Challenges of Fetal Medicine

I have been following with deep interest, the series your paper has been running, on the new prenatal testing that is being done on fetuses to determine their viability. Shades of Hitler!

Have we now become a nation such as his, when he decided that all the unwanted, imperfect and those with the wrong ethnic background should be eliminated. How Hitler would have loved the availability of such testing, since he then could have eliminated these groups even before they were born.

What is this nation coming to? Are we to be a nation of selective birth, allowing only those who are perfect or of the right sex to be born? Or will we continue to be the compassionate and caring nation that has set a shining example for the rest of the world?

Those who are so concerned with nuclear war, saving the whales, protecting the endangered species, and cleaning up the environment, would do well to direct their energies toward the protection of the human species.

Who is there to say how many geniuses, artist, writers, world leaders, etc., we are destroying by this process of selective birth? We will ultimately return to the law of the jungle, where only the fittest will be allowed to survive. What a selfish self-centered, me-only nation we will become.

I feel qualified to say these things since I raised a child for 33 years who was blind and bedridden. Yet despite his multiple handicaps, he brought such love, happiness and joy to our home it could not be measured. He also taught my five other children compassion, forebearance and consideration for those less fortunate and most assuredly strengthened their characters and made them better human beings.

We must be careful lest we go too far in assuming the role of God.

RUTH C. KELLERMAN

Desert Hot Springs