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- Apr 25, 2014
- Messages
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Just thinking out loud here, but if the hospital must withdraw care then I guess they could do so and the parents could then do whatever they want with the child? Including flying him to whatever other hospital they wanted to take him to? (Presumably paying for a private care provider to step in with their own machines as soon as the hospital machines are switched off.)
If he dies on the way then so be it - the hospital will have done their duty by law, the parents will feel like they have done their duty as parents and will have got what they wanted to happen, fate/god/nature/whatever will have taken its course, the dice will fall as they will.
Turning the whole thing into a media circus, where unqualified persons and organisations looking to sell newspapers and harvest website clicks opine and emote freely, with no consequence to themselves and with no regard to the recognised legal and medical processes established over time for good reason, only serves to stir up trouble.
Of course, sometimes such stirring is required when a change in the law or processes is needed, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Of course, parents are always more sensitive to their children than other people because they spend so much more time with them and have watched them grow so know their habits and traits and characters, but to refuse to accept the opinion of so many medical professionals seems more like sheer bloody-mindedness than a logical, fact-based decision.
What happens if by some miracle the child survives? Are we going to have a 'Charlie - 20 years on' TV program, where he is still hooked up to machines and generally unresponsive but maybe, just maybe, 'improved' in some negligible way that apparently only the parents can detect? What will that prove? That science can keep a body pumping blood round when its own internal organic processes have otherwise lost the ability to do so? That perhaps doctors might be wrong once in a while, even if being wrong means that an individual has barely any quality of life rather than zero quality of life? That 20 years on a machine and barely registering the outside world, if at all, with the vast associated costs and care provision, is an acceptable quality of life for an individual? That the needs of the parents should trump the needs of the child? That an individual with no ability to speak for themselves should have their life dictated by others? That human life is so valuable, even when it just sucks up resources without any ability to interact or give back to the world, that it should be prolonged and preserved at all cost?
I don't know...
I just think that if we had a pet that was in pain and/or unresponsive and had no hope of getting better, or had only a tiny improvement likely with medical intervention, which we had to feed by hand and then clear up after every time it soiled itself, we would do the decent thing and put it to sleep, even though we would be sad to do so. Why is human life apparently so much more important/valuable than other life when we are all just organisms blessed with the opportunity to exist after 4billion years of evolution on this tiny rock in the vastness of space? Why can't humans die with dignity? We all have to die, it is a part of life - let it be swift and painless and, hopefully, after a full and fulfilling life filled with joy and good experiences. If a human is born with such physical faults that its existence is only short, surely that is just evolution at work and we should accept that?
Anyway, here I am, opining and emoting anonymously on the internet so perhaps I better step away from the keyboard lol
If he dies on the way then so be it - the hospital will have done their duty by law, the parents will feel like they have done their duty as parents and will have got what they wanted to happen, fate/god/nature/whatever will have taken its course, the dice will fall as they will.
Turning the whole thing into a media circus, where unqualified persons and organisations looking to sell newspapers and harvest website clicks opine and emote freely, with no consequence to themselves and with no regard to the recognised legal and medical processes established over time for good reason, only serves to stir up trouble.
Of course, sometimes such stirring is required when a change in the law or processes is needed, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Of course, parents are always more sensitive to their children than other people because they spend so much more time with them and have watched them grow so know their habits and traits and characters, but to refuse to accept the opinion of so many medical professionals seems more like sheer bloody-mindedness than a logical, fact-based decision.
What happens if by some miracle the child survives? Are we going to have a 'Charlie - 20 years on' TV program, where he is still hooked up to machines and generally unresponsive but maybe, just maybe, 'improved' in some negligible way that apparently only the parents can detect? What will that prove? That science can keep a body pumping blood round when its own internal organic processes have otherwise lost the ability to do so? That perhaps doctors might be wrong once in a while, even if being wrong means that an individual has barely any quality of life rather than zero quality of life? That 20 years on a machine and barely registering the outside world, if at all, with the vast associated costs and care provision, is an acceptable quality of life for an individual? That the needs of the parents should trump the needs of the child? That an individual with no ability to speak for themselves should have their life dictated by others? That human life is so valuable, even when it just sucks up resources without any ability to interact or give back to the world, that it should be prolonged and preserved at all cost?
I don't know...
I just think that if we had a pet that was in pain and/or unresponsive and had no hope of getting better, or had only a tiny improvement likely with medical intervention, which we had to feed by hand and then clear up after every time it soiled itself, we would do the decent thing and put it to sleep, even though we would be sad to do so. Why is human life apparently so much more important/valuable than other life when we are all just organisms blessed with the opportunity to exist after 4billion years of evolution on this tiny rock in the vastness of space? Why can't humans die with dignity? We all have to die, it is a part of life - let it be swift and painless and, hopefully, after a full and fulfilling life filled with joy and good experiences. If a human is born with such physical faults that its existence is only short, surely that is just evolution at work and we should accept that?
Anyway, here I am, opining and emoting anonymously on the internet so perhaps I better step away from the keyboard lol
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