Its a nice article and a positive one.

Unfortuna another documentary about people with Down Syndrome were more heartbreaking. A young girl got told from a doctor that not only shouldn't she get to try pregnant, the chance is very low already and that she has other medical concerns she needs to handle.

Not something she could handle without a proper care taker though.

▲

bobthebuilder4 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They absolutely shouldn't try to get pregnant, they'll be incapable of looking after the child.

▲

InsideOutSanta 5 hours ago | parent [-]

People with Down syndrome aren't all the same. The highest measured IQ of a person with Down syndrome in a scientific study was 117:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3707311/

Having said that, men with Down syndrome are generally infertile anyway.

▲

rustyhancock 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Downs syndrome is indeed highly heterogeneous, one of the sadder aspects is the accelerated dementia specifically Alzheimer's.

I've known a few people with Dawn's syndrome and the striking often abrupt and rapid tragectory is shocking.

As much as the slow decline of dementia that it's often incidents months apart before things fall apart. Is sad.

So is it in people with Downs syndrome when at 35 their often bright and cheerful life loving demeanor seems to vanish over the course of a few months.

As I understand it it's because chromosome 21 carries the genes associated with Alzheimer's so they get an extra copy, but also structure issues with the brain, increased risk of sleep apnea and other toxic conditions.

▲

bobthebuilder4 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, there might be exceptions, but the averages in that article make my argument for me.

	▲	InsideOutSanta 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your argument was not that it's bad for an average person with Down syndrome to have children. It's that they "absolutely shouldn't try to get pregnant, they'll be incapable of looking after the child." My response is that your argument, stated in this extreme way, is factually incorrect.

▲

WarmWash 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Not all car crashes are the same. People sometimes live because they weren't wearing a seatbelt."

The point of these statements is to make an outlier appear as if it is part of the norm. They're bad statements to make, because at heart they are just misleading.

	▲	Synethesiac 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I understand this is an intellectual argument, but to use car crashes as a parallel to people's lives with Down syndrome is gross and dehumanizing.
	▲	InsideOutSanta 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The point of these statements is to make an outlier appear as if it is part of the norm Please don't lie about what I wrote. I explicitly said that 117 was "the highest measured IQ of a person with Down syndrome." My own comment says that it is an outlier. > They're bad statements to make, because at heart they are just misleading Please note the context of my comment, which was somebody saying that people with Down syndrome are "incapable of looking after the child." I pointed out that this does not apply to all people with Down syndrome, which is not misleading; it's correct. TBH, I'm not sure what the purpose of your comment was, other than to start a moronic fight that does not need to be fought by lying about what I actually said. I'm not interested in having that fight.

▲

geertj 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To add a factoid without expressing an opinion: women with Down syndrome are often fertile while men typically are not. The odds of the offspring of a female with trisomy 21 having the same trisomy are 50% theoretically, and between 33-40% in practice due to trisomy embryos having a higher rate of spontaneous miscarriage.

	▲	gadders 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This chap pops up on social media occasionally: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/20/man-shares-what-it-was-like-t... (Not to say that anything you say is incorrect).