screening, if they showed it was wrong, would also make it permissible to cause oneself to have a disabled child rather than a non-disabled one. He illustrates this with a woman who takes a pleasure drug that replaces her egg with one that will produce a disabled child. Since most people judge her act wrong, the objections cannot prove screening wrong.
What implication does McMahan draw for the disability debate?
He thinks the critics' central worry is the hurtful message screening may send. He notes that parents of disabled children overwhelmingly prefer the actual child they have, since avoiding disability would have meant a different child. He suggests advocates publicise such positive evaluations rather than campaign against screening, which could make them look like fanatics.
Why does the non-identity point matter for screening?
When screening or selection changes which embryo becomes a child, the child who is born could not have existed otherwise. McMahan stresses that avoiding disability would almost always have produced a different child. This makes it hard to say a selection harms the very child it produces, and it explains why parents can prefer their actual child while still accepting screening.
Exam move
Draw the two models of disability side by side and attach one sentence from the reading to each. Write McMahan's argument as a reductio in four steps, including his crucial premise about causing outcomes one may not be prevented from avoiding. Reread Davis and reduce her argument and its main objection to two sentences each.
Then practise a compact opening for question five that covers all four parts in about a minute, and rehearse follow-ups with a partner who interrupts.
