Sun Hudson followup
The physician-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital and a bioethicist at Baylor Medical College jointly published in the Houston Chronicle a rather self-serving, condescending, and possibly misleading justification of their decision to disconnect a baby boy from a ventilator. the full text can be found at this URL:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3103113
The following excerpt seems mostly factual: (i say seems because i have no medical training)
Little Sun Hudson was born with a defect so overwhelming that most infants with it die before they are born or at birth. The name of his disease — thanatophoric dysplasia — literally means death-bearing. His lungs and his rib cage were tiny and there is no medical treatment that would allow them to grow so that he could someday breathe on his own. Keeping him on a ventilator meant keeping him anes- thetized. He never had a chance at real life.
The rest of the editorial strongly implies that any parent in full possession of her senses would choose euthanasia for a baby thus afflicted.
So I did what a curious, net-savvy person might be expected to do when confronted with an unfamiliar medical term: I googled it. The first site that turned up, eMedicine.com, had this to say:
Mortality/Morbidity: Although the literature documents several reports of survival into childhood, TD virtually is always lethal in the neonatal period. Respiratory insufficiency secondary to reduced thoracic capacity or compression of the brainstem leads to death.
Sex: Males and females are affected equally.
Age: TD is lethal in neonates; however, long-term survival has been reported.
Not quite the death sentence the Hospital administration portrayed. eMedicine gives a frequency of 1 case per 10,000-35,000 live births. I also doubt that eMedicine has a pro-life bias. Here's what it says under Patient Education:
If a fetus is affected by TD and if the pregnancy has proceeded past the period during which a therapeutic abortion can take place, discuss aggressive and nonaggressive management frankly with the parents.
Elsewhere, it implies that nonaggressive management consists of palliative treatment. The eMedicine article, which I believe is merely stating current medical practice as opposed to advocating any particular approach, can be accessed here:
http://www.emedicine.com/PED/topic2233.htm
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3103113
The following excerpt seems mostly factual: (i say seems because i have no medical training)
Little Sun Hudson was born with a defect so overwhelming that most infants with it die before they are born or at birth. The name of his disease — thanatophoric dysplasia — literally means death-bearing. His lungs and his rib cage were tiny and there is no medical treatment that would allow them to grow so that he could someday breathe on his own. Keeping him on a ventilator meant keeping him anes- thetized. He never had a chance at real life.
The rest of the editorial strongly implies that any parent in full possession of her senses would choose euthanasia for a baby thus afflicted.
So I did what a curious, net-savvy person might be expected to do when confronted with an unfamiliar medical term: I googled it. The first site that turned up, eMedicine.com, had this to say:
Mortality/Morbidity: Although the literature documents several reports of survival into childhood, TD virtually is always lethal in the neonatal period. Respiratory insufficiency secondary to reduced thoracic capacity or compression of the brainstem leads to death.
Sex: Males and females are affected equally.
Age: TD is lethal in neonates; however, long-term survival has been reported.
Not quite the death sentence the Hospital administration portrayed. eMedicine gives a frequency of 1 case per 10,000-35,000 live births. I also doubt that eMedicine has a pro-life bias. Here's what it says under Patient Education:
If a fetus is affected by TD and if the pregnancy has proceeded past the period during which a therapeutic abortion can take place, discuss aggressive and nonaggressive management frankly with the parents.
Elsewhere, it implies that nonaggressive management consists of palliative treatment. The eMedicine article, which I believe is merely stating current medical practice as opposed to advocating any particular approach, can be accessed here:
http://www.emedicine.com/PED/topic2233.htm
posted by yitwail at 9:58 PM
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