The treatment of infants who are impaired is seen as an ethical issue by many people. Throughout history, there have been different periods of time where the treatment of impaired babies was either supported or frowned upon, depending on the goals of the society in general. Even today, the treatment of impaired babies is a topic that is often debatable amongst individuals because of varying moral and ethical views and different beliefs.
In the past, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the killing of impaired newborns would be beneficial to help weed out the unfit from society. Often times, many people believed society would be better off without them. Babies who were born with down syndrome, a genetic condition that causes a wide range
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Many individuals questioned if it was ethical to end the life of one twin to save the other. Others argue that expensive resources used for low chance cases or high risk cases could be used for others in need. With other cases, doctors would tell the families what they were going to do to help the child but would refuse to state the other side of the coin. This became a starting point for people to argue whether refusal of treatment for children was morally right or wrong. In the two Baby Doe cases that occurred within a year of each other, the parents refused to have surgery to correct genetic abnormalities that would have saved their children’s lives because of the information received from the doctors. In both cases, a third party initiated proceedings to have the courts intervene on behalf of the children. It was decided that the physician has an obligation to inform the parents regarding the full potential outcomes of the treatment, but are not qualified to overrule their assessment of the family’s interest. At birth Baby Jane Doe had spina bifida, hydrocephalus, a damaged kidney, and microcephaly. Her defects traumatized her parents. Surgeon Arjen Keuskamp recommended immediate surgery while a pediatric neurologist, George Newman, told the parents that …show more content…
Consequentialists argues that if the we treat impaired babies and they live to be healthy and happy, then the greatest amount of good was achieved for both the baby and the family. Kantian Ethics argues that to kill an innocent person would be going against one’s perfect duties. Immanuel Kant argues that “ethics is not a matter of consequences, but of duty” (Pence, page 11). For example, if the treating physicians and nurses withheld treatment from the impaired babies, then they would be killing an innocent person. Thomas Aquinas has a different view on the treatment of impaired babies. He supports natural law in which states that “the human body may be changed only to ensure the proper functioning of that body” (Pence, page 14). With this, the questions arises that if physicians treat impaired babies, are they going against what God has decided and created? Another belief of natural law is the doctrine of double effect. This presents the idea that an action is either good or evil and has a corresponding effect. The ethical issue presented with the doctrine of double effect is the question of whether the doctors and nurses are trying to perform an act of good or evil by either treating the impaired infants or allowing them to die. Ethical theorists have differing views on the treatment of impaired babies because of varying moral and ethical views and
There are many ethical paradigms through which humans find guidance and justification for their own actions. In the case of contractarianism, citizens of a state are entitled to human rights, considered to be unalienable, and legal rights, which are both protected by the state. As Spinello says, “The problem with most rights-based theories is that they do not provide adequate criteria for resolving practical disputes when rights are in conflict” (14). One case that supports Spinello is the case of Marlise Munoz, a brain-dead pregnant thirty-three year old, who was wrongly kept on life support for nearly two months at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. Misinterpretation of the Texas Advance Directives Act by John Peter Smith Hospital led to the violation of the contractarian paradigm. Although the hospital was following the directive in order to maintain legal immunity for its hospital staff, the rights of the family were violated along with the medical fundamental principle to “first, do no harm.”
This case was taken into the British court system where, after a long trial, a judge upheld the doctor’s decision not to resuscitate. The reasoning was that the judge felt he could not order the doctors to perform actions that would cause increased suffering for the child. After considering the doctrines of the sanctity of life and the...
The best interest standard holds that the treatment that minimizes cost and risk to the child is in his/her best interest. This is often the standard that governs physician decision-making processes as it is intimately tied with the principle of non-maleficence or to do no harm. But, the issue that arises with the best interest standard is that it lacks the ability to take into account the parent’s values and beliefs. When a parent does not agree with the recommendation of the physician, they are often deemed to not be acting in the child’s best interest. However, the threshold for this determination is very limited. Thus, Douglas Diekema, a pediatric bioethicist, suggests that instead of the best interest standard, physicians should apply the same standard that the State uses to prove cases of child neglect (2011). This standard is known as the harm principle. The harm principle disregards moral and value based differences and instead
Thomson provides the example of being hooked up for nine months to provide dialysis to an ailing violinist to expose how a fetus’s right to life does not supersede a mother’s right to make medical decisions about her body (48-49). I find that this thought experiment especially helpful in understanding how even though a fetus does have a right to life, because the continuation of their life hinges on the consent of their mother to use her body, it falls to the mother to choose whether or not to allow the fetus to develop to term.
In discussing whether God must create the best world that he can, Robert M. Adams raises the following hypothetical (Adams 1972, 326). Imagine a drug exists which is known to cause severe intellectual disability in any children conceived by a couple who takes it. If a couple desires to raise an intellectually disabled child, takes the drug, and conceives such a child, the challenge is to explain what, if anything, they have done wrong. The problem illustrated by this hypothetical is known as the “non-identity” problem (Benatar 2006, 114). The solution presented by Adams is that the parents have violated the following principle: “It is wrong for human beings to cause, knowingly and voluntarily, the procreation of an offspring of human parents which is notably deficient, by comparison with normal human beings, in mental or physical capacity” (Adams 1972, 330). After discussing whether someone is harmed by the parents’ action, this paper will build on the solution presented by Adams by suggesting two ways of understanding why the couple’s action was wrong – one utilitarian, and one virtue based.
Aiding the death of infants is a much disputed controversy in healthcare. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. provides an ethical view that there is a moral duty not to treat an impaired infant when this will only prolong a painful life or would only lead to a painful death. It is these individuals, like Engelhardt, who must defend this position against groups who consider that we have the ability to prolong the lives of impaired infants, thus we are obligated to do so.
A. A. The "Best Possible Child" Journal of Medical Ethics 33.5 (2007): 279-283. Web.
Should anencephalic newborns be used as organ donors? This has been a debatable topic within the medical field and anencephalic families. There has been many pros and cons whether it is right for anencephalic babies to donate their organs. With regards to using anencephalic newborns as organ donors, I believe that doctors should be able to use anencephalic babies organs to save another baby live.
Recently, a family decided to end treatment for their 21 month old baby girl in the only “humane way” possible: nutrition withdrawal (Bever, 2014). In September, 19-month old Natalie Newton wandered into the family’s pool unsupervised by her parents. When she was found, Natalie was blue in the face from lack of oxygen and immediately rushed to the hospital. Though they were able to revive her, doctors informed the family that Natalie would not live; she was deaf, blind, unable to move and ultimately brain dead from being withdrawn from oxygen for as long as she had been. While Natalie remained immobile and dead to the world, her parents begged the physicians to euthanize their child. However, currently in the state of Texas, euthanziation is illegal and the hospital’s ethics committee would not allow it. The only method they allowed that they considered humane, was to withhold both nutrition and hydration from Natalie. While it’s always traumatic for any parent to watch their child die, the Newton’s looked on as it took nine full days for Natalie to finally pass away from lack of nutrition. The parents argue ...
The scene at issue in my mind right now is one where a fourteen-year-old girl comes to the orphanage which is the setting for part of the movie. This girl came to the orphanage because it was known in the region as a place that performed abortions. She had had a crude abortion performed in such a way that she had been severely injured (her uterus was punctured by a crochet hook, and, not being a sterile instrument, this caused an infection of the uterine lining, eventually killing her). The resident doctor is disgusted by this, and uses the girl's injury as an example explaining why he performs abortions. The doctor's argument is fairly simple. If the girl had come to him, rather than the ignorant abortionist she chose, she would likely have survived. In addition, he claims that potential parents have a right to choose to be parents or to not be parents. The doctor, a seeming proponent of utilitarianism, says that this demonstrates a duty to perform abortions.
Imagine…the birth of a human being into the world. 9 months of endless anticipation leading to someone’s first chance at seeing the world for the first time. While some enjoy the result of a pregnancy, leading to a new human being entering life, some are not so fond, or just can’t be in such a situation. Abortion is the supposed “cure” to this problem and is, for the most part, done safely. However, one of the factors stopping someone from committing an abortion is the consideration of moral status on the child.
This report will outline the ethics of conceiving a child for the purpose of using cells, tissues or even organs to treat an existing child with a fatal disease. In outlining the ethics of saviour siblings, the question of whether it is ethical to conceive a child for the purpose of becoming a saviour will be explored.
Foht, Brendan P. "Three-Parent Embryos Illustrate Ethical Problems with Technologies." Medical Ethics, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2015. Current Controversies. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,
Consequentialism sets out to prove that one’s actions are morally right just because they produce the greatest amount of possibly goodness in the world. Consequentialism has two forms; one being act-utilitarianism, and the second one being rule-utilitarianism. In this paper I will explain the difference between the two forms, and will also apply these two forms to the same given scenario, and describe how the act-utilitarian will select the male patient, while the rule-utilitarian will select the female patient.
My family immigrated to America from Conakry, Guinea which is located in West Africa. My mother and father went through a series of struggles during their time in Africa, including wars, difficulty finding and securing jobs, and lack of education. The highest level of education my parents received was middle school. Many people in different countries come to America for the same reason. America provides better opportunities when it comes to education and jobs.