***NEWS RELEASE***

 

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom:  Iceland on Way to Eugenics with Eradication of Down Syndrome Births

Life ‘Nipped’ in the Bud; High Abortion Rates Occur Once Mothers in Iceland Discover Their Pre-Born Baby Has the Genetic Disorder

 

PAUL, Minn.—The nation of Iceland is working to eradicate Down syndrome births by making sure expectant mothers know about government pre-natal testing that would show if their baby has the genetic disorder.

If the chromosome abnormality is present, nearly all of these babies are aborted in Iceland, where “community consent” for DNA collection, a centralized medical database, commercial monopoly and socialized medicine rule the day, says Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org).

CCHF co-founder and president Twila Brase reported in CCHF’s daily radio feature, “Health Freedom Minute,” that the voluntary “Combination Test” in Iceland uses ultrasound, blood tests and the mother’s age to check for abnormalities in pre-born babies. If Down syndrome is found, a vast majority of mothers—close to 100 percent, according to a CBS report—terminate their pregnancies. About 80 to 85 percent opt for the screening test, which is only about 85 percent accurate.

“Most disturbingly,” Brase said, “the head of a Prenatal Diagnosis Unit, who told the CBS reporter that murder is ‘so black and white,’ said, ‘We don’t look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. … We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication.’ Apparently, the few children born each year with Down syndrome result from an inaccurate test. So, how many normal pregnancies have been terminated? Simply put, this is eugenics, working to ‘improve the population’ by increasing births with desirable characteristics—and decreasing births with undesirable ones.”

Geneticist Kari Stefansson, the founder of deCODE Genetics, a company that has studied nearly the entire Icelandic population’s genomes and is owned by biotechnology giant Amgen Inc., said the low numbers of babies born in Iceland with Down syndrome—about two or three a year—reflects “relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling,” he told CBS.

Now, consider America, Brase says, where non-invasive pregnancy testing is a prenatal screening method. Ironically, she says, the acronym is NIPT, which could be pronounced “nipped.” In a separate “Health Freedom Minute,” Brase told the story of 37-year old pediatric nurse Erin Acosta who used NIPT to screen for Down syndrome. The results said her pre-born baby girl was positive for Turner syndrome, which can cause intellectual disability.

“But to avoid any possibility of miscarriage, Erin refused confirmatory tests—and she cried a lot,” Brase reports. “Months later, her baby was born perfectly normal. The test was a false positive. What if she’d aborted her little girl? These are the risks of any system that uses imperfect tools in an attempt to identify ‘perfect’ babies and eliminate ‘imperfect’ babies. Children with Down syndrome are the first targets for elimination in Iceland, and perhaps in America. What conditions are next and how many babies’ lives will be nipped in the bud as a result?”

For more information about CCHF, visit www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page or its Twitter feed @CCHFreedom. Also view the media page for CCHF here. For more about CCHF’s initiative The Wedge of Health Freedom, visit www.JointheWedge.com, The Wedge Facebook page or follow The Wedge on Twitter @wedgeoffreedom.

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