Reply to Should a child with an intellectual disability be denied an organ transplant?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Eugenics is bad. We all get that.

How do you put this girl on the list, knowing another child is probably going to die as a result?  If she lives to adulthood it will be a miracle. [/quote]

What about using a living, willing donor, though?

This reminds me a bit of the Philip Becker case.  He was a 10 year old boy with Down syndrome.  He needed a corrective surgery.  His biological parents, who had given him up to foster care when he was an infant, stepped in and refused to permit the surgery, arguing that they preferred he die young (a slow, painful death) than grow up with a mental handicap.  The courts backed the biological parents' decision over the foster parents, and the surgery was not done.  It took four years of court battles by the foster parents before he received the surgery.

In that case, the biological parents' bias against intellectual disability denied intervention.  Here, the doctors' bias against intellectual disabilities is denying intervention.  When a survey of physicians was done by researchers after a series of high-profile cases in the 1970s, 70% of doctors agreed with the idea of withholding treatment, including food and water, from mentally disabled children.  That bias is insidious, and no, not everyone gets that eugenics is bad.  In fact, eugenics is the legally accepted, reasonable exception for post-viability abortions--it's written into dozens of statutes, here and abroad.  Here's Britain's law:

An abortion is legal after 24 weeks:
--if it is necessary to save the woman's life
--to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman 
--[b]if there is substantial risk that if the child were born, it would suffer from physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.[/b]

How many times have DCUMers approvingly supported one another through "late termination for likelihood of intellectual/physical disabilities"?  And that mentality of lessened quality of life magically stops at birth?[/quote]

If they find a willing donor match, they will most likely get their transplant.  They will have to go through hoops but they won't be denied because her risk of death without a transplant will be pretty evident.

Honestly I don't believe the mother's account because the lifespan of a patient with her disease is such an obvious red flag and yet the mother never mentioned it.  And Down Syndrome patients have received kidney transplants, heart-lung transplants, you name it.[/quote]

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