It's certainly moving in that direction. The latest is the 'Ashley treatment'. It's been around for five years, but I just heard of it. (Get to the point. What is it?)
The treatment is designed to limit the growth of severely disabled kids. And by 'limit' I mean keeping them essentially as infants for the rest of their lives. These kids will not walk, talk, grow. They will always be kids. But if they will never talk, never become even a kid, remain always an infant, can we ever consider them as kids?
Clearly, we will never know just how much the parents and the kids suffered before the decision was made to prevent the kids' growth. There are not a lot of these cases, less than a couple of hundred in the world. The primary element in the therapy is hormonal. Surgery is also usually involved as well.
Need I say that disability groups oppose the therapy? I find the therapy extreme, but I've been lucky thus far in that my kids have been normal. I also find it interesting that some of these children were adopted and, I believe, had their condition at the time of adoption. Why would these parents have adopted the kids? Did they have a faith in medicine and in their abilities that led them to believe they could ameliorate the problem?
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