Severely retarded girl undergoes surgery to keep her in childlike state

As outsiders to the whole process, I feel it is very difficult to criticize the parents in this situation. We probably aren’t going to be able to ascertain too much more, except that this decision wasn’t made spontaneously by the parents alone but with consultation with treating doctors. As such, it’s difficult to simply recommend that they should have decided earlier, terminated or whatever. They may have been waiting all this time for a “miracle cure” and have now decided that enough is enough, but we don’t know. In any case, I do not think her parents would have made this decision lightly.

As for LeHah’s rather bold assumption that it must clearly be “unethical” practice otherwise there wouldn’t be a thread about it… that’s probably the jumping to conclusions. My understanding is that the choice to stunt her growth has already had medical ethics committee approval, although this won’t stop the fact that there will be a big fucking ethical question mark hanging over the whole situation for a long time.

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Originally Posted by LeHah

So then the obvious anwser is that the medical ethics committee who decided to do this is flawed. Perhaps they just wanted more money in their coffers.

It boils down to what benefit does the girl get from this operation. She doesn't get any - it was done because the parents are too skeeved out to clean up vagina shat.

You make an interesting point, and while it could very well be true, I feel your assumption that the process boils down to just benefiting her is a rather oversimplified viewpoint to take. Perhaps in your limited ethical framework it is easier to reduce a complex situation down to a simple matter of benefits, but it is seems rather underhand to exclude other considerations. Given that a medical ethics committee typically comprises of people with expertise in medicine, law, religion and in this case most certainly at least one person with an understanding of the concerns of a disabled person, I would be more inclined to accept that they have adequate personnel to make a reasonable assessment and judgment rather than your “obvious” conclusion. I’m also inclined to believe that there has definitely been a lot more thought put into it than any of us can possibly imagine.

Still, I won’t deny that I don’t feel this is an unusual or disturbing case. This is not because I believe any of it to be inherently wrong, but rather because it is such a drastic departure from conventional treatment which would involve the hiring of carers etc.

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