considering health problems and disorders during spouse search

Sandhya, this is really shocking. The bride has a health condition, so the groom should not?????? Great! My dear friend, the woman's future children are already at risk for being myopic, especially if she is so afflicted that she can see very little without glasses / lens.

The parents' justification for wanting a guy with perfect vision while their own daughter is afflicted is outrageous, to say the least. To expect perfection in another, one should be perfect oneself. Is the daughter perfect?

Please think about this.Would not the woman's parents be very hurt if a guy with 20/20 vision told them that he would not marry their short-sighted daughter because he would be taking the risk of subjecting HIS children to chronic myopia, when he can find many other women with perfect or near-perfect vision?

I would have understood if the woman had perfect health and the parents had said that they do not want SNILs who either suffer from such chronic conditions or have these running in their family because their own family history and daughter are perfect. Perfection for perfection is perfectly understandable. But these parents want a man in perfect health and belonging to a family with perfect health to accept their short-sighted daughter, while they themselves will make no compromises when it comes to the health of their future SNIL???!

Unless the woman has something REALLY good going for her, I do not know of she should be picked as a wife by a perfectly healthy guy when there are a million other fish in the sea. I know that this sounds very harsh but the parents' hypocrisy and sense of self-entitlement really make me wonder what the world is coming to.

Good luck to this woman in not only finding that perfect groom but also in having a good marriage. With her family's attitudes towards marriage in general, and other people's weaknesses in particular, they are going to need lots of it.

 

Malyatha, but what about diseases where if one parent has it, there is a slim chance of passing it on to the child, but if both parents have it the chance becomes super super high? I was reading in the paper a long time back where a couple both had the gene for a disease that is almost always life threatening, and where if one parent had it child would most likely be 'ok', but since both parents had it the risk was very high. The disease was something that could not be prevented through medicine or lifestyle, and usually a child is born with it. Then they had two kids... one with the disease (who eventually died) and another one who is healthy. Do you think in cases where the disease/abnormality risk is low for healthy+unhealthy couple, it is ok to specify only wanting a spouse NOT having the gene? I mean, chances are somebody who also has that disease would want to avoid marrying a spouse with the same, so as not to unfairly risk their child's health, right? I don't know. I feel this question is one of those ethically 'gray' areas.

 

Both my parents died of cancer. I was seeing someone few years back and his parents did not approve of our relationship because of this reason. They thought I carried a 'bad gene". I did asome research on it and consulted a genetic counsellor as well. He said that the probablity of passing on cardivascular disorders to the offspring was much more higher than the more threatening 'cancer'. Some of these diseases are contracted due to lifestyle and personal body conditions. I am currently married to a great guy, whose family accepted me for what I am. I am a scientist myself and find it quite sad that people give importance to all these things some of which can be treated. For myopic eyes you always have lasik surgery. Heredity dictates a lot of things, but depends on so many things which we cant control such as the genetic code, dominant, recessive genes and things like that. Gene therapy is still in its infancy and still in clinical trials. It has not yet made to the bench yet.

 

ASG,

First of all, my biggest problem with the OP's friend's expectation is that it reeks of Eugenics. Who are we to play God and decide whose genes are, and whose genes are not, good enough to be introduced into our gene pool? Who are we to decide who is a genetically fit partner and who is not one? Isn't that why Eugenics is so reviled? Then how can anyone seek to justify it under the guise of using it to guarantee ourselves fit and healthy offspring (which, incidentally, is exactly what Eugenics purports to do)?

Coming to your observation that a carrier for a life-debilitating disease (such as Parkinson's, or cerebral palsy) may wish to protect one's offspring by choosing a non-carrier for a partner, let me ask you this. Won't a non-carrier also think like we do? Why do we believe that s/he (non-carrier) would willingly want to introduce such a mutation into his or her OWN gene pool by marrying a carrier, and hazarding the possibility that a hitherto non-existent disorder could suddenly appear and threaten future generations of his or her own family, when we, ourselves, are unwilling to take on someone else's genetic shortcomings into our own family?

Think about it, ASG. Say that you are not a carrier for, say thalassemia, but that you are a carrier for Parkinson's. You are seeing someone who is a carrier for thalassemia but not Parkinson's. Would you not be hurt if this person breaks off with you stating that he is unwilling to marry you simply because you are a Parkinson's carrier even though you are more than willing to accept his thalassemic genes into your own family?

That was my point before. If I am not perfect, then how can I demand a perfect spouse? Isn't this expectation unfair to the potential partner? How fair is it of me to expect my partner to add my mutations into his gene pool while I, myself, will not accept someone else's mutations into my own? That is what the woman in the OP and her parents are attempting to do. They want only 'good, clean' genes to be added to their own genetic pool while they themselves will be contributing mutations into someone else's pool and they justify this entitlement and unfairness by stating that they are doing it for the sake of their 'grandchildren' (as if that makes it any less hypocritical or entitled).

Secondly, the OP talks about chronic conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, which are easily manageable (given the giant strides medicine has taken in the last 50 odd years) and not life-threatening or life-debilitating ones such as cerebral palsy or thalassemia or haemophilia. If an individual lives long enough, then the odds are REALLY high that s/he will develop a chronic condition at some point in his or her later life. For example, these days with increasing rates of childhood obesity, there is an increase in the incidence of childhood diabetes. So, even if the OP's friend ended up marrying someone who did not have diabetes in his genetic history, it is still not a guarantee that her offspring wlll be free of diabetes etc.

Finally, the OP's friend has a pretty exhaustive check list of non-acceptable illnesses / disorders and she expects that these disorders should not only be absent in the spouse but also in the spouse's entire family! This is a very tough call for reasons that I mentioned in my first post in this thread. I think that it would be very interesting to see if she will be able to find an individual who fits her bill 200%, and, in addition, accepts her (myopia and all) as his bride.

I am really disappointed that, even in this day and age, we still have such backdated thinking and still practice conscious or unconscious discrimination against people with disabilities or a compromised gene pool / health status. There are simply no guarantees in life and every family has its share of woes. If only individuals with perfect health and further hailing from only healthy family background were to marry, then 95% of the world's population would remain single. On the flip side, of course, this would be a fine solution to the Earth's overpopulation issue (even if this did further the ideology of Eugenics and sets human civilization firmly back by at least a 100 years or so).

JMO.

 

Sandu

If a person is looking for disease free family then I think they will be on continious search for ever, there are certain diseaces which are chronic and almost 60% of population has one or other.

For instance diabeties, nearly 50% are affected both in my family and my DH's family and may be after 40-45 years even we might be a diabetic patient one day, and even asthma, both my SILs have asthma attack during cold seasons and their kids to have got it. Touch wood my daughter is not been attacked by this,

I think its foolish to do so.

 

Thanks Malyatha, your post made a lot of sense. Also thanks for explaining 'eugenics'... I wasn't familiar with it.

I totally see your point, esp about diabetes and managable dieases. And I was trying to think of the abnormality I saw in the paper and I think it was something related to a deadly form of dwarfism. Here's a question... say you have the gene for some disease, and if you marry a non infected person, say there is a 5% chance your kid will be born with it. But say if the other partner has it, it'll be 75%. In my opinion, I would not have a problem marrying someone with that gene as long as I myself didn't have it, because the risk was still low. But if I had the gene, wouldn't it make sense for me to want to avoid someone having the same if it meant almost certainly our kid would be affected? I'm not talking about diabetes or mangable diseases... but like, something that is permanent, deadly, and you are born with. What do you think of that?

I don't have a real strong stance on the situation, so like the OP, I'm trying to think this through and figure out what I think about this topic.

 

This is my stance. If one is a carrier, then one needs to accept the fact that one's offspring or their offspring's offspring may well be affected. That mutation isn't going to go anywhere - it is going stick around in the gene pool and express itself at one time or the other, even many generations down the line. So, this is more about understanding one's own genetic shortcomings and accepting them as opposed to resisting or going into denial or on the defensive about them.

While it may seem obvious that some people would attempt to actively suppress this gene by marrying only a non-carrier and while it may even seem understandable, I believe that one's genetic background alone should not be the deciding criteria when it comes to picking a partner. For one, the couple may never have children. Or, the gene may never express itself in their offspring despite a rather high probability of doing so. Or better yet, the couple may simply opt to adopt kids instead of taking the risk of producing biological ones that may suffer from the disorder. If tthe disorder is a big deal, then there are options. But discrimination against fellow carriers as persona non grata in the marriage market is not.

In the OP's friend's case, she wants the perfect spouse but is not above discriminating against fellow imperfect individuals herself! How fair is that? Also, it may start with something big... such as avoiding a life-disabling disorder such as Parkinson's but it may quickly spread to less serious issues such as myopia, as in the OP's friend's case. Furthermore, if left unchecked, then we may even have people demanding that their potential partner have certain minimum SAT scores or IQ score, or maybe a Master's degree in Rocket Science, or even maybe blue eyes, blonde hair and ambidexterity! Where do we draw the line, really?

It is also VERY disturbing to me that Eugenics is alive and well in this day and age, under the guise of freedom of 'choice'! Apparently, Sir Galton's advocacy against "reversion towards mediocrity" has left a very a deep and indelible scar on our psyche, whether we admit it or not.