24 MARCH 2001, Page 28

'Benign' malignity

From Dr Philippa Martyr Sir: Terence Kealey (Don't blame eugenics, blame politics', 17 March) seems blissfully unaware that those 'benign' screening technologies that 'allow disease carriers to abort affected foetuses' are actually a perpetuation of Nazi selection processes by other means.

The children thus selected for disposal because of their racial unfitness would in all certainty not consider those technologies benign. Death by chemicals, curette, suction, saline injection or partial-birth abortion is not humane, and using it to rid the human gene pool of undesirables is to be roundly condemned, not praised.

Philippa Martyr

Oxford