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Once doctors have started assisting these babies, he says, parents find it difficult to agree to treatment being withdrawn, even though it is of no help.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’.”
It's fascist. It's ugly. But it sure saves money.
This is completely heartless. I am aghast.
This lev of evil is beyond words.
And well should be compared to Hitler, they also take the same path as Hitler, after all Hitler was also a Socialist just as they are, he headed "The National Socialist Party".
They shout their own name while having sex. A Godless generation that has the blood of millions on its hands.
Pro-Lifers are going to have to completely abandon.
The most naive group IMO are the "social justice" Christians. They want the government to pay for cradle to grave, but howl when the leviathan state that they helped create decides to cut off people.
Baroness Warnock. What a name. Sounds like something out of Revenge of the Sith.
The same eugenics morality code which the U.S.A. saved Great Britians ass from the nazis. It is an easy sell. You see the "experts" in morality now proclaim that this group of people have fewer rights to life than others. As long as it doesn't effect me, well thats ok. G.K.Chesterton warned us in the early 1900s of this. Few listened, and the holocaust was the result of turning blind eye. Now lets kill the least among us. It is hard to believe it has come to this.
WTF do they mean by squint anyway? So you're kid will need glasses or contacts or Lasik, and they want to kill for this.
He was born "in the veil",as the story is told. The midwife noticed some movement and cut the sac open and delivered him. He had no eyelashes and only a few fingernails were developed. They put him in a shoebox and kept him on an open oven door to keep him warm.
My Hungarian immigrant grandmother didn't know that he couldn't possibly survive so she did everything she could to keep him alive.
He was undersized until he had a huge growth spurt around age ten, he was about 5"7" as an adult and fought as a middleweight at 158 lbs as an amateur boxer.
During WW2 he worked at a Wright Aero. engine factory slinging unmachined aluminum ingots around for 12 hours a day.
He fathered three of us who are eternally grateful that there was no cockeyed liberal do-gooder around to talk my grandmother out of saving him.Amen
That being said, I am aghast that the media gives this monster a voice.
How bout those old non working slugs over 65, they get sick, off they go.
Ghouls, the lot of them.
The same thing happens here in some states the law requires it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,151862,00.html
Can anyone tell me how this woman came to be considered "Britain's top medical ethics expert"? What are her qualifications?
My brother went through similar experiences (see #11).
I cannot fathom putting an arbitrary number of months on which baby can survive.
My oldest daughter was born at 28 weeks and fortunately she was born in a research hospital for neonatal care. At that time, there was very much of chance she would not have survived in a regular hospital; not only did she survive because of the care she received in the hospital, she came home on her due date. She never had any problems from being born premature, not one. She was just smaller and thankfully because of the shots I received the 24 hours before she was born by C-Section, her lungs were strengthened. If 28 years ago, my daughter survived and thrived at 28 weeks, I wouldn't say 24 weeks was out of the question with the new technology.
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