Posted on 07/10/2011 11:42:03 AM PDT by wagglebee
A study of babies in intensive care suggests that doctors are getting better at recognizing situations where infants are sure to die or have severe brain damage -- and are often holding back on life support when that's the case.
The findings "reflect increasing awareness by the medical community of the need to limit interventions of minimal or very questionable benefit, and particularly if those interventions potentially include significant pain or suffering to the patient," said Dr. Renee Boss, a neonatologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who wasn't part of the new research.
Over the past 30 years, Boss said, doctors have gotten better at keeping very premature babies and babies with severe birth defects alive.
But more recently, those survival rates have flattened out -- possibly because "the treatments that we have now simply have reached their maximum potential for increasing survival," Boss told Reuters Health, forcing doctors and families to address cases where survival, or survival with a positive outlook, doesn't seem likely.
About six of every 1,000 infants die in the U.S. before their first birthday -- with more than half of those deaths coming in the first 28 days.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The question is one of whether we are extending life or merely prolonging the dying process. Every case is different and needs to be examined on its own merits.
On one extreme you’ve got a severely brain damaged child who might, using the latest technology, be kept alive for years or even decades in great pain, and obviously at great expense, diverting resources from others who might actually be helped by them. What is the point of prolonging such a “life,” other than perhaps to let others feel they are morally superior for doing so?
On the other extreme we would start ending “lives unworthy of life,” people with relatively minor disabilities, deciding that their lives just aren’t worth living and so we should take action to end them. With such a policy the severity of the disability needed to provoke such action will continue to go down.
Slippery slopes obviously exist on both sides of this issue. There is no single easy answer. Which is why I contend each case needs to be decided on its own merits, not on glib soundbite answers.
We have never had, and never will have, the financial resources to provide the utmost in medical care to every person who needs it. As medical technology continues to develop, the gap between our technological capability and our financial ability to pay for it only becomes greater.
If we are going to provide the ultimate in medical care to every person, how are we going to pay for it? The only two options are increased medical insurance premiums or taxes. Which do you prefer?
Good lord no! My works at a Catholic hospital and we’ve discussed this at length. I am not demising your experience at all. Certainly different places, different experiences.
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