Ethical treatment, what's your opinion?

[PurpleXVI]

I'm sure everyone has heard the story by now, but here's a link anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6229799.stm

The short version is that two parents had a mentally retarded child that will never have more than a baby's intellect, and as a result they're stunting her growth and getting her surgery so she'll always be around that size and appearance, too. Ethical or not? Up to you.

Personally I'd say that, quite honestly? Mercy killing would be more fitting. She'll never have more brains than a baby, so it's not about her dignity and her quality of life. She doesn't have a life, she's just furniture that needs food(Mind you, I don't have that opinion of actual infants, but at least they'll end up as children or adults at some point.). It's arguable whether she even counts as sentient.

If she had a mind of her own and could talk for herself, then fine, I'd say, it would be a matter of her quality of life. If it was her choice and it didn't take the surgeons away from actually helping people with more pressing cases, then fine. However, in this case, the only PERSONS who are actually affected are her parents.

It's like keeping Terry Schiavo alive, in my mind. Pull the damn plug.

[shamrock_uk]

Agreed.

Pulling out her uterus, breast buds and then stunting her growth is nothing short of horrific mutilation in my opinion.

Even moreso because it is non-essential.

If she is human enough to be kept alive, then she shouldn't be subject to treatment like this.

If she is inhuman enough (in the sense that we can violate her human rights due to her non-existent capacities) to be violated in this way, then we have already crossed a line and it would be the lesser of two evils to end her life.

[ 01-04-2007, 06:09 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[JrKASperov]

So ehm.. How about just letting her walk around?

[PurpleXVI]

If that's the case she needs to be away from her parents, who apparently consider what's "easier to take care of" more important than what's good or healthy for her. I mean, if she DOES have the intellect of a baby, it's not like she's going to be around in places where any men can take advantage of her, really.

It only states "baby," not what level of brains she'll have, but I doubt she'd even be able to hold a coherent conversation. She basically just lies whereever someone puts her, it's not like she could run out and get into trouble with boys unless her parents are ridiculously careless.

Her parents are dangerous to her health and she should be in some sort of group home for the mentally challenged where she could be taken care of properly.

[John D Harris]

Here's some words form another source (One that I WILL NOT GIVE because the very mention of the name will cause it to be dismissed by cry the most against shootting the messenger) Anyone that wants to can take the effort to find it on the web it's real easy.

"Until New Year's Day, not even her first name was known. Ashley was a faceless case study, cited in a paper by two doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital as they outlined a treatment so radical that it brought with it allegations of "eugenics", of creating a 21st-century Frankenstein's monster, of maiming a child for the sake of convenience.

The reason for the controversy is this: Three years ago, when Ashley began to display early signs of puberty, her parents instructed doctors to remove her uterus, appendix and still-forming breasts, then treat her with high doses of estrogen to stunt her growth.

In other words, Ashley was sterilized and frozen in time, for ever to remain a child. She was only 6 years old.

Ashley, the daughter of two professionals in the Seattle area, never had much hope of a normal life.


Afflicted with a severe brain impairment known as static encephalopathy, she cannot walk, talk, keep her head up in bed, or even swallow food. Her parents argued that "keeping her small" was the best way to improve the quality of her life, not to make life more convenient for them.

By remaining a child, they say, Ashley will have a better chance of avoiding everything from bed sores to pneumonia — and the removal of her uterus means that she will never have a menstrual cycle or risk developing uterine cancer.

Because Ashley was expected to have a large chest size, her parents say that removing her breast buds, including the milk glands (while keeping the nipples intact), will save her further discomfort while avoiding fibrocystic growth and breast cancer.

They also feared that large breasts could put Ashley at risk of sexual assault.

The case was approved by the hospital's ethics committee in 2004, which agreed that because Ashley could never reproduce voluntarily, she was not being subjected to forced sterilization, a form of racial cleansing promoted in the 1920s and known as eugenics (it was satirized in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby").

However, the case of Ashley X was not made public, and, as a result, no legal challenges were ever made.

Ashley's doctors, Daniel Gunther and Douglas Diekema, wrote in their paper for the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that the treatment would "remove one of the major obstacles to family care and might extend the time that parents with the ability, resources and inclination to care for their child at home might be able to do so."

The paper inspired hundreds of postings on the Internet: many supportive, some disapproving but sympathetic, others furious.

"I find this offensive if not perverse," read one. "Truly a milestone in our convenience-minded society."

It was the critical comments that finally provoked Ashley's father to respond.

While remaining anonymous, he posted a remarkable 9,000-word blog entry at 11 p.m. on New Year's Day, justifying his decision.

The posting includes links to photographs of Ashley, in which the faces of other family members, including Ashley's younger sister and brother, have been blanked out.

"Some question how God might view this treatment," he wrote. "The God we know wants Ashley to have a good quality of life and wants her parents to be diligent about using every resource at their disposal (including the brains that He endowed them with) to maximize her quality of life."

Ashley's father went on to describe how her height is now expected to remain at about 4 feet 5 inches, and her weight at 75 pounds.

Without the treatment, she would have grown into a woman of average height and weight, probably about 5 feet 6 inches and 125 pounds, with a normal lifespan.

The medical profession is divided.

"I think most people, when they hear of this, would say this is just plain wrong," wrote Jeffrey Brosco of the University of Miami, in an editorial. "But it is a complicated story ... you can understand the difficulties. [But] high-dose estrogen therapy to prevent out-of-home placement simply creates a new Sophie's Choice for parents to confront.

"If we as a society want to revise the nature of the harrowing predicament that these parents face, then more funds for home-based services, not more medication, is what is called for."

George Dvorsky, a director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, countered: "If the concern has something to do with the girl's dignity being violated, then I have to protest by arguing that the girl lacks the cognitive capacity to experience any sense of indignity.

"The estrogen treatment is not what is grotesque here. Rather, it is the prospect of having a full-grown and fertile woman endowed with the mind of a baby."

anyone notice how the original story LEAVES OUT Health issues?

Now here's a link that won't cause the anti- messenger shooters to be hypocrits.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/condi....ap/index.html

Notice how much they write of ethics, and how these do gooders (And I ain't writing of conservative Republicans here.) from MILES away and without knowing the full story speak as if they got a clue.

[Bithron]

I try o avoid medicine and medical treatment as much as I can when it comes to me, so this is makes me feel sick... To think that someone would slice a child for their own convinence(sp?) makes me sick!

[Szass-Tam]

I believe the emphasis on this decision was very much that it was for the girl's convenience and comfort rather than a whim of the parents.

Purple XVI, surely every child has the right to life regardless of their mental condition. Furthermore, when a couple have a severly disabled child the last thing they want is for it to die, they want to care for and comfort it. I believe that's what motivated this decision and the girl's parents see it as doing everything they can to preserve the comfort and well being of their daughter and a way of averting future trauma or discomfort.

Shamrock, the point you raise is interesting and presents a unique dilemma as a case (or solution) like this has never come up previously. The way I see it, the parents don't see the surgery as violation of her human rights but rather a medical amelioration of her condition, and they believe that the benefits of this couse of action outweigh the costs.

[PurpleXVI]

Of course the child has a right to life, BUT, the problem here is whether this child even has the intelligence to be considered human. I mean, she doesn't even have the intelligence to be mobile, amoebae manage that. It's hard to argue that anything but the most basic reflexes required to keep the body alive exist. I don't believe that you can even comfort her, because she's not sentient, not even on the limited level of an animal.

While every human has a right to live, humans also have a right to live AND die with dignity. If you consider her to be intelligent, to an extent, and feeling, then you have to afford her those rights rather than deal with what her parents are putting her through for THEIR comfort. She doesn't even have the intelligence to walk, how would she ever be the victim of molestation unless it was within their own family or they left her outside on the lawn? That part of their argument is just too thin.

And frankly, if they're willing to carve out her reproductive parts, why would they be so utterly opposed just getting her a far less destructive abortion at some point if she DID get abused? It would be orders of magnitude less invasive. Either way, there would be the mental scarring(Again, assuming she even has the capacity for such.).

[Felix The Assassin]

My mother is well aged, and is in permanent physicians care. She still has a life, and must do things in order to achieve goals, etc.. However, as her three different doctors have all agreed upon, it is for "her quality of life" that they will conduct the future planned operation.

Ethics? Is ethics not a derivative of philosophy? Then, in so much as ethics is not a debatable, ever changing accomplice to life? If we were to perceive emotivism as; does not express factual claims or lacks truth-value, then can we judge this case? Hardly not. The medical staff has provided indisputable medical documentation. On the obverse, if we perceive prescriptivism as; moral statements that prescribe appropriate attitudes and behaviors, can we then enforce 'our' beliefs onto this case? Again, hardly not. The post' within this thread clearly affirm this.

Moreover, what must we do with normative ethics? I do believe we have witnessed in very recent times that this article of ethics may not mean the same across the spectrum, in so much as the level of melancholy that was expressed in recent historic events. How then, are we as humans, allowed to judge good from bad, in others? Especially when there is supporting professional documentation

However, as I commend you for having brought this to the forefront, we as a society must at least put forth the challenge to this etiquette of ethics. In so much as the decision of the doctors.

Reading the article, it becomes clear that from a medical standpoint, "quality of life" is the reason the doctors chose to perform the operations.

Therefore, I cannot condemn the decision based upon the medical facts presented and the current level of meta-ethics doctrine.

[Morgeruat]

Originally posted by John D Harris: anyone notice how the original story LEAVES OUT Health issues?

I will say the article makes no mention of a family history of any of the discussed health issues, meaning (at least to me) she would have no more than a normal chance of any of them actually occurring, which seems like justification after the fact.