What’s Wrong with the World

This is why I generally dislike doctors and why doctors really shouldn't be making ethical decisions. They objectify the matter in unhelpful ways and they generally lack any significant training in ethical theory. They confuse technological progress with moral progress. They are merely highly skilled workers so don't let the white coats fool you. They don't represent moral purity. They often slide from thinking that being skilled in medicine implies that they have knowledge in other areas. It seems none of them have read Socrates.

"Whether they are neurologically capable of hunger behavior is another question, and I don’t know the answer."

Uhmm, here's a thought brain wave. Why not refrain from doing so until you know and if you can't know, then don't do it? Given what you might very well be doing, and that on a large scale to the utterly helpless, wouldn't the WISE thing be to refrain from doing it at all?

Have these people have never been hunting? You never shoot at something moving in a bush until you know what it is. I could be a deer or it could be your buddy taking a wiz.

This is why I generally dislike doctors and why doctors really shouldn't be making ethical decisions. They objectify the matter in unhelpful ways and they generally lack any significant training in ethical theory. They confuse technological progress with moral progress. They are merely highly skilled workers so don't let the white coats fool you. They don't represent moral purity. They often slide from thinking that being skilled in medicine implies that they have knowledge in other areas. It seems none of them have read Socrates.

Everything you said there can be applied to other professions. Lawyers are even worse when it comes to judging other fields. I've backed a few of them into a corner before on copyright law where they had to admit that they actually did not understand even the conceptual aspects of the technology they wanted to protect (digital rights management). Didn't stop them from holding very strong opinions which they took to Congress during congressional testimony on the subject.

Smart people, and doctors are almost invariably highly intelligent, tend to feel it is their God-given right to regulate the behavior of others. That is why for a number of doctors, it is simply natural to feel they have the right to determine when your quality of life has reached a point that is "not worth living."

That's one of the reasons I try to establish up front that my doctor or lawyer is essentially an adviser to me, I make the value judgments. Same with a contractor: I ask them to give me the information that enables me to choose, not to make the choice for me. The doctor may have all the medical knowledge in the world, but it is not his body at risk and it is not his values that the actions taken must carry into effect. Same with the lawyer.

The thing is, though, doctors have to have some sense of the meaning of their profession--some sense of loaded notions like "health," "normalcy," "well-being of the patient," etc. The trouble isn't that they are giving moral content to their profession but that they are giving exactly the _wrong_ moral content to their profession. If the parents were the ones demanding that the child be dehydrated to death (which is not unprecedented) the doctors would be right to refuse. So while speaking for myself I certainly do not want the doctors over-riding me to kill my child, at the same time I don't want to say that doctors should be simply technicians doing whatever I tell them to do. This is one area where I'm afraid procedure alone won't do the job. Content matters. There is really no neutral stance on whether it is licit or a rightful part of the medical profession to be dehydrating infants to death over a period of twenty-six days! The medical profession should be refusing to do it, and the government should be punishing it.

Don't get me wrong: I certainly don't think that doctors have some special handle on the moral issues involved. Far, far from it. In that sense I definitely agree with those saying, "Don't let the white coat fool you." And we have a real problem if doctors are allowed to think of themselves as God. What I am saying, however, is that we need an asymmetrical relationship in custom, medicine, and law between killing patients and not killing patients, and that we are just badly messed up if we get rid of that asymmetrical relationship and then hope to fill the gap with the concept of patient (and parental) autonomy. It will probably prevent some evils in some cases, but it will cause evils in others.

All health care is futile. I wonder then, if someone is beaten to the point of being knocked out, then murdered, if the police think it is only battery. Peter Singer and his ilk will have much to answer for...

The trouble isn't that they are giving moral content to their profession but that they are giving exactly the _wrong_ moral content to their profession.

This.

Please tell me there are over-the-counter ways to feed these infants for the times when our healthcare providers deem food too extraordinary a treatment?

Depends, DmL. It depends on two things: First, it depends on whether the child is in fact able to eat by mouth and especially able to eat enough to sustain life. Second, it depends on whether the health care profession has to give you permission to feed the child by mouth and whether they will do so. Since a number of these infants had neurological impairments, it is possible that they may not have been able to eat, or perhaps eat enough, by mouth. I have had a premature baby of my own (not very much premature, either) who was quite healthy and normal but simply too sleepy to eat enough. She required a simple NG tube for about a week until becoming more wakeful. Might have survived all right without it and just with mouth feeding; might not.

However, I fear that we may see situations where people are simply not permitted to feed their impaired relatives--adult or child--by mouth. If there is any idea that a tube is "needed"--for example, if the medical profession can say that there is any danger of aspiration--it is possible that mouth feeding would be ruled "inappropriate" and forbidden. This has certainly happened to many stroke patients, even when the question is not a cut and dried matter. I had a post here about a patient in Canada who went for eleven days with nothing until his friends were permitted to feed him by mouth.

Mike T,

I quite agree that across fields, people act in such a way. In this regard I am entirely Socratic. It is one reason why they are fools.

Lydia,

It may be necessary that they bring to bear some moral content to their profession, but that doesn't entail that they be the gate keepers on bio-ethical decisions or that they hold an equal standing in that sphere.

As something of a moral particularist, I agree that procedure is inadequate. This is why oaths of office are in part important and why the moral formation of a people is paramount.

I just can't see a tube as extraordinary, either. My father-in-law had throat cancer and had a jejunostomy. He was fully self-sufficient, and I just can't see why this wouldn't be allowed, even for infants. He is fully recovered now, and fit as a fiddle, but I am just imagining that 10 years from now, it wouldn't be so...

By the way, I've been thinking about how our culture is completely topsy-turvy as far as what things medical people are and are not permitted to _not do_ for (supposedly) reasons of conscience. Take something like prescribing and dispensing birth control. The idea here is that a pharmacist and perhaps a doctor as well is a mere technician--not supposed to make any moral judgements, nor even judgements about whether, say, it's _healthy_ for an unwed teen to be having sex outside of marriage (for example), just supposed to dole out the prescription. Yet when it comes to a feeding tube to prevent a patient from dying of starvation and dehydration (!), suddenly they're a bunch of "conscientious objectors," and it would be a shocking attack on their medical professionalism for them to have to give it!

I'm very confused.....why are these infants being starved to death?

AnonGuy,

Some infants are not born healthy. Some are premature, some have suffered trauma of some kind, others from birth defects, etc.

Regardless, those infants are deemed to be too difficult to bring about full recovery, so murder by negligence is thus considered the "humane" option. Of course, as many articles have shown, there is no recourse for those who would prefer to not be "humane", but save and nurture a life.

Essentially, it's all about the Modern Triumvirate of Bentham, Freud, and Marx assaulting basic decency.

Parents should be warned that the report will document the technical cause of death as “starvation” — a loaded word for all concerned. It is important that parents separate this word from any notion of suffering, he said...

Far, far from it. In that sense I definitely agree with those saying, "Don't let the white coat fool you." And we have a real problem if doctors are allowed to think of themselves as God.

Given the high esteem physicians are accorded in Scripture, one wonders whether or not this wouldn't be Sirach's worst nightmare?

From Sirach 38 (my bolding, to highlight the absurdity called modern medicine):

1 Hold the physician in honor, for he is essential to you, and God it was who established his profession.
2 From God the doctor has his wisdom, and the king provides for his sustenance.
3 His knowledge makes the doctor distinguished, and gives him access to those in authority.
4 God makes the earth yield healing herbs which the prudent man should not neglect;
5 Was not the water sweetened by a twig that men might learn his power?
6 He endows men with the knowledge to glory in his mighty works,
7 Through which the doctor eases pain and the druggist prepares his medicines;
8 Thus God's creative work continues without cease in its efficacy on the surface of the earth.
9 My son, when you are ill, delay not, but pray to God, who will heal you:
10 Flee wickedness; let your hands be just, cleanse your heart of every sin;
11 Offer your sweet-smelling oblation and petition, a rich offering according to your means.
12 Then give the doctor his place lest he leave; for you need him too.
13 There are times that give him an advantage,
14 and he too beseeches God That his diagnosis may be correct and his treatment bring about a cure.
15 He who is a sinner toward his Maker will be defiant toward the doctor.

Ah, but the doctor who is a sinner will be defiant towards the patient.

The Chicken

Perhaps one of the blogmeisters could do a post on the following "finding" of modern science:

A Genetic Disposition for Liberalism

The Chicken

AnonGuy, the report says that Dr. Siden was talking about five cases of starvation he and his fellow physicians had "overseen."

Two infants had severe neurologic impairment, 2 had severe hypoxic ischemia, and 1 had severe bowel atresia.

In other words, four out of the five simply had brain damage. That was why they were sentenced to death. The fifth probably needed treatment, even surgery, to survive and be able to digest and process food normally. They decided instead to let him starve to death.

That's the only answer that can be given to your question. These are the reasons that the Canadian doctors considered sufficient for them to convince parents that their children were better off starving to death than living.

Sounds about right, babies can be left to die slowly, but it's a terrible crime to the same to a dog.

Man....
Imagine that - being brought into a world where you're viewed as not being worth the trouble to save.
Killing a child because he or she has a mental handicap?! And in America we make movies portraying NAZIs as terrible people?? If NAZIs were so terrible (and I'm not saying they weren't) then what the hell does that make a "civilized society" who lets infants starve and whither away??

Oh God forbid one of these "parents" (which they're not) go out of their comfort zone to help their innocent child have a flippin chance to live and be loved - if only for a few moments during a valiant fight to keep them alive!

If they survived for that long, too, it's clear that they didn't die of the underlying condition. That's one of the points Smith makes: The fact that it took that long and that they became emaciated makes it quite clear that they were not in the dying process from the conditions themselves.

Hello. I've just found you from England. I have to say my admiration for Americans has never stopped growing since I got online in 1998. There are reservations in that of course,but...

Very glad you have found this and will certainly be visiting often.

With Regards,
Winnie