Should disabled newborns be euthanized?

Published 2006-11-06 at 17:34:57Z under homepage, thoughts
Via: Kevin, M.D.
[mermaid-ba]

They're debating this very topic in Scotland at the moment. While I don't think
euthanasia is appropriate here, the real problem does merit some serious
discussion.

In the distant past, we never had to deal with problems like this. When we
would have a child with a disability—even a relatively minor one—the child
would invariably die. Either the parents lacked the ability to properly care
for him, or the child simply would be unable to survive in the world. He might
easily contract a disease, or would be easy pickings for predators. This
provided a certain selective pressure to keep our species relatively free from
these types of defects.

Recently, from an evolutionary perspective, we've come up with all sorts of
medical advances. People with birth defects or disabilities that would have
meant a quick death in the past are now treatable. Some of these treatments are
cheap and easy, but others require a lifetime of resources and commitment
simply to stay alive—to say nothing about liberty and pursuit of happiness.

But isn't this a good thing? We prosper by having longer life spans, and it's
the humane thing to do, after all, to save a life that might otherwise be lost.
There are two problems:

More medical advances means more people "saved"

A disabled child that survives used to be somewhat rare. The family normally
has to deal with extreme hardship to deal with this. But that's what we do with
our children, right? We accept our blessings even if they come with strings.
But consider that there are many children born today that don't survive simply
because we haven't made the medical advances yet to deal with them. That will
change, though. This means more and more families will find themselves with
children that have special needs. Yesterday's miscarriage could be tomorrow's
saved life, if the parent keeps up with medication and doctor's appointments.
Is congratulations really in order?

Many birth defects are hereditary

Many of these disabilities or birth defects are problems at the genetic level,
which means there's a good chance they will be passed on to children. This
serves to compound the problem. With more and more people available in the gene
pool with what are, essentially, defective genes, more and more families will
have to bear the burdens of raising children with special needs. This means
more birth defects and the need for more medicine to treat the same population.
Health care costs for the average person will skyrocket. We will become a
society dependent upon medicine for our basic survivability.

We have reached the point where we can "opt out" of evolutionary processes like
natural selection. This means our species is no longer subject to nature's
checks that have ensured our survivability without the need for any significant
medicine throughout the millennia. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but with
that decision comes an enormous responsibility. If we have decided that nature
will not guide our evolution, we must take that responsibility for ourselves.
Blind "cure all" solutions and unchecked reproduction seem to be the only moral
options for us today. It seems unthinkable to suggest that we should work to
oppose either. But it ultimately means the destruction of our species unless
more drastic genetic engineering measures are undertaken to repair the damage
later.

π
© 2002-2006 David Nesting. Some rights reserved.
(For spam harvesters and poorly behaved spiders: poisoned addresses)