XYY Controversy Case Summary
There has been hard work to inform the people of genetic development that have been done on people without their consent that has caused many controversies. The practice of genetic development was used by the Nazis that were trying to create a superior race. Information gotten from the Human Genome Project is going to bring into the light both a lot of different concerns of trying to screen, control, manipulate, or manipulate people’s genetic dispositions, things in genes more likely to get a disease, behavioral issue, or something else. The XYY controversy is a case that shows many ethical issues that come up when exploring differences in genes.
In 1961, the first man with an extra Y chromosome was discovered. Normal men only have one X and one Y chromosomes. The extra Y chromosome was referred as the “criminal chromosome”. They are referred as this because men with an extra Y chromosome were believed to be more violent. This belief turned out to be a myth but was widely believed and eventually was printed in biology books.
A study by child psychiatrist Stanley Walzer and Harvard Medical School geneticist Park Gerald to screen all new born males. They were screening for abnormal karyotypes such as XYY or XXY. Harvard microbiology professor Jonathan Beckwith and MIT molecular biology professor, Jonathan King said that the research done by Walzer and Gerald did not produce valid and scientific conclusions. King and Beckwith led criticism against the study. The Science for the People Group tried to get Walter and Gerald’s research stopped by appealing to the institutional review board, but they failed. The Science for the People Group tried to get the screening stopped again by getting help from organizations who were concerned with children’s welfare. This tactic finally achieved the goal of getting Walzer and Gerald, along with other researchers, to stop screening newborns for XYY. The victory was finally won but with that win, some biomedical researchers became alienated or separated from everyone else.
I am confused on the unethical issue dealing with this article. Is it the whole manipulating with people's chromosomes and not stopping the experiments on them when they discovered that their hypothesis was invalid?? or is it something else that I just missed?
ReplyDeleteThe unethical issue was that scientist were screening male babies to see if they had the chromosome. But, they did not have the right consent for this study, and there was no point to this study becaused it had no scientific conclusions.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much elizabeth this makes since!! Although they need to do the study correct but i believe that they should have stopped it once they realized that it was going no where
ReplyDeleteI agree that the testing of newborn babies is wrong. The newborn babies don't have the choice on whether or not they want to be tested, so I think it is unethical. And since they didn't find any conclusions to this, there was no point to this study.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything said in the above comments. Testing on new born babies is so wrong. New babies are exposed to so many germs when they are first born; their immune systems are not as strong as ours. This testing could seriously harm these babies.
ReplyDeleteI agree that testing new born babies is wrong because the babies aren't old enough to speak for themselves about whether they mind getting tested or not. Also thanks Elizabeth for explaining it! I was so confused at first!
ReplyDeleteWere they getting permission from the parents?
ReplyDeleteIt is horrible to test these babies without consent, but some studies must be done on infants. No infant could ever personally give informed consent(unless they were some kind of prodigious, talking baby). However, if no studies were ever done on infants, there would be no medicine for them and the infant mortality rate would be obnoxiously high. So, studies on infants are necessary, but need to have a justified purpose. Also, every infant has some type of legal guardian who can give consent for this type of study. Consent of a guardian should always be required.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that testing new born babies is wrong and should not be done. How do they know that men with an extra Y chromosome are violent?
ReplyDeleteReally? I would not like someone to be running test on me without my consent. Let me by a violent baby then run test on me when i can speak about it
ReplyDeleteSo let me get this straight, because I am a little confused. There was a man once wh was discovered to have adn extra Y chromosome. There was a myth that humans with an exta Y chromosome were more vioent. The myth was proved untrue? Whatever happened to this man? Was he more violent than the average human?
ReplyDeleteSo then they started to tet newborn infants for either an extra Y or X chromosome, but without any gurdian/parental consent? Were they testing these infants so that if one happened to have an extra chromosome, they could use he/she as a new test subject?
I also think that the infants' gurdian should have been required to give their consent!!
i really don't see the problem with testing babies for abnormal chromosomes as long as there was parental consent and there was no risk in harming the baby. was there parental consent? and was there any chance of the tests harming babies?
ReplyDeleteI believe that they should not have been testing babies unless they have parental consent. After screening, I think that they should not have changed any part of their chromosomes. These people were just born that way and should not have been changed. They should have especially not have been changed without the families consent.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the screening was right really because there is no purpose for it. I mean other than the fact that people would know you had an abnormality...
ReplyDeleteThe myth that if you had an extra Y chromosome you would become a criminal was already proven false so there really was no point to continuing the screenings.
I agree with Paige P. They should have never tested the babies without the parents' consent. Also they really should not have changed their chromosomes either. They were made that way for a reason and aren't just hamsters to be experimented with.
ReplyDelete32928: They did not know for a fact that men with an extra Y chromosome were violent but most men who had an extra one were more violent than men who only had one X and one Y chromosome. I hope that answers your question.
ReplyDeleteI don't really understand what is wrong with this article. From what I understand, in some men there was found an extra Y chromosome, but then this was found false. What's the problem?
ReplyDeleteAnne: baby males, shortly after they were born, were screened or tested for the extra chromosome without consent - it was just done, no one knew - sometimes the chromosomes were even changed without anyone knowing either
ReplyDeleteTO ANYONE WHO ASKED IF THERE WAS CONSENT: no there was never any consent - no one could pull their baby form the screenings
ReplyDeleteALEX: sometimes there were chances the babies could be harmed
What were the effects of the testing? Were any babies harmed??
ReplyDeletewell if there was no parental consent and there was a chance of harming the babies then this was definitely unethical. it was right that they eventually got rid of this scanning
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is unethical or not because I don't know what the scanning did to the child. If it was harmless to the child then all they needed was to get the parents permission and it should have been okay.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this research harmed the children, but the parents did not agree to the study. Many people did not like this because the results were not clear and did not come up with useful information. And since this study did not benefit anyone, i think that it was good that they stopped it.
ReplyDelete