Down syndrome: Attack the disease, not the babies

I am writing this column -- to try to persuade as many as I can to not easily accept the common treatment of Down syndrome and condemn those diagnosed with it to death. How hopeful am I? I am not brimming with optimism. . . . I now call upon Dr. Jerome Lejeune, discoverer of trisomy 21, the defective chromosome in Down syndrome. In The Lancet, one of the leading medical magazines in the world, he wrote on Jan. 5, 1980:

"The whole history of medicine is at hand to answer any … death-doctor. Those who delivered humanity from plague and rabies were not those who burned the plague-stricken alive in their houses or suffocated rabid patients between mattresses. … Victory against Down syndrome -- curing children of the ill-effect of their genetic overdose -- may not be too far off, if only the disease is attacked, not the babies." Nat Hentoff