“If it is a routine screen for childhood diseases, it most certainly is neglect.”
This is screening for a disease — there is only a chance that the condition even exists. Please explain how it is neglectful to not look for a disease when, as it will certainly be in the vast majority of cases, the disease doesn’t exist?
At what point does exposing the child to risks (hospitals and doctors’ offices are known hotbeds of infection) outweigh the possible mitigation of other risks (the slight chance of a genetic abnormality)? What if for every case identified one child died of an infection? What if for every case identified 10 children died of an infection?
Here in my city they are trying to notify thousands of people that they need an HIV test because an anesthesiologist reused syringes. This is the second such issue to arise here in less than one year. Exposing children to potential medical malpractice must be just as neglectful as failing to screen them for obscure diseases, no?
These are important arguments to raise. However, the parents are not raising these arguments: they are arguing that their child should lose out because his parents have poor reading comprehension.