Unfortunately, that's not entirely accurate.

50-90% of babies with diagnosed Down Syndrome are aborted before having a chance to be born and enjoy their lives. In Iceland, that figure is 100%.

But it's still a profound disability that leads to health complications that necessitate significant medical interventions to achieve a lifespan that's still reduced by ~10 years. Only about a third of the afflicted can live by themselves.

Additionally, it should set off alarms that the argument implies we should give people Down Syndrome.

Using it to argue against helping people with Down syndrome is worse.

The authors spell out why its wrong. [1] Their sample was exclusively from DS nonprofit mailing lists, got a 17% response rate, with a median household income of $100K, (2x median), and as they wrote, the results are likely "a positive overrepresentation" because people with severe problems are least likely to participate.

On top of that, decades of research [2][3][4] document that people with intellectual disabilities disproportionately answer "yes" to whatever you ask them, and this survey had "Yes" as the first option on every scale. If you take the number at face value, people with DS are the happiest demographic ever measured, crushing the OECD average of ~67% [5].

Using happiness to argue against helping people is wrong because it papers over what Down syndrome actually is, a physical ailment. About half of people with DS have congenital heart defects. Alzheimer's incidence exceeds 90%. Life expectancy is around 60 [6][7][8].

And the suffering isn't contained to the individual. My sister was disabled. It consumed my family. Research confirms this isn't unusual: parents of children with DS show significantly elevated stress [9], siblings become caregivers young [10]. A self-reported happiness survey doesn't capture any of that. It's not the whole picture. It's the one corner of the picture that's easy to look at.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3740159/ ; [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7231176/ ; [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11551964 ; [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3044819/ ; [5] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-202... ; [6] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12812862/; [7] https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/alzheimers-causes-and-risk-fa... ; [8] https://www.cdc.gov/birth-defects/living-with-down-syndrome/... ; [9] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8911183/ ; [10] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10848223211027861

If I told you the chemical gave people down syndrome you’d probably think I am evil.

Whenever these topics come up there’s always people saying things like “but what if people like it?” And I can’t help but wonder, really? Are we really having this conversation? The answers are obvious so why pretend they’re not?

I don’t believe anybody actually thinks this way.

Most people don't want to be unique, they want to be a part of the rest of the herde.

Its objectivly better to not have down syndrom.

And before i get downvoted: My stand doesn't mean i look down on peole with down syndrom. These two viewpoints are not exclusive. The same for the decision to abort a fetus with down syndrom doesn't mean that someone decided this, would look down on people with down syndrom.

Would it?

> Would they all want what makes them unique turned off?

Having a disability doesn't make you unique, it makes you disabled. There is a difference.

> 99% of people with Down syndrome were happy with their lives; 97% liked who they are; 96% liked how they looked; 99% expressed love for their families; 97% liked their brothers and sisters; 86% felt they could make friends easily.

Survey their parents, who are almost certainly their full-time caregivers, if they are "happy their child has Down syndrome."

Correction: the people with Down Syndrome who are capable of meaningfully responding to the question answered a certain way on one survey. Down's affects different people differently. There are plenty of people who don't have the mental facilities to understand the question, let alone respond.

I've seen this kind of argument with autism, too. People here on HN will point out that they were diagnosed with autism and still have rich, meaningful lives. I don't doubt that for one moment! Still, my family lived next to a family with a profoundly autistic, nonverbal kid, and their lives were hard. The parents are lovely people but they were at their wits' end dealing with the consequences of his condition. When people talk about nebulous things like "a cure for autism", they don't mean a way to help the HN folks who have jobs and friends and families. They're talking about my next door neighbor who liked to take off his pants and run around naked outside.

I imagine it's the same here. There's the occasional news story about someone with Down Syndrome graduating college and getting married. They're doing fine. It'd still be nice to find a way to help those who'd never be able to make it to kindergarten.

IIRC there are countries and years without a single Down syndrome sufferer born alive. An effective treatment for the condition could change these stats.