Parents Under Fire for Making Daughter Stay Child Forever Opinions?

Question

Until New Year's Day, not even her first name was known. Ashley was a faceless case study, cited in a paper by two doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital as they outlined a treatment so radical that it brought with it allegations of "eugenics", of creating a 21st-century Frankenstein's monster, of maiming a child for the sake of convenience.

The reason for the controversy is this: Three years ago, when Ashley began to display early signs of puberty, her parents instructed doctors to remove her uterus, appendix and still-forming breasts, then treat her with high doses of estrogen to stunt her growth.

In other words, Ashley was sterilized and frozen in time, for ever to remain a child. She was only 6 years old.

Ashley, the daughter of two professionals in the Seattle area, never had much hope of a normal life.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,241279,00.html

10 points to best answer!

Answer 1

Well I might get slammed but here goes anyway.....

Do I personally think it was right, no. Can I understand some of the rational behind it? Yes.

Ashley is a completely disable person, and will require care every minute of everyday for the rest of her life. It is difficult to care for and maintain a disabled child, but as they fail to grow cognitively they continue to grow physically which makes there care exponentially more difficult. Just from a pulmonay and skin standpoint she needs to be repositioned and turned at the very least every two hours, not to mention transfers, hygeine issues, and changing out very expensive equipment every few years due to be outgrown.
It is much easier to care for a smaller person than a full-sized adult. I can understand that part of the parents argument.

I take issue with unnecessary surgery and medication on a helpless disabled child for the sake of convienence. Theoretically they may have saved her the pain of bedsores and other medical problems, but I think that they gambled with her life by putting her under general anesthesia and subjecting her to high dose medications.

Bottom line, it was not my child, and I am blessed with 4 healthy children and cannot imagine what they are going through.

Answer 2

first reaction is that the parents and doctors are insane. after reading the story ,it raises some very real questions,that no one can answer. without being in the parents shoes it is impossible to know what you would do. it is not eugenics,the disability remains. as parents we do tend to try and mold and shape our childrens lives. sometimes good,sometimes bad. i can only say i'm glad their choice is not one i have to make. i have made what i hope will be the toughest choice i will ever have to make. my wife and myself had to make a decision a few years back,risk our daughters life in hopes of saving it. it turned out to be the right decision and she is fine. while she was in surgery we were in doubt. even the doctors doubted it would work. so my answer is you never know what you would do and you shouldn't judge others choices in a situation such as this.

Answer 3

You're leaving out the part about Ashley NEVER having a chance at a normal life due to the disease she was born with. Do I think this is right? No way. I think the parents and child would have been best served to terminate the pregnancy.

I understand parents not wanting to deal with these sort of situations. But I do not agree with parents having the child and then mutilating it.

Answer 4

a million. Christians are to be forgiving and are not for the demise penalty. you have been misinformed. 2. Why could I ever end loving my daughter? according to probability i could grieve thinking that maybe she wasn't in heaven, yet Christians fall and come back up. If I had raised my daughter interior the religion and he or she had slipped back, Now the guy who had repented from her homicide and grew to become to Christ is a stable factor no longer a bad factor, for this reason Christians do no longer choose the demise penalty, that and it is extra useful to forgive. 3. so far as lucifer falling is precisely why we are given unfastened will. He grew to become into crammed with himself and theory he would desire to be better than his writer. 4. don't be fooled devil is the author of lies, the daddy of all liars

Answer 5

That is just sick. First of all, I don't think you can find a Dr. willing to remove organs unless it medically necessary. Secondly, the ovaries produce the estrogen which is responsible for female development, not the uterus. Do you have a specific comment about the article? or are you just fielding comments? I completely disagree with what happened.

Answer 6

First of all you need to tell the COMPLETE story so these folks don't sound like whack-os! The parents were actually trying to prolong this child's life--albiet not the way most of us would have done it, but this is America and the doctors wouldn't have done it if were not ethical!!!! I may not agree with what they did--but people on this board deserve the ENTIRE story before you give out your ten points at this child's expense.

And now, for the rest of the story!!!!

Afflicted with a severe brain impairment known as static encephalopathy, she cannot walk, talk, keep her head up in bed, or even swallow food. Her parents argued that "keeping her small" was the best way to improve the quality of her life, not to make life more convenient for them.

By remaining a child, they say, Ashley will have a better chance of avoiding everything from bed sores to pneumonia — and the removal of her uterus means that she will never have a menstrual cycle or risk developing uterine cancer.

Because Ashley was expected to have a large chest size, her parents say that removing her breast buds, including the milk glands (while keeping the nipples intact), will save her further discomfort while avoiding fibrocystic growth and breast cancer.

They also feared that large breasts could put Ashley at risk of sexual assault.

The case was approved by the hospital's ethics committee in 2004, which agreed that because Ashley could never reproduce voluntarily, she was not being subjected to forced sterilization, a form of racial cleansing promoted in the 1920s and known as eugenics (it was satirized in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby").

However, the case of Ashley X was not made public, and, as a result, no legal challenges were ever made.

Ashley's doctors, Daniel Gunther and Douglas Diekema, wrote in their paper for the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that the treatment would "remove one of the major obstacles to family care and might extend the time that parents with the ability, resources and inclination to care for their child at home might be able to do so."

The paper inspired hundreds of postings on the Internet: many supportive, some disapproving but sympathetic, others furious.

"I find this offensive if not perverse," read one. "Truly a milestone in our convenience-minded society."

It was the critical comments that finally provoked Ashley's father to respond.

While remaining anonymous, he posted a remarkable 9,000-word blog entry at 11 p.m. on New Year's Day, justifying his decision.

The posting includes links to photographs of Ashley, in which the faces of other family members, including Ashley's younger sister and brother, have been blanked out.

"Some question how God might view this treatment," he wrote. "The God we know wants Ashley to have a good quality of life and wants her parents to be diligent about using every resource at their disposal (including the brains that He endowed them with) to maximize her quality of life."

Ashley's father went on to describe how her height is now expected to remain at about 4 feet 5 inches, and her weight at 75 pounds.

Without the treatment, she would have grown into a woman of average height and weight, probably about 5 feet 6 inches and 125 pounds, with a normal lifespan.

The medical profession is divided.

"I think most people, when they hear of this, would say this is just plain wrong," wrote Jeffrey Brosco of the University of Miami, in an editorial. "But it is a complicated story ... you can understand the difficulties. [But] high-dose estrogen therapy to prevent out-of-home placement simply creates a new Sophie's Choice for parents to confront.

"If we as a society want to revise the nature of the harrowing predicament that these parents face, then more funds for home-based services, not more medication, is what is called for."

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.

"The estrogen treatment is not what is grotesque here. Rather, it is the prospect of having a full-grown and fertile woman endowed with the mind of a baby."

Answer 7

And deservedly so.

I thought this kind of junk science went out with Hitler. WHy the doctors went along with this also contravenes everything they are to stand for and are equally culpable in this travesty.

The bottom line is "To what true end or purpose?" Those parents should be thrown in jail forever with no hope of anything.

Answer 8

That is just creepy. I can see the parents' side, and I can see how it won't ever really matter to the child, but the way I see it, that's not too far removed from euthenasia. I have mixed feelings. I'm not in that situation thank god, but if I was, I'm sure i wouldn't do that to my child.

Answer 9

why did the doctors do this? They are just as responsible as the parents in this regards. They owed it to society to report these people to the local authorities for child abuse. What is the real story behind this I wonder.

Answer 10

I thought this question was a hoax, and merely an attempt to propagate an urban legend. This is one of the the most disgusting inexcusable misuses of medical science not to mention wonton cruelty on the parts of the parents, I have ever seen.
And to say that this was for her benefit, and not for the convenience of the caregivers? I am astonished and thoroughly disgusted.