I don’t think modern medicine has gone too far, I think it hasn’t gone far enough yet.
It always starts with life saving and then it develops quality of life improvements over later years. Do you know the last child Polio victim who needed an iron lung to breath just passed away? Martha Lillard contracted polio in 1953 at age 5. She then lived until age 78, passing away this past June.
Initially medicine meant these children had to stay in the iron lung all the time except for a few minutes here and there for hygiene and nappy changes.
Later, they had better medication so these now young adults only needed to sleep in them at night and so their lives started. Then they developed other better, smaller and portable ventilators and ways to wean some off needing them.
Too late for them did we get a vaccine. But isn’t it good we didn’t look at this girl at age 5 and think, hm better to euthanise her. It was the desire to give her a better life that inspired the medical innovations that did in fact give her a chance for a long and full life- she married twice and had pet dogs, she painted and made friends.
If we look at children in similar states where current medicine isn’t there yet- we can well write them off and say god that’s awful how can anyone, much less a child live like that?
I think it’s better to push to have medicine go further and increase quality of life rather than give up, shrug our shoulders and put them to sleep.
If all the children with polio had been euthanised because modern medicine had nothing better to offer, we would never have developed the kind of ventilators that saved the lives of thousands from other lung infections. Even when it looks hopeless, we can’t know what could be done for a child next year or a few years later.