Nonetheless, the issue isn’t the parents asking or trying (because that isn’t their agenda)to engineer a deaf embryo. The issue is that if a deaf embryo naturally occurs, it should be up to the parents to determine its value not the government’s by way of the bill its trying to pass.

I don’t agree with making someone deaf, severing off limbs etc, as the next deaf person. You are misunderstanding this debate.

The government needs to make its mind up: give us choice *both* ways, or no choice at all. Its current stance is discriminatory to certain classes of persons.

For the record, this goes beyond deaf and to other conditions. E.g. if you have ’severe refractive errors’ i.e. wear glasses, current guidance says you cannot be a donor. Here the state is dictating to citizens who is permitted to reproduce and who is not.

The other issue with 14(4)(9) is that it sets up groups of people against each other. No-one on planet earth is free from “defective” genes / perfect, neither do we know how certain genes will mutate. What happens if one embryo might be deaf and another one might develop Alzheimer’s Disease. To you, which is the healthy embryo?

If they can’t have a deaf child naturally, they should not be considered for IVF.

I have read both transcripts and I am sorry to see Paula and Tomato had a difficult experience with answering these questions and getting an uninformed audience to become educated about the difference between embryo selection and genetic engineering.

For me it is clear that Paula and Tomato are advocating for the right to have that choice (especially where the embryo is already conceived) but I am not sure if the audience or the interviewers have understood this.

Well done for trying!
John