Friday RNS is publishing a feature on prenatal gender tests and two reviews. Peggy O’Crowley reports on the ethical questions arising from new and more accurate reproductive technologies: After learning that she was pregnant, Erin Rivera purchased a Baby Gender Mentor test kit, which claims a 99.9 percent accuracy rate. Rivera learned that she was carrying a boy. Three weeks later, she was told by the lab director who performed the test that she should have genetic testing. The gender test, he told her, showed an elevated level of protein in her blood. Such a level could indicate chromosomal abnormalities, she was told. More information than she wanted, Rivera said. As reproductive technology advances, new, unanticipated ethical questions are arising even as critics challenge the very accuracy of such tests. Taken together, these challenges could derail the emerging niche industry.
Our first review is a look at the History Channel’s upcoming documentary “The Crusades: Crescent & the Cross” airing Sunday and Monday. Ted Mahar writes: The Crusades lasted close to 200 years and constituted one of the pivotal events in world history. Having occurred two centuries before Columbus landed in the Americas, they mean nothing to most Americans, whatever they may mean to the American future. But the Crusades are discussed in Middle East cafes as if they happened last week, says historian and novelist Tariq Ali, one of many scholars who describe events in the documentary.
Lisa Rose reviews a new film called “Ushpizin“: In the Israeli fable “Ushpizin,” unexpected guests arrive at the home of an Orthodox Jewish couple (real-life spouses Shuli Rand and Michal Bat Sheva Rand) over the holiday of Sukkot, a harvest celebration during which visitors are traditionally housed in thatched huts built to stand a week. The guests are less than pious, escaped convicts whose unruly behavior causes a scandal in the strictly religious neighborhood. The movie, shot in accordance with the rules and customs of Orthodox Judaism, vividly captures a community that has historically kept itself cloistered away from mainstream culture.
