Do you avoid morphs with known genetic flaws?

[WingedWolfPsion]

I chose to skip working with caramels, in part because we now have ultramels that don't kink. I'm saving up for an ultramel.

The issue with kinking is that it can be fatal or very debilitating in a physical fashion (interfering with growth and passage of food through the digestive tract). Severely kinked hatchlings would have to be euthanized. I also would not intentionally produce a Pearl.

Spider and woma wobbles, duckbilling, or even bug eyes, really don't do any harm to the animal. I've heard of the occasional spider that was so severe it was dysfunctional, but that's very rare, and from what I understand, those animals could still eat with minor help. They weren't in physical discomfort.

So, I have no issues working with spiders, womas, cinnies, or lessers, or their supers.

Until we do some genetics studies on these morphs, there's no way of knowing whether selective breeding can reduce the severity of these linked flaws. It's possible that it simply can't. The question is, are these flaws so bad that we need to eliminate them? At the moment, the majority opinion seems to be that they are not.

There are plenty of pets out there bred to have flaws that people think are desirable--the huge head and smashed face of a bulldog, the chondrodysplasia of Dexter cows and Dachshund dogs, the tailless gene in Manx cats, which is fatal in its 'super' form, fainting goats...the list goes on.
If the animal isn't suffering due to it, and humans find it desirable, then the reality is, it is not a flaw in a pet species. It may be a flaw in a wild animal, but not in a pet.

I bought my spider and cinnamon knowing full well that there were perceived flaws associated with them. I was not aware of the super-lesser bug-eyes until I started working with lessers, but it doesn't give me cause for concern.
I was unaware of the woma wobble issue, because when I got my first womas, the usual opinion was that womas didn't have a wobble issue. I was certainly a bit bummed to discover that wasn't true, but now I've come to terms with it. (It's less common in incidence and severity than the spider wobble, but still prevalent).
Doesn't appear to distress them at all, and I've never heard of a 'trainwreck' woma the way I have spiders, so, no problems with it now.

I think if we ever discover a mutation that causes half the hatchlings to be born inside out, or something, then there will definitely be a call to eliminate that gene, but most of the morphs that have flaws now don't have anything quite that serious going on. Pearls can be avoided through careful breeding.