White Noise and Selective Abortion

       While working on my Junior Theme, I originally planned to have this section in the paper. However, I couldn't find a way to integrate my connection to white noise that didn't totally kill the flow, so I decided to put this section in as a blog post. The style of writing is different, as a result.

       One of the most common forms of genetic engineering as I defined it in my paper is prenatal genetic testing combined with selective abortions. Some parents choose to have the genes of the fetus tested for genetic defects which cause diseases, sometimes through noninvasive blood tests. Often, if the tests are positive, pregnancy is aborted. There are parallels between the attitudes that cause this practice, and the attitudes of the people of White Noise to disease.
       The people of Delillo's America do anything to avoid illness of any type. This is evidenced by the grocery list of medications in Jack's household; "Blood pressure pills, stress pills, allergy pills, eye drops, aspirin. Run ofthe mill." Each pill staves off another ailment. Any possible health issue needs an answer, and the result is a massive pile of pills. It is eventually revealed that everything Jack does is because of his overwhelming fear of death, and the urge to cure every problem, real or imagined, is one of the primary manifestations of that fear.
       The reasons for terminating a pregnancy are similar to the motives of Jack with his pill obsession. As Erik Asch, an ethics scholar who has written on the issue, put it; "the idea is that prenatal testing," usually used for selective abortions, "helps prospective parents have healthy babies." Quite simply, the use of these tests allows parents to "solve" a health problem of their child, to get rid of an illness before it even begins. Like Jack's pills, the promise of fetal testing is to eliminate any possible health issue, and the motives of the two groups are parallel.
       I've tried not to either endorse or condemn the actions of those who use such procedures, both in this blog and in my paper. Mentioning abortion tends to provoke strong reactions, but regardless of which side of the debate you are on it is helpful to understand the motivations of those who use genetic technologies. White Noise provides a good illustration of these reasons.