Sunday, after watching the Pittsburgh Steelers go 5-1 on the season with 5 touchdowns and 50 points, I watched 60 Minutes on CBS-TV and saw a Leslie Stahl story about two Americans, a medical doctor and another fellow, a biologist, I think. who each had a company devoted to removing unwanted genes from the heredity of parents, claiming they (the genes, not the parents) were unwanted in the first place.

Genes such as those that might give you cancer, or heart disease, or ALS, or brain tumors, or Parkinson’s, or Muscular Dystrophy, etc., etc., and etc. are worthless at best.


But there’s a catch. All impregnations must be made by a surrogate donor! So much for connubial bliss! It seems as though both the mother and the father must be rid of the same genes for it to be effective.

If one had removed the gene for cancer and the other one had not, for example, the daughter of such a couple would, in all likelihood, be susceptible to cancer. The mother, however, would not be any more susceptible nor immune than she was before.

The way in which the procedure is implemented is the height of simplicity: one cell of the male sperm is removed and a needle no thicker than a human hair is inserted (totally painlessly) and the gene for cancer removed — a similar procedure takes place in the woman’s womb (also totally without pain).

The daughter will never have cancer — unless some other related couple down the line did not have their cancer-gene removed.

A similar fate befell me: my granddaughter has to have a hysterectomy this January. My ex-wife’s mother-in-law had that exact operation in 1964; long before we’d ever heard of these two Americans and long before we could do anything about it.

When the ex-wife was impregnated by me, I passed on my set of those genes (my own mother had had a hysterectomy in 1938), and the ex-wife passed them on to my eldest daughter, who in turn passed them to my granddaughter. Had I known all this, I could’ve prevented it from happening.

I myself am afflicted with Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS) and have been since 2006, and though it is not fatal nor in my case painful (unlike ALS), it is not a disease I would wish on anyone. I can no longer walk, am wheelchair-bound, and spend my days at my computer and in a soft, easy chair watching TV. And wearing, of all things, a diaper!

Consequently, I would like to have my gene-pool removed of any indication of Primary Lateral Sclerosis.

At 83, I have no intention of ever marrying again (unless she is under 40), and I am in possession of her complete gene history. I will have her genes completely harmonious with mine by the time we tie the knot, and if we do have any kids, they will as ‘bad’ gene-free as possible.

After trying countless times, before and after we were married, my darling Christine and I were unable to conceive, and we decided to adopt. The result, in 1986, was Alexandra, who has no ‘bad’ genes that we know.


Copyright© 2014 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved, may not be published, nor re-written nor broadcast without author’s permission