When Doctors Want to Kill Handicapped Newborns
A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH
When Doctors Want to Kill Handicapped Newborns
Interview With Neonatologist Carlo Bellieni
SIENA, Italy, 14 NOV. 2006 (ZENIT)
According to British press reports the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecology has asked that doctors be allowed to let seriously disabled newborns die.
The Royal College sent its request to the Nuffield Bioethics Council, the body in charge of examining the ethical issues involved in the new developments of biology and medicine. The latter, an influential private commission, is about to publish a report on critical decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine.
Opposition to the Royal College request has been expressed in the United Kingdom by the British Council of Disabled People.
To better understand the issue and its implications of a bioethical nature, ZENIT interviewed neonatologist Carlo Bellieni, director of the Neonatal Intensive Therapy Department of the Le Scotte University Polyclinic of Siena.
Q: What do you think of the request of the United Kingdom's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists?
Bellieni: The request to do away with newborns with serious disabilities, does not leave any pediatrician insensitive, namely, those who tomorrow will be called to carry out the "eliminations."
But it is not new: Already in 2002 Michael Gross wrote in Bioethics that there is "a general endorsement of neonaticide subject to a parent's assessment of the newborn's interest broadly defined to consider physical harm as well as social, psychological and or financial harm to related third parties."
And it is always by the "interest of third parties" that one begins to understand what might be hidden behind a pietistic intention "to put an end to the child's sufferings."
Q: What are the most disturbing aspects of the British proposal?
Bellieni: Three things disturb pediatricians.
One, having to become executioners of a death sentence. We are not doctors for this, especially at a time when the death sentence is stigmatized by an increasing number of states.
Two, having to consider the patients themselves as non-persons. There are authors who say that newborns are not persons because they still do not have self-awareness, precisely a requirement for this sensation — affirmations amply denied by science and experience.
Three, having to consider the handicapped not as a life to help and respect but, with a phobic attitude, as a second-tier life.
Q: Some British doctors have said that no one must be scandalized because a late abortion is similar to active euthanasia. What is your opinion in this respect?
Bellieni: I was not surprised by this news. I understand the horror but I do not understand the astonishment.
Whoever has studied anatomy and biology, whoever is an expert in human physiology, knows very well that there is no substantial difference between the fetus and the newborn, other than small modifications in the blood circle.
Therefore, one cannot understand why it's horrible to kill a newborn but not to kill a fetus. Unless one believes that the filling of the lungs with air has a "magic" effect, capable of transforming the DNA or the individual's conscience!
The photo of the small dead fetus within the murdered mother, published a few months ago by an Italian newspaper, made an impression not because a corpse could be seen — sadly we have also seen recently on TV and in newspapers many dead children in war and no one has protested — but because the reality was shown: that a fetus is nothing other than a child that has yet to enjoy the exterior air.
And, every mother knows that this is true, as any one knows whose job it is to look after the very small fetuses that have come forth prematurely from the maternal womb, called "premature children." Surgeons who operate on fetuses that are still in the womb, also know this.
I repeat: The tragedy is that it surprises us, whereas a cultural endeavor must be initiated, made up of research and serious writing, and not only of "reactions" to the latest "transgression," to the latest horror.
The real bioethical effort of today is not to affirm a vague feeling of mercy toward one's neighbor — television programs are also full of tears — but to look for the evidence, the reality; to affirm that an embryo is an embryo and not just a cell, that a fetus of a few hundred grams feels pain, that the DNA shows that every one's life begins at conception.
In short, it is like demonstrating that a flower is a flower and not a vase! ZE06111421
This article has been selected from the ZENIT Daily Dispatch
© Innovative Media, Inc.
ZENIT International News Agency
Via della Stazione di Ottavia, 95
00165 Rome, Italy
www.zenit.org
To subscribe http://www.zenit.org/english/subscribe.html
or email: english-request@zenit.org with SUBSCRIBE in the "subject" field
