Posted on 09/05/2009 10:46:13 AM PDT by Schnucki
A mother who watched her premature baby die when doctors refused to help him has condemned medical guidelines which said he should not be saved.
Sarah Capewell gave birth to a baby son when she was 21 weeks and 5 days into her pregnancy. Her pleas to doctors and midwives to admit the newborn to a special care baby unit were rejected.
Staff at James Paget Hospital, in Gorleston, Norfolk, told her that if her son Jayden had been born two days later, at 22 weeks, they would have tried to help him.
Instead, Miss Capewell, who had previously suffered five miscarriages, says she was told the child had "no right" to life, by doctors, who refused to even see the baby, which lived for almost two hours without any support.
She is now fighting for a change to British medical guidance which says intensive care should never be given to babies below 22 weeks gestation, and rarely to those below 23 weeks.
She has created a website, Justice for Jayden, campaigning for changes, which has already attracted 5,000 members, including scores of women who have suffered a similar plight.
Medical guidance for NHS hospitals says the low chance of survival for babies born below 23 weeks means they should not be given interventions which could cause suffering.
It is backed by research showing that despite improvements in the survival chances of babies born beyond 24 weeks, there has been little change in the viability of those born more prematurely.
A national study last year found 16 per cent survival at 23 weeks, compared with 47 per cent one week later.
A separate study of 150 babies born in the Trent area at 22 weeks last year found none survived, though latest annual figures record three cases surviving in 2006.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Were that my child Britain would be short some medical personnel and they wouldn't be coming back.
bookmarked
Coming to a hospital in America if 0bama gets his way ...
That poor dear lady. Is there no end to her agony?
That a civilized society would do such a thing is impossible to comprehend. Any Doctor here in the U.S. would do anything possible to save a life. This illustrates what government health care does to physicians and medical personnel.
No rational person would want a system like this.
Unbelievable.
I’m trying to imagine this happening under Maggie Thatcher...
Their obligation is to do everything in their power, and it's a simple thing to admit a 21 week old to a NICU. We all know why they didn't: costs too much.
The age of routine survival for preemies continues to get earlier. My son, born at 27 weeks, just had his 6th birthday and has ZERO problems (other than annoying me routinely). While 21 weeks is difficult, and has middling survival rates, it's only a matter of time before even they will have routine expectation of survival.
This is just ordinary murder, nothing more.
First of all, there's no way doctors know the exact amount of weeks or days of pregnancy. In my own experience, the doctor was off ONE MONTH! even though I told him the exact date of conception and brought it to his attention that his dates were off one month.
You know the difference between God and a doctor?
God doesn't think he's a doctor.
No baby has ever survived after being born at 21 weeks 5 days. The world record holder is a 21 week 6 day girl, and for unknown reasons, girls have a much better chance of surviving extremely premature birth than boys. Other factors also influence survival chances, such as weight, and whether there were longstanding pregnancy complications (as opposed to a pregnancy that was proceeding perfectly normally until some sudden internal or external event caused the premature delivery). Since this woman had been having a seriously complicated pregnancy for the preceding two months, the baby likely weighed significantly less that the little girl who survived a 21 weeks 6 days birth.
How much would this woman have been willing to pay, in advance, out of her own pocket, for an insurance policy that would cover attempts at saving an extremely premature baby whose statistical chances for survival were zero? If we really want to have free-market health care (which I do), we need to ask these questions and answer them honestly. I think the money would be much better spent, and save more babies, if it was spent on research on how to to delay premature births, instead of on attempts to save extremely premature babies that have virtually no chance of survival and a 100% of experiencing pain and suffering during attempts to save them.
Coming soon to a state near you!
May those who refused help for this baby go to hell! I know where the baby is. God bless this family and someday those doctors or so called doctors will pay and pay dearly.
Your question is insultingly arrogant. You have no way to call this baby as zero chance of survival, your claim to statistics in no way supports such a call.
As for how much "ths woman" would have spent to at least try to save her child, the answer is that she isn't "some woman" - she's the baby's mother, and would have given everything in her life for it. Good lord man, do you have ice in your veins?
Government shrinker - you're aptly named. Go back to your life-value charts and guess where you'd fit on them, if human decency were a line item.
Let the babies die, but don’t worry though - it’s NOT a death panel.
But what unearthly reason would they have to, at least, not allow her to hold her son? Offer him the comfort of a mother's love, denied him in his short life. And help her with her grieving. There seems to be a fine line between 'costly' care that may not help and simple care that should be the basis of simple human kindness and not a privilege, not a monetary judgment.
Coming soon to American under the guise of healthcare reform! Many babies every year live born from 20 weeks on unfortuantely when you have the government in charge they decide based upon cost and it costs a lot to fund NICU.For those under the age of 35yo you might want to thinkabout your support for this because this could be one of your children!
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary shall establish within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research (in this section referred to as the ‘Center’) to conduct, support, and synthesize research (including research conducted or supported under section 1013 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003) with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services and procedures in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically.
Whatever they determine isn't effective will become unfunded.
You need to learn the lesson that the leftists need to learn. Resources are not unlimited, and continuing to add to the list of expensive things that people are “entitled” to get courtesy of the government/taxpayers, is a recipe for economic disaster. We can’t have everything that would be nice to have. Putting the money into research on ways to prevent premature deliveries would save a lot more babies who are wanted just as badly by their mothers, and who are being delivered so early that they’re dead at birth or within an hour or so — whose skin is too fragile for any attempts at treatment whatsoever (or has already mostly torn off during delivery, if a Caesarean wasn’t done). Why are all those babies worth less than the ones who are currently getting delivered just a few days short of any real chance of survival?
Spoken like a true bureacrat. FYI, private resources are unlimited. Private resources come from human effort, creativity, sweat and love. Private resources make the wealth you can't find to care for the desperately ill. And if the only "solution" you can front involves being "sophisticated" enough to enable a group of bureaucrats to deny healthcare to a premature baby because it doesn't fit a limited tax budget, then maybe - just maybe - people should be left alone to develop a private system to deal with such "statistical flyers."
Until then, may any bureacratic panel holding your life in their collective, nonresponsible 9-5 hands find that your value to the masses deserves prolonging.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.