Posted on 06/05/2005 2:29:56 PM PDT by wagglebee
BRITAIN’S top medical ethics expert has urged doctors to let the most premature babies die, with treatment offered only in exceptional cases.
Baroness Warnock believes Britain should follow Holland in setting an age limit below which babies would not routinely be resuscitated.
She says this would prevent doctors competing for the “triumph” of keeping babies alive at increasingly young ages even though they may not survive in the long term or may be left severely disabled.
Warnock’s comments were backed in part by Britain’s most senior paediatrician, who said the setting of a lower limit should be considered.
In Holland, doctors do not routinely administer intensive care to babies born before 25 weeks of pregnancy. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a medical think tank, is considering proposing similar guidelines in Britain. It is consulting doctors, nurses and parents about setting a 24-week limit.
Warnock, who helped frame laws on embryo research and fertility treatment, supports setting an age limit, with exceptions for babies who show they have a strong chance of living to become healthy children.
“Some doctors and nurses get competitive about the triumph of keeping these tiny, premature, babies alive,” she said. “It would be better to set a minimum age than to have no form of scrutiny or regulation. Below a certain age of gestation no baby should be kept going without very thorough scrutiny of what the prognosis for that baby is.”
Although most doctors are opposed to an age limit, Sir Alan Craft, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said it was a legitimate option to consider. “One possible course of action would be not to intervene with any 23-week-old babies unless they breathe completely and spontaneously themselves,” he said.
Craft, speaking in a personal capacity, argues that, as it is not possible to tell which babies born at 23 weeks or less will survive, doctors are forced to consider resuscitating all of them, although the majority have no chance of living.
Once doctors have started assisting these babies, he says, parents find it difficult to agree to treatment being withdrawn, even though it is of no help.
The Nuffield council is investigating the costs of raising the disabled children that premature babies often become as well as the expense of intensive care in neonatal units.
A study of the most premature babies showed most went on to suffer disabilities. The EPICure study of babies born at 25 weeks or less, led by researchers at Nottingham University, found that, by the age of six, only 20% of surviving children had no disabilities; 22% had severe disabilities, including cerebral palsy; while 34% had milder problems such as a squint.
In addition, it found that only 11% of all babies born at 23 weeks survived. Since the study began, however, care has improved and the figure is believed to be closer to 20%.
Bliss, the premature baby charity, says about 50 babies born at 23 weeks survive every year and it would be wrong to deny them the chance to live.
Bonnie Green, head of external relations, said: “We would be very unhappy. It is expensive to keep adults who may not pull through in intensive care but, in their case, we do not say ‘let’s use the money for something else’.”
Pro-life Ping!
How Liberal!
The Great Liberal Lie is they are for the little people.
Tiny Baby ping --can you ping your list, Gram?
Any thoughts on he encroching Pro-death crowd?
By setting an arbitrary limit, that 11% could have been zero percent instead of the 20% it is today. Only by pushing the limits do we push the survivability back week after week after week.
Ten years ago survivability may have been 28 weeks (just a guestimate). Today it's 23 to 24. Setting a limit will insure only one thing. That 23 to 24 weeks will be the limit from here on out. Frankly I'd like to see it become 15 weeks sometime down the road and even less years after that.
Limits? No.
Know this. God will NOT be mocked. You WILL answer to Him someday, and He is NOT someone who will look lightly at this disgusting "course of action".
From the second grade on, my brother was on the all star little league baseball team every year. In high school he ran track and his times were in the top ten in the nation for medium distances. After college he went into the Army and was a Ranger, a compound fracture to his shoulder following a parachute jump and his disgust with having Klintoon as Commander in Chief made him decide to leave the service. He went to law school and is now a successful corporate attorney.
And that's my experience with premature babies.
Amen!
Take a look at what I wrote in #11.
This is in England, it's not here yet (but if we ever get socialized medicine in will be!), England is following Holland's example.
Absolutely nothing!
Wow! Pretty cool, to say the least!!!!!!!
My experience with Preemies? Well.....I think you know. ;)
Oh, and to the poster who asked what's the difference between this and the abortionists? IMO, on the one hand, no difference. OTOH!...this is more blatant-murder.
Bliss, the premature baby charity, says about 50 babies born at 23 weeks survive every year and it would be wrong to deny them the chance to live.
I am afraid I dont think this is disgusting. Survive is a long shot from livning.
The thought of this premature baby lying on the table while so called doctors and nurses stand by and watch it die is horrific. I suppose Dr. Mengele would reach over and wring its little neck. How do so-called human beings come up with ideas like this.
My Nephew was a premie of 5 months. He is now as healthy as anyone else ,smarter than a whip, and is 16 and works two jobs already. Nice kid. When I think that this woman and these doctors may have flushed him down a toilet it sickens me.
Read what I wrote in #11, and keep in mind that in 1970, 28 weeks was probably more critical than 23 weeks is today.
So of those that survive, most of them either have no disability or have something mild like a "squint". And for this, they must die?
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