Word: argument
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Romanian colleague Mihai- Razvan Ungureanu that we would [celebrate in each others' cities]. So I went to Bucharest and he came to Sofia. [E.U. Enlargement Commissioner] Olli Rehn said that in the European Commission they used to talk about our two countries as R&B. There was an argument over which was the rhythm and which was the blues, but at the end everything finished successfully...
...doctors who agreed to an experimental treatment for a severely disabled girl thought there were clear medical benefits to keeping her small. Autopsy the doctors' argument, and you find that they concluded they could remove Ashley's uterus and breast buds because she'd be better off without them; they could keep her short because, since she'll never have a job or a romance, she'd not suffer the social consequences of smallness. "To those who say she has a right to develop and grow," argues Dr. Daniel Gunther, "Ashley has no concept of these things...
...That argument sends disability rights advocates around the bend. "Benevolence and good intentions have been among the biggest enemies of disabled people over the course of history," says Arlene Mayerson, a leading expert in disability rights law, who like many critics feels intense sympathy for these parents. "Many things that were done under a theory of benevolence were later seen as wrongheaded violations of human rights. " Medicine's role is to relieve pain and improve function, but Ashley was not sick, and the treatment was untested; do we really want to start bending the rules in the case...
...Gunther also understands why the case has inspired such intense feelings-but notes that "visceral reactions are not an argument for or against." This was not a girl who was ever going to grow up, he says. She was only going to grow bigger. "Some disability advocates have suggested that this course of treatment is an abuse of Ashley's ?rights' and an affront to her ?dignity.' This is a mystery to me. Is there more dignity in having to hoist a full-grown body in harness and chains from bed to bath to wheelchair? Ashley will always have...
...would Drs. Gunther and Diekema take this argument? Would they agree to amputate a child's legs to keep her lighter and more portable? Hormone treatment is nowhere near as risky and disfiguring as amputation, Diekema retorts; it just accelerates a natural process by which the body stops growing. Parents of short children give them growth hormones for social more than medical reasons, he notes. How can it be O.K. to make someone "unnaturally" taller but not smaller? To warnings of a slippery slope, Gunther tilts the logic the other way: "The argument that a beneficial treatment should...