Doctors support drugs to speed newborn deaths

Doctors support drugs to speed newborn deaths | NEWS.com.au

This is a very concerning report because it shows that doctors are forgetting their own Hippocratic oath, by even considering such a course of action. If this is the way that they are thinking it is a real worry if the situation for the child is not as bad as the doctor claims:

ONE in three medical specialists is prepared to break the law by using painkillers or sedatives to hasten the death of a baby born with a severe life-threatening disability.

An anonymous survey of neonatologists in Australia and New Zealand also found almost half were willing to use medication to speed up death in critically ill newborns for whom further treatment was considered hopeless.

Peter Barr, a senior physician at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, who conducted the study, said the desire to alleviate a baby's pain and suffering sometimes outweighed doctors' concerns about the law.

"This was a self-reporting questionnaire where neonatologists responded to hypothetical situations, so we don't know exactly what they do in practice, but we know what their preferences are," Dr Barr said. "They were presenting their views, knowing that they were not lawful." 

While neonatologists commonly withdraw or withhold treatment in newborns with a terminal disease or severe disability, it is illegal to use medication to hasten a person's death.

However, doctors reported that they would prefer to use painkillers or sedation to hasten death rather than withholding oxygen or nutrients.

"For example, if further medical treatment has been deemed therapeutically non-beneficial or overly burdensome, then neonatologists may consider it more compassionate and humane to purposefully hasten death unlawfully with analgesia-sedation than, for instance, to forgo gastric tube feeding, which may be lawful," the study found.

"Hence neonatologists seem to support the moral notion that it is sometimes 'better to kill than let die' - even though the former is unlawful and seem not to respect the 'sanctity of life'." Dr Barr also discovered there was a link between doctors' personal fear of death and their ethical beliefs.

"Neonatologists who said that they were prepared to hasten death when death was inevitable had a greater of fear of death than those who thought that it was unacceptable," Dr Barr said.

"Fear of the dying process and premature death may unconsciously motivate these neonatologists to do what they can to ease the baby's suffering and hasten their death, and that takes priority over the legal implications."

University of Queensland professor of medical ethics Malcolm Parker said doctors who chose to break the law were motivated by compassion.

"It's never easy for clinicians faced with that situation but I'm sure they feel compelled in very severe cases to do what they believe is the most humane thing," he said.

It is alleged that the doctors who chose to break the law by giving the babies sedatives are "motivated by compassion", but is this a false compassion. What is disturbing though, is that the withdrawal of a gastric feeding tube is considered lawful and the use of sedatives is considered illegal. Yet, the withdrawal of the gastric feeding can in fact cause a very cruel death, and this is still something that is euthanasia. The patient has not died naturally if starved and dehydrated to death. I can understand that these baby doctors would not want to see a baby face such an horrendous death, which would then probably motivate their actions. However, I am not sure that this is real compassion. It remains euthanasia.

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