Doctors: let us kill disabled babies

[ALoudFireworkScaredMyBadMouse]

Joy Delhanty, professor of human genetics at University College London, said: ?I would support these views. I think it is morally wrong to strive to keep alive babies that are then going to suffer many months or years of very ill health.?

What do you think?

This jumped out at me:

?We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other??

Am not sure what to think though. I don't envy people in that siutation.

I can't help reflecting on the plight of my friend whose second pregnancy started to go wrong. She was heading for a late miscarriage but the medics intervened and forced the baby our early and forced him to survive. He's five now and severely disabledwith CP, he can't even sit up straight in his wheelchair and can't eat on his own. His mother is a single parent Her life, and that of her first son, has been completely taken over by this poor boy.

She was once a bubbly happy woman with a gorgeous young boy. They went everywhere together and had a full life.

Of course she loves her son, because we are programmed to, but I can't help but reflect on how life would be for her if the pregnancy had ended in miscarriage as nature had intended it to.

However, John Wyatt, consultant neonatologist at University College London hospital, said: ?Intentional killing is not part of medical care.? He added: ?The majority of doctors and health professionals believe that once you introduce the possibility of intentional killing into medical practice you change the fundamental nature of medicine. It immediately becomes a subjective decision as to whose life is worthwhile.?

don't doctors already have to do this when they have limited resources to allocate?

what a hideous choice

The biggest problem with this for me is that no line can be drawn, as shown very clearly by the fact that terminations up to term are routinely offered for disabilities that cannot be considered severe and profound - e.g. Down's syndrome, or minor physical abnormalities such as a cleft lip.

We were there not so long ago - 15 years ago a doctor left a newborn baby boy with DS starve to death with the parents' consent, and was subsequently acquitted of any wrongdoing by the court. Babies with DS were also denied routine heart surgery because it was considered favourable to shorten their life spans. My friend's son with DS was born on the same day as my dd2 5 years ago and was also born with the same heart defect as her. However, he saw a different cardiologist at the same hospital and instead of being referred for surgery like dd2, he was referred to the paediatric palliative care team. His parents were told to take him home and love him, because he'd die within a couple of years. Thankfully they saw the same consultant as us when their son was 8 months old because their regular one was on holiday, and were told that his heart defect was easily repairable after all.

I really don't think that this situation is acceptable in a civilised society, and if we allowed euthanasia for 'very disabled' children, then who will decide on what constitutes 'very disabled'?

and actually, there is an easy solution to dealing with this issue of the families of disabled children becoming 'disabled families'. Give them decent support through Social Services and better financial assistance, rather than offering them the chance to have their disabled baby killed off so it doesn't interfere with their ability to keep up with their mortgage payment and the UK's gross national product.

Like geekgirl, I wonder where the line will be drawn. What is a 'serious disability' to one person may be an acceptable one to another.

My dd was in the next bed to a little boy with ds who'd only been offered pallative care for his heart. He died of pneumonia at 18 months

applause for geekgrrl

Got sod all to do with doctors and everything to do with the parents.
Parental choice alone.

Its a slippery slope, once it becomes acceptable to kill a child under circumstances such as these what is next? It makes me feel sad that it is even considered worth debating.

i am not even going to read it.

articles like this make me feel sick.

Why restrict the policy to newborns? If it's ethical to kill newborns then surely a 2-week old baby's not that much different? And if 2 weeks is okay then why not a 4wk-old? Where would you stop?

"Sorry Mrs Coppertop but the assessment shows that your son is disabled. Go down the corridor to the left and we'll give him the injection. It'll save resources and you'll be happier for it."

Well put coppertop! You could go much further than that of course. What if your older child was in a car accident (God Forbid) and became disabled and difficult to care for. Would a doctor eventually be able to say that their life was unworthy as well.

and the infirm elderly...
The moral and ethical implications of allowing newborn euthanasia, when euthanasia for others (capable of deciding their own fate and determining their tolerance for reduced quality of life) is illegal.

Do not resuscitate is contentious enough on its own (as Charlotte Wyatts case proved).

Can they really use cleft palate as a reason for late termination? It is so easily corrected. I can't help but wonder what sort of doctor would recomend something like that. Is it parental vanity? Life is getting cheaper all the time.

This bloody well beggars belief

God, what is happening to the world?

It makes me wish I hadn't had children.

i really don't want to read the article but can someone just give me a breif synopsis of what is being proposed in it?

I am fully behind early scaning and treatment if its possible during pregnancy but to terminate a child simply because it doesn't conform to society's norms is disturbing to me.

Maybe the fact that my own son has special needs makes me more sensetive to these articles but at least i know that his problems couldn't be picked up on a scan or some pedeatricians visit as a newborn.
but would this mean that once he turned 25 months and we had our first report back saying that he was quite possibly ASD i could have a Dr knocking at my door with a hyperdermic ready?

this is nothing better than what Hitler tried in the 40's.
i am so and sickened by this. its made worse by knowing that there will be some out there that will read that and agree.

this thread is heartbreaking

I odn't agree with ti but solely because i htink its such a difficult line to draw, instead i'd prefer greater levels of support and societal acceptance for terminations in early stages.
The headline was bloody contentious though, typical media trying to pull a the heart strings!

I personally couldn't cope with a disabled child and if there had been any indication i would have terminated. I also would have wanted option to withdraw life supporting treatment if baby had been born severly disabled.

I have issues even with the quote in the opening post 'many months of ill health' - FGS it's no reason to end a life.

I think the headline was correct. Using the words terminate or anything else is just sugar coating it.

geekgrrl I am truly appalled at what happened to your friend's son. I agree with all the points in your post. If this were allowed it would constitute a very, very dangerous breach.

Medicine at its heart is about sustaining life, not actively discontinuing it. For anybody to take into their hands the decision as to whether an individual life should be actively ended or not is very, very dangerous IMO.

Haven't read the article but can sort of see the point I assume he is making if the baby has very poor quality of life. I used to work with someone who had a severly disabled baby, looking after her was very stressful and he did feel somewhat that it would have been better for them all if she had not survived birth (though maybe he would have felt differently if they had more support/respite care, etc). I do agree however that it then becomes a question of where to draw the line.

I know someone who had a baby with DS recently. One of the consultants she saw when pregnant told her that if it was his wife in that position he would urge her to have an abortion . The baby does have a heart condition but it is operable...

Surely for every family who has felt that their disabled child is a burden there is one that has experianced great joy from their child. I have worked with people who have had DS and they can lead really productive happy lives even if it is a shorter life. How can you deny someone that.

Well as I support voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill and as I'm sure this practice (in the article) is happening anyway, - I'd have to say I lean towards the view that in some cases it would be the best thing.

Of course it's very emotive because we are talking about babies, even more emotive for us because there are mumsnetters with very sick children and I wouldn't want to offend them in anyway.

If your baby is very, very ill though, in constant pain, and not likely to recover, whilst you can love that child to the moon and back and do everything within your power to make that childs life as comfortable as possible, and the parent does have to deal with the emotional involvement, it isn't actually the parent who is living that life of pain. I think we should think about that.

I think the other problem is that when you see your baby the love is overwhelming and ALL babies need taking care of so I think it's hard for parents who are given a horrendous diagnosis to see the bigger picture and let's face it who wouldn't find it hard?

For every parent of a very sick child who says this is a terrible idea there will be another who says the opposite. It's very, very difficult.