Comments:Dying Canadian infant moved to U.S. hospital for medical treatment

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What is MailOnLine? And what is Cnews? Oh, after checking the link I see it's affiliated with Quebecor. Wasn't it worthy enough of a story to put in one of their monopolised newspapers? Also, this doesn't appear to be very balanced. Why are we quoting a priest who is defending the parents, and why don't we have more information about the panel's conclusion? Why are we insinuating that Canada doesn't care about dying babies? What exactly is the child's illness, and what's the percentage chance he/she will survive? Is it just a matter of delaying the inevitable? How much money would Canada be saving by not treating a terminally ill child with this diagnosis?

Valid arguments. Someone should look into this.

Allow me to address some of your points. Relating to the illness, it is recognised simply as an "unknown neurological disorder". This suggests that the cause of the condition hasn't been identified. We're quoting a Priest defending the child's parents because that particular Priest, Father Frank Pavone, is the National Director of one of the largest Individual Rights Organisations in the US, Priests for Life, and he supports the Parent's decision to move the child to the USA.

There is, as far as I can see, no insinuation that Canada doesn't care about dying babies. The content reads to me that the Canadian hospital concerned, and the panel of experts who reviewed the case, along with the Canadian Superior Court, have concluded that Baby Joseph stands little or no hope of recovery from the condition. In such cases it is sometimes common for medical authorities to conclude that the cost of life support to the board and persistive care would be expensive, although in this case there is no information to suggest how much the Hospital or the Authorities would save by removing life support.

At this age, however, should the child continue to live on, life support would be an inordinately expensive thing to continue with, even if the child were to grow to being at least a toddler.

As you can see from the article, their daughter Zina died from a similar condition within 6 months of her Tracheotomy, so this would suggest that there is the issue of "delaying the inevitable" as you say.

In short, I don't believe there is an issue with the portrayal of the article, the hospital or anyone else in the work - however, as always, you are welcomed to see a second opinion from other editors.

There is an insinuation from the headline that the child had to be transferred to the U.S. in order to receive medical treatment. The reality was that the child was already receiving more than adequate, dare I say exemplary, medical treatment in Canada prior to this move. The headline could easily have been written "Hysterical parents engineer medical abuse on their brain-dead child". The situation is simple. It is the struggle of knowledge and sense vs. selfishness and emotion. What if the parents had demanded that the child's genitals be altered so that he looked more like a girl, because the parents wanted a replacement for the daughter they lost previously. Would that have been acceptable? No. Because one of the tenets of good medicine is not to perform treatments which can do no good. Everyone acknowledges that this child will be dead soon. Performing a tracheotomy on this child is unnecessary and constitutes medical abuse.

Actually, the primary law of medicine is "First, do no harm." And in this case, giving the child a tracheotomy would not do harm, directly the opposite in fact. He's been in hospital for a considerable amount of his short life, and the operation would allow him to go home, where he could be supported on a mobile ventilator. In this and any instance, it is always preferable for a patient of any age with a terminal illness to pass away in their home environment, as opposed to a hospital of any sort. I should mention that I do have some bias in the subject, in that I am Catholic and a strong pro-life/pro-rights supporter. This is why I felt it better as I said in my other post, that you seek advice from other editors. I will make no further comment on this subject, with the declaration above.

I think it is fine to be pro-life and pro-rights. It's too bad pro-rights doesn't include supporting women's reproductive rights. It's too bad pro-life does not include opposing the death penalty (70% of Americans favor the death penalty, and I assume a goodly proportion of those folks are Catholic).

The Terri Schiavo case, when examined with the clarity of perfect hindsight, demonstrates clearly that those with a religious axe to grind are all too willing to interfere with sound medical judgment, and in the process deny the designated next-of-kin the RIGHT to decide, along with the doctors, an appropriate course of treatment for those who are vegetative with no hope of recovery. In the case of Schiavo, the parents were claiming responsiveness right before her death, yet autopsy showed dramatic and devastating brain degeneration which would have made such a thing completely impossible. Yet, the impassioned pleas of "right to lifers" across America prolonged this poor man's agony in a peculiarly selfish and self-aggrandizing way.

In this case, the medical board has concluded that further care is a waste of time and resources. I don't think doctors, especially a whole panel of doctors, would so conclude unless they were very certain of their medical facts. The poor parents deserve our sympathy, but I for one cannot condone nor approve of the continuing abuse in the name of "right to life".

This just goes to show why our health system should not be made to look like Canada! USA FTW!

Case in point. -SweetNightmares (talk) 15:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, you just go on believing that. <rolls eyes> I think most people here would rather ration healthcare from a person who cannot be saved or helped in any way, rather than rationing from citizens who could be helped but can't afford to pay for it. Enjoy your nation's ongoing descent to third world status.