Fatherhood

A second generation. A mini-me, a little person to carry on your family name and history. A slice of immortality, that you will not be instantly forgotten the moment of your death.
I've heard all the arguments, yet cannot get beyond the one that concerns me most: I cannot subject another human being to the suffering that I've been through.
My parents no doubt thought that their combination of genes would produce supermen (or women). And that's the way it should have been. Unfortunately, they did not account for factor X. That's the wild card in fertilization that produces unplanned problems.
I have a cousin in Park Slope with a child that has an autism-like syndrome that makes their child a permanent infant, though he is much older chronologically now. The doctors can't figure the child out, and get at what the problem is.
Mind you, these are hyper-educated Park Slope parents, yet the mystery of exactly what is plaguing their physically-beautiful son continues to elude them and the best minds of New York health care.
This is the central conundrum: what we know is still, despite modern science etc., much less than what we do not know. The breakthroughs in anti-depressants in recent years (Zoloft, Prozac et. al.)haven't helped me, nor a certain anguished acquaintance. A little modesty on medical science's part would go a long way - not all problems have a ready-made solution. Not then, not now.