8mm
Posted on 05/20/2007 11:07:34 PM PDT by monomaniac
VERNON, British Columbia, May 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Canadian physician and writer, Dr. Ken Walker, has upset a BC family after he wrote in a column that their two conjoined baby girls ought to have been aborted to avoid being seen as “freaks of nature.”
Walker, a syndicated columnist under the pen name Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, called the twins’ mother, Felicia Simms, “irrational” and suggested she should have had an abortion.
Walker wrote, “Physically they are destined for ill health, lying on their backs forever. They will become obese and develop the myriad of diseases that accompany this problem. Their lives will be a living hell.”
Louise McKay, the twins' grandmother, responded with outrage at the comments.
“We figured that doctors take oaths to preserve lives,” she told CanWest News. “He obviously hasn't been keeping track of their progress. They've been sitting up, eating and playing like any seven-month-old child does.”
The girls, Tatiana and Kristina Hogan, were born last year joined at the head but are healthy and developing normally, eating solid food and playing. The twins are joined at the top of the skull and have fused brain stems, a condition that accounts for only 2 per cent of conjoined twins. No decision has yet been made as to whether they could be surgically separated.
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The surgeons studied the operation for months, yet it ran into so many unexpected complications that the surgery took an astonishing 34 hours. But it worked! As I understood it from my friend, all of this effort was donated by the medical facilities, the doctors, nurses and other medics. This web site relates,
The numbers alone tell a story. The surgery required more than 50 personnel, including:
* 5 neurosurgeons
* 2 plastic surgeons
* 1 pediatric general surgeon
* 1 oral surgeon
* 9 anesthesiologists
* 4 anesthesia technicians
* 6 pediatric nurses
* 4 respiratory therapists and
* 6 surgical technologists.
It was charity and yet it was medical pioneering in which much was learned for future cases. Perhaps the doctor in Canada could have learned something from it too. At least he could have found reason to soften his hard heart.
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