Sir, The remarks by the Master of the Rotunda Hospital as reported in your paper and those expressed in a letter from Dr L Condren remind one rather forcibly of the ostrich with his head in the sand.
Neither of them can see any difficulties arising out of the availability of pre natal genetic testing by means of amniocentesis. Yet as recently as November 1995 the British Medical Journal reported that in the Netherlands - a country not normally considered conservative - a public debate has erupted and even the parliament debated the issue. But here in Ireland we are told it is not a problem, there is no need for a debate, there is nothing to discuss.
Would that there was even one Irish politician to echo the sentiments expressed by the Dutch Labour spokesman for health Dr Rob Oudkerk: "I don't want to live in a future where people feel they have to apologise for a handicapped child. We have the technology now. Let's start discussing the consequences of what we know. Society must be informed by doctors, academics and politicians." I would add "by journalists". What about it Mr Editor? Will The Irish Times take up the cudgels in defence of the handicapped, those of the "wrong" gender, those the insurance companies will want to weed out because they are found to carry a gene that predisposes them to cancer, heart disease blindness etc?
We cannot doubt it, there are too many medical journals that confirm it: amniocentesis is used to identify female children so as to selectively abort them. Amniocentesis is used to identify hereditary disease which would not normally become evident until much later in life e.g., retinitis pigmentosa; amniocentesis is used to identify Down's Syndrome and in the Netherlands up to 400 children are aborted every year.
Recent media coverage of other events comes to mind when one reads that in the People's Republic of China, the authorities wait until such children are born naturally, before starving them to death. Should we protest? Have we the right to protest if we are in reality, though more surreptitiously, condoning or ignoring what happens in our own country? Yours, etc.,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.