Word: ashley
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...least in Ashley's case, however much the doctors debated the proper "management options," they all agreed that hers was a life worth fighting to preserve...
...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 suffering, and the treatment was untested. Do we really want to start bending the rules in the case of the disabled just for the promise of some benefit in the future?, advocates...
Autopsy the doctors' argument, and you find that they concluded they could remove Ashley's uterus and breasts because she would be better off without them; they could keep her short because, since she'll never have a job or a romance, she wouldn't suffer the social consequences of small size. "To those who say she has a right to develop and grow," argues Gunther, "[I say] Ashley has no concept of these things." But he is talking as a scientist; the philosopher uses different tools. Just because autonomy doesn't show up on an X-ray doesn...
...Ashley may be an extreme case, but she is a terrifying precedent. Critics note that development in the disabled can come very, very slowly, so deciding when a child is only 6 to change her body irreversibly could amount to a medical form of identity theft. Ann McDonald-Cacho in Berkeley, Calif., was told there was no hope for her son Philip, who had a diagnosis of the same condition as Ashley's. There's no way to know if Ashley will ever be able to sit up or control a wheelchair with her head as Philip eventually could. "They...
Those deploring the Ashley Treatment as a medical fix for more than one family are watching the direction that Britain is taking. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecology has proposed that doctors openly consider allowing euthanasia of the sickest infants, which is legal in the Netherlands. "A very disabled child can mean a disabled family," the college wrote to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and urged that it "think more radically about nonresuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions ... and active euthanasia, as they are ways of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns...