Should severely disabled kids be kept small?

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Mom_of_5 said:
I know that some day in heaven, she will be made whole. I can only hope that she will take my hand and help me to heaven.

Love and peace,
Mom of 5
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Made me cry. Reminds me of my grand-aunt, thank-you.

BTW they sterilized her back in the 40s-50s. So sad.
 
why not just euthanize the girl. Seems a lot easier. Both are morally wrong so what difference does it make.
 
contemplative said:
That is the title of the article…Should severely disabled kids be kept small?
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My answer is absolutely NO!

I want to add that keeping a person “small” does not decrease the chance that the person would become overweight or difficult to manage in other ways. A small, overweight person is much more difficult to handle than an adult sized person–IMO (I have a lot of years of experience with this!)
 
Dear Lord in Heaven!!! What ever possessed them to think of this? Oh, I know…these are probably the same folks that thought it was too much trouble to remember a pill a day to not have a baby…so they made a month supply in one pill…gee is anyone going to be surprized when this child and the once a month pill takers get cancer?
 
Satan must be just so delighted to have perverted people’s minds that they would even think of such a thing!!
And another thing: all those hormones they are giving her. That poor child could be getting cancer down the line, just from that. Or throw a blood clot & die of it.
Yeah, this does sound like Mengele, doesn’t it?? And they consider this caring for her?? Sure. Sounds real “caring” to me. NOT!!
Just outrageous.
 
I care for a DD child who is receiving growth hormone so he can grow to his normal size – he’s pretty close to normal. The trick was to help him learn to walk and help take care of himself, as he’s already pretty heavy. He does walk but will lie down and refuse to move at school sometimes, so has to be cajoled. But all this is certainly worth it, as he is a person who deserves to achieve his highest potential.
The child you mention must be more disabled, probably can’t get out of bed or walk. But as mentioned, it’s nearly as easy to turn, clean and feed an adult as a child, as long as she’s not overweight.
Seems to me they’re limiting her potential, they don’t really know what effect this will have on her cognition and other development. Sounds bad to me.
 
Karin said:
I am sorry but perhaps I am not seeing what you are trying to say…
but this is a normal child that has severe mental and physical issues…Here parents wish to continue to care for her but know that if she grows to adult size they will not be able to do this (perhaps) how are you comparing this to dwarfism?

Sorry please let me add…I do not agree with what these parents have done …they have basically mutilated their child in more than one way !!!
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Most average height women, when a child is diagnosed with dwarfism before birth, are strongly advised to abort. In general, society is working to eliminate dwarfism through abortion (a similar reduction in downs births is recorded because of abortion).

This is dancing further down the path to killing disabled children after birth - it is sickening. It is not a comparison, it is a way for these medical “professionals” to de-humanize that child.
 
Sadly Drs in the UK have proposed killing new borns as a way to reduce late-term-abortions. This came out in the news Sunday November 5, 2006.
 
please forgive my stupid questions, i was raised a protestant<<
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I’m Protestant and I’ll forgive your assinine and uncharitable remark.

I’m sure our Saviour would be very displeased by one of His followers talking that one to a fellow believer.
 
A friend of mine has a daughter approaching 15, who will eventually be over 6 foot tall and a healthy weight. She will keep growing, and already outweighs her mother. She is non-verbal and when angry lashes out with her fists. Wiping feces and blood off the walls is not a pleasant task. Her mother has already had one heart attack caring for her, trying to manuver her from bed to wheelchair. Yes they have money, yes they have help, but in the end its the mom who bears the brunt of the work.
If she had chosen this option, I might not had agreed with it, but I certainly would understand it, and could not condemn it.
 
cmom said:
A friend of mine has a daughter approaching 15, who will eventually be over 6 foot tall and a healthy weight. She will keep growing, and already outweighs her mother. She is non-verbal and when angry lashes out with her fists. Wiping feces and blood off the walls is not a pleasant task. Her mother has already had one heart attack caring for her, trying to manuver her from bed to wheelchair. Yes they have money, yes they have help, but in the end its the mom who bears the brunt of the work.
If she had chosen this option, I might not had agreed with it, but I certainly would understand it, and could not condemn it.
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I admit I see your point. This is ethically very difficult. It goes to the quality of life of the child, too. It could be described as therapeutic, a chance to give her more practical mobility.

Remember, this is not a question of life/death, but of a medical procedure, a treatment for an incredibly heartbreaking condition. Their motive os to help the child have a better quality of life, which is the opposite of abortion.

I think this is very difficult and I thank God I am not faced with such a choice.
 
st_ignatius110 said:
I still don’t understand the need to sterilize?
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Didn’t a whole bunch of people get sued for billions of dollars not too long ago, for sterilizing and mutilating huge numbers of the disabled?

Did we learn nothing from that experience?

I can appreciate that disabled children are difficult to care for, especially when they grow to become adults, and that better medical care is a mixed blessing in that all of us, including the disabled, are living a lot longer than we used to.

But, the solution we arrive at has to be one that respects the dignity of everyone involved - caregivers, as well as patients.

I would rather see a disabled person find a home in a safe and caring environment established for the specific purpose of caring for disabled persons, rather than see either the parents overloaded and destroyed by their child’s disability, or see the child mutilated and sterilized for anyone’s convenience.

How we treat our most difficult and needy citizens is a reflection of the values of our whole society - and the severely disabled need the care and love of the whole of society - it is crazy to expect the parents to do everything all by themselves.
 
Here’s the story about it. Ashley X and a link to the parents blog here. I think it’s awful what they done, I am disabled myself and require quite a bit of help I am glad my parents never butchered me up in the name of convince.

This a total disrespect for human dignity.
 
I have read the father’s response on a blog, to all the criticism they received over the treatment of their daughter.

It is packed with inconsistencies, contradictions and dare I say medical nonsense. I do not know who their ‘experts’ or consultants were, but it looks like they were misinformed at every level.

One minute the child is making no material mental progress and the next she is showing developing levels of tolerance. One minute they are saying they would never surrender the child up to a caregiver and in the next breath they are full of concern over a caregiver having to deal with the childs weight and bodily build or concern over the possible development of large breasts and how they might “sexualise” Ashley to her caregiver. It goes on and on.

Read it for yourselves at
ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com/blog/

or at ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com/ with photographs of the child.

They say twice that their decision was not a difficult one so I can see not a lot of thought went into it.

I have seen pictures of the child and the house in which she resides and from the pictures of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Lourdes about the place I can safely assume they are Catholic.

The whole sad scenario, boils down to one of giving the parents an easier life with little respect to the childs dignity.

They say that when the child is happy they’re happy and when she is not they’re not. I very much think the actions taken show, without a shadow of a doubt, that the opposite is the case. When they are happy they decide that the child is happy and when they’re not happy they then conclude that she is not. This is a very selfish way to look at their relationship to a disabled sibling.
 
jmcrae said:
Didn’t a whole bunch of people get sued for billions of dollars not too long ago, for sterilizing and mutilating huge numbers of the disabled?

Did we learn nothing from that experience?

I can appreciate that disabled children are difficult to care for, especially when they grow to become adults, and that better medical care is a mixed blessing in that all of us, including the disabled, are living a lot longer than we used to.

But, the solution we arrive at has to be one that respects the dignity of everyone involved - caregivers, as well as patients.

I would rather see a disabled person find a home in a safe and caring environment established for the specific purpose of caring for disabled persons, rather than see either the parents overloaded and destroyed by their child’s disability, or see the child mutilated and sterilized for anyone’s convenience.

How we treat our most difficult and needy citizens is a reflection of the values of our whole society - and the severely disabled need the care and love of the whole of society - it is crazy to expect the parents to do everything all by themselves.
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The article begins on: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,3-2530561,00.html​

On page 2, at the end:

“George Dvorsky, a director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, countered: “If the concern has something to do with the girl’s dignity being violated, then I have to protest by arguing that the girl lacks the cognitive capacity to experience any sense of indignity.””

I think he’s mistaken, because ISTM that human dignity is based on our creation by God - & is therefore inalienable; not dependent on consciousness or perception. It can’t be lost, it can’t be gained, it can’t be increased, it can’t be lessened - it can only be conferred, by God, on each & every human being, by virtue of their creation by God & their vocation to eternal life in Christ. If we ignore God, we don’t gain fuller life on earth, but lose both heavenly *and *earthly happiness. AFAICS.​

If cognition is essential for human dignity, no one who is incapable of manifesting self-awareness is safe.

She’s had bits taken out of her even while she’s alive - is this really so different from “harvesting” (!) “spare” embryos ? People are not Lego kits, to be assembled and disassembled 😦 - yet that seems to be what is now happening.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/displayPopup/0,31497,00.html

Taken separately:
  • the designing of the Pill for women
  • the legalisation of abortion
  • “living wills”
  • IVF
  • partial-birth abortion
  • surrogate pregnancies
  • the male Pill
  • & now this
  • may not seem of much significance: but put them together, & they don’t seem to be doing much for the cohesion of society (to put it mildly). So much in medicine seems all set to be a curse rather than a blessing 😦 It’s become a means for “some men to have power over other men” - which is how C.S. Lewis defined man’s “conquest” of nature. How right he was.
 
My gut instinct is no that it is terribly wrong and really twisted. In another article that I read yesterday it was stated that she would do better being kept small - less chance for bed sores and since she is in bed 24/7 she would be more comfortable if she weighed less. These measures though seem so extreme. I can’t imagine that these reasons are justification enough.
 
This is so sick!

These doctors are so perverted and talk parents into to playing God with their own child! It is an act of despair. How can they forever limit their daughter’s capabilities by doing this? Can they foresee the future? No. As long as there is life there is hope, and even hope for a treatment, therapy and/or a miracle!

Nurses move helpless adults. Find out how they do it.

It is definitely Mengelean ‘treatment’. Everyone needs to read what Dr. Mengele, Dr. Rascher and their ilk thought, and tried to justify what they did. Then all the talk of the parents is shown for the selfishness that it is.

Let this be a warning to everyone. Consult the Church, not the physicians as to morality! The profession of physicain has been corrupted and until they get their moral compass back, the Hippocartic Oath, they are not to be trusted. Test each one until he proves himself to be a true healer.

By the way, I thought that taking estrogen was a great way to get cancer. I would never in my life take it, much less give it to a disabled child. But I suppose since she is disabled they will consider it a blessing if she has an early demise.
 
dulcissima said:
My gut instinct is no that it is terribly wrong and really twisted. In another article that I read yesterday it was stated that she would do better being kept small - less chance for bed sores and since she is in bed 24/7 she would be more comfortable if she weighed less. These measures though seem so extreme. I can’t imagine that these reasons are justification enough.
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Well if you do even the slightest research you will find that treatment of bed sores has nothing to do with size or shape. they are prevented by properly management through the following methods:
Bed sores can be prevented by inspecting the skin for areas of redness (the first sign of skin breakdown). Other methods of preventing bed sores and preventing progression of existing bed sores include the following:
frequent turning and repositioning
providing soft padding in wheelchairs and beds to reduce pressure
providing good skin care by keeping the skin clean and dry
Again they were using the bed sores idea in order to justify their drastic size freezing hormonal action and certainly not the other way around.
 
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