Posted by
John C. Walker on Saturday, January 06, 2007 6:47:50 AM
Recently the news has carried headlines about Ashley X, a profoundly mentally disabled child that, with hopes of easing home care and reducing potential suffering, had her growth medically stunted and her breasts buds and uterus removed by ethically corrupt doctors under the encouragement of her parents.
I do walk in the same shoes as these parents as I not only have a daughter in a virtually identical condition (mine is worst) who actually will be more difficult than Ashley to care for at home, I have a second child with special needs to care for as well.
However, objective morality requires that one cannot simply use circumstances to justify an immoral act. The Church teaches that it is an "error judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances which supply their context." (CCC, 1756)
These medical interventions are addressed by the Church and "[e]xcept when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law." (CCC, 2297). "Therapeutic" is "of or pertaining to the treating or curing of disease; curative." (Dictionary.com, 2007).
First, these medical interventions are not therapeutic in that they DO NOT treat her disease or the symptoms of the disease. The treatments have nothing to do with her brain disorder. Rather, these medical interventions are an attempt to alleviate a social defect in our inability to adequately support this family in their home care of this child (which is the goal specified in the cited Pediatrics and Adolescence Medicine Journal). Her brain dysfunction is a consequence of world broken by original sin and should be treated, but her normal growth and normal size is part of God's masterful design of the human body. The medical profession once had a motto of "first do no harm," yet, in this case, these doctors removed her breast buds and uterus to eliminate the significant cancer risk they themselves introduced as a consequence not of her disease, but of their blitzkrieg of estrogen hormones to stunt her growth.
Second, the parents admit in their own blog that their reasoning is "intuitive" and that "we do not know of a study to reference that provides us with an objective and quantitative understanding of these benefits." (Ashley Treatment, 2007). Even the abstract of the one medical journal cited only hypothesizes a benefit ("home care"), but establishes no quantitative framework to provide a statistical justification for such a medical intervention. (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, 2007). At what point did America become a place where radical medical experimentation could occur on the profoundly disabled without first proving the hypothesis scientifically?
Third, while I'm not a theologian, I would argue that these acts demean the dignity of the human body and commit the gnostic heresy that implies we are spiritual creatures merely trapped in our physical bodies. The doctors did, in fact, euthenize her breasts and her uterus. While 70% of Americans claim to be Christian, they often forget that we believe in a physical resurrection. Humans are both physical and spiritual creatures, incomplete without the other, and to deliberately mutilate the physical is to rob one of the inherit dignity as a complete human person. This intrinsic dignity of the human body is part of the reason the Church has always held that mutilations (particularly of the innocent) are immoral (mentioned above).
John C. Walker
Software Architect, Charlotte, NC
References
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United States Catholic Conference, Inc. (1994). English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.
Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. (2007). therapeutic. Retrieved January 6, 2007 from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=therapeutic.
Anonymous. (January 3, 2007). The Ashley Treatment. Retrieved January 6, 2007 from http://ashleytreatment.spaces.live.com.
Gunther, Daniel F. and Diekema, Douglas S. (2006). Attenuating Growth in Children With Profound Developmental Disability. Retrieved January 6, 2007 from http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/160/10/1013.