Fables and futures
Subtitle: biotechnology, disability, and the stories we tell ourselves
By: George Estreich
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
ISBN-13: 9780262039567
Subjects: Biotechnology; Parents of children with disabilities; Human genetics
Description: From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilitiesespecially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? 0This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreichan award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndromedelves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on ́three-parent IVF,́ a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. 0In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Virtual children; title: The germline; title: At the fair; title: Human interests; title: The fine print; title: New Orleans; title: Reading Synthia; title: Dismissive narratives; title: Model worlds; title: Finding a place.