Q&A: Bringing a Child into the World with a Risk of a Genetic Disease
Bringing a Child into the World with a Risk of a Genetic Disease
Question
Following questions in the responsa about incest, a question occurred to me.
Is it morally permissible for a couple who are both recessive carriers of a genetic disease to bring a child into the world? As is known, the chance that the child will be sick is 25% (you could also calculate it as 75% that the child will at least be a carrier and continue passing the gene on, so eventually someone will certainly become sick). If that is acceptable, what about having many children? The chance that at least one of them will be sick approaches 100%, but when looking at each child individually the chance is 25%.
What about diseases where the probability is higher than a quarter, such as a disease linked to the X chromosome, where a son will definitely receive the defective allele from the mother.
Answer
I do not think there is any halakhic prohibition here (even if the child will definitely be born defective). But morally it seems that there is, despite what I wrote regarding wrongful birth.
Discussion on Answer
In my opinion, there is no difference.
This is the sorites paradox, but can one not draw a fuzzy boundary for the statistical risk one is permitted to take? Presumably yes (even parents who are not carriers may have a child with a defect). If so, is a 25% risk an ethical gamble?
And if so, I asked about having several children, where for each child the risk is low (without getting into non-classical models of probability), but overall the chance is very high. Maybe one could say that the very willingness from the outset to have several children is already problematic, since that willingness contains a high risk.
It seems like a question with no good answer, but perhaps you will think about it differently than I do.
Indeed, I do not see a general criterion here. There is common sense and proportionality.
What if, for the sake of discussion, there is a person such that no matter whom he marries, his children will have genetic problems?
Would it then be proper for him not to have children at all?