There are two issues here. And they are not the love of a child or the laws by the governing country.
One is that there is no reason to say that the “cure” they are using is going to even help. It is an experimental drug, not a cure set up by our AMA or FDA. They don’t know if it will even work. So even though this illness is being called terminal, what do they have to lose?
But that leads us to the second issue, quality of life. This phrase has not been in the forefront of the issue in a way that considers it a part of it. We have been told the child already has brain damage. Okay, how much? Will this experimental cure do anything about that? Probably not. Destroyed cells normally do not regenerate. So if this cure actually works, what type of life will, or can, or have the ability to consider, possibly have?
Life is fragile, but sometimes death is peace. Why hurt for a few years? This needs to be weighed and decided if just having life is worth living? Or if death is the answer to the pain of no life whatsoever or one of pain and anguish. Hell of a choice, huh?
rwood
Third issue and most important: who decides for Charlie? The state or Charlie’s parents.
Q: Ever had to make the decision to withdraw care? Just curious.
There are two issues here. And they are not the love of a child or the laws by the governing country. One is that there is no reason to say that the “cure” they are using is going to even help. It is an experimental drug, not a cure set up by our AMA or FDA. They don’t know if it will even work. So even though this illness is being called terminal, what do they have to lose? But that leads us to the second issue, quality of life. This phrase has not been in the forefront of the issue in a way that considers it a part of it. We have been told the child already has brain damage. Okay, how much? Will this experimental cure do anything about that? Probably not. Destroyed cells normally do not regenerate. So if this cure actually works, what type of life will, or can, or have the ability to consider, possibly have? Life is fragile, but sometimes death is peace. Why hurt for a few years? This needs to be weighed and decided if just having life is worth living? Or if death is the answer to the pain of no life whatsoever or one of pain and anguish. Hell of a choice, huh?
rwood
That sounds pretty much like this:
Are there lives that have forfeited their individual legal protection because their continued existence has permanently lost all value for the person himself, and for society as well? Simply posing this question brings up an uneasy feeling in anyone who has become accustomed to evaluating the value of a particular life to both the individual concerned and to society.... If one simultaneously thinks about a battlefield covered with thousands of dead young men, or a mine where a violent thunderstorm has buried alive hundreds of diligent workers, and compares it to an institution for imbeciles with its care for its living inmates, one is deeply shocked by the blatant dissonance between the sacrifice of the greatest treasure of humankind on one hand, and on the other, the greatest care being given to existences that are not only absolutely worthless, but that drag other worthy beings down negative existences.
Binding & Hoche