Would the world be a better place without people like my daughter? DOMINIC LAWSON likens the new test for Down's syndrome to State-sponsored eugenics
Daily MailBy Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail
Published: 18:19 EST, 8 May 2016 | Updated: 05:07 EST, 9 May 2016
The Department of Health is about to approve a scheme designed to bring about a world in which people like my youngest daughter will cease to exist.
In January, the National Screening Committee cleared a new blood test for expectant mothers, said to be almost 99 per cent effective in detecting if an unborn child has Down's syndrome. Ever since then, those behind the test have been lobbying Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to authorise its use throughout the NHS.
Unlike amniocentesis, the method of extracting amniotic fluid through a needle into the womb, this new process detects the composition of the unborn child's DNA in the mother's own blood.
This does not entail the risk of miscarriage —roughly 1 per cent — present in current invasive procedures, which has led to many babies without Down's syndrome being 'accidentally terminated'.
One newspaper put it exuberantly: 'Hundreds of babies could be saved each year.' Another spoke enthusiastically of 'the eradication of Down's syndrome'.
In fact, the new method, known as Non-Invasive Pre-natal Testing or NIPT, is not a complete alternative to amniocentesis. That would still be required before the NHS will carry out a termination on grounds of disability, since NIPT only gives a much more accurate estimate of the probability of the baby having Down's than previous non-invasive blood tests: it is diagnostic, not definitive.
The purpose of the medical campaign, however, is clear: it is to encourage more expectant mothers to undergo the screening process, on the grounds that it has been made less risky. But there is also a hidden agenda, which can properly be described as state-sponsored eugenics.
I first got a sense of this after my daughter, Domenica, was born, almost 21 years ago on June 1, 1995 and I made public the fact that she had Down's syndrome.
The immensely popular ex-NHS nurse and agony aunt Claire Rayner wrote an article criticising us for not undergoing pre-natal screening. She declared 'the Lawsons will not be paying the full price of their choice', and that society would have to bear the burden of the 'misery' of our daughter's life.
But this was, I'm afraid, exactly the sort of argument used by the German academic Karl Binding, whose book Permitting The Destruction Of Life Unworthy Of Life was hugely influential in preparing the ground for the Nazis' later programme of compulsory euthanasia of the mentally disabled.
Of course, the NHS is not proposing to terminate the disabled unborn without the full consent of the parents. But there is an insidious pressure to 'do the responsible thing'.
This became clear when the BBC ran a selection of comments on ante-natal screening from the public. One, from 'Heather, in Livingstone', is worth reprinting: 'I was told that my daughter had Down's when I was about 12 weeks pregnant and every doctor and gynaecologist I saw tried to convince me that termination was the best option. I was still offered this at 26 weeks!
'One reason given to me by a cold-hearted consultant was that 'these babies put a strain on the NHS'.' ...
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