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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12267795
Danielle Rizzo's son is screaming. He is planted in the middle of the lobby of his elementary school, clinging to rainbow-coloured blocks as she gently explains that she is here - off schedule, in the middle of the day - to take him to a doctor's appointment. But the first-grader is not listening.
"Happy Meal," he repeats over and over again. "Happy Meal!"
His little brother, who is also going to the appointment, is nearby, not moving. Rizzo is relieved that the two of them are not melting down at the same time, which happens all too often, and firmly guides them out the door.
Rizzo's children, ages 7 and 6, were at the center of one of the most ethically complex legal cases in the modern-day fertility industry. Three years ago, while researching treatment options for her sons, Rizzo says she made an extraordinary discovery: The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities.
The phenomenon is believed to be unprecedented and has attracted the attention of some of the world's foremost experts in the genetics of autism, who have been gathering blood and spit samples from the families.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday September 17 2019, @06:25AM (1 child)
You're right. That did raise my eyebrows a little, but my goldfish-brain forgot that as it didn't pattern-match for Autism. It's quite possibly true that the donor's "learning and emotional disabilities" were in fact undiagnosed Autism. Could this be the new Typhoid Mary?
As to Gattaca - all of nature basically screens their mating partners (whether it's the dominant male in a pack, the bird whose dance is the most elaborate, the spider who managed to avoid the female's fangs to get in position etc). Humans do it too where they can observe desirable/undesirable traits, and it would be naïve to think that we would not avail ourselves of further information (I know I'd want to know predisposition to Autism if I were a female shopping at a sperm bank or a male looking for a donor egg). The society we build around that is another matter entirely, but we're certainly doing better now than we did 50 years ago when we routinely locked away those that were 'different'.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:36PM
Or it may merely mean that some variants of autism and AHDH have the same causes. The donor and children may all be correctly diagnosed.
As to Gattaca, it's a better genetic dystopia than Idiocracy although you have to wonder if they were sliding towards Idiocracy - "let's launch our most genetically perfect people into high radiation space" or "the dude has six fingers on each hand, that means he can play the piano".