The Curse and Blessing of the Ghetto

In the article, The Curse and Blessing of the Ghetto, Diamond ‘s hypothesis is that Tay-sachs disease is most common genetic disease in Eastern European Jews above all others.  People who are carriers of Tay-sachs have a better chance of not getting TB.  The curse of Tay-Sachs is that it is a killer disease.  The blessing of  being a Tay-Sachs carrier is that it prevents people from catching TB.  

An ethical issue in genetic testing in this article would be religious.  Genetic testing does not change anything, but it tells parents whether their baby has Tay-Sachs so they can have an abortion or not.  Some people might think that changing what God created is wrong.  When people are religious, they might think that changing genes is destroying what God made.  The second ethical issue is that it is bad to try to change someone because they are different.  Finally, it is unethical to give one person the power to decide which are good or bad genes.  

The author of this article biases would be that he and his wife are Eastern European Jews and they are more likely to be a carrier of Tay- Sachs and that has an effect on them.  The second bias would be that the author wife is pregnant and the child she is going to have can be affected by the Tay-Sachs.  Lastly, the author might have known children who have suffered and died from Tay-Sachs.

The reason why Tay-Sachs remains prevalent in certain populations even though they no longer live in ghetto-like environments is the gene.  Gene transfers from parent to child so Tay-Sachs might have been inherited.  The second cultural reason would be that two heterozygous are most likely to have one baby with Tay-Sachs.  Jews were forced to live amongst their own people in Eastern Europe because of persecution.  They were not allowed to go out to the country and that resulted to Jews to marry to their own people.