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Notes -
They is currently an 8 month old baby in the UK with a mitochondrial disease which is almost definitely terminal. The babies name is Indi: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italy-grants-citizenship-terminally-ill-british-baby-after-104666139
A UK judge has ordered that that the baby be killed. Her parents have protested this, saying that they don’t think the government should kill their baby.
The Catholics have said: give us the baby and we will put the baby in our pediatric Vatican hospital, and the Italian government has said they would cover the medical bills. The Italian government has also said that the family can have Italian citizenship.
The UK has said no, you can’t leave, you need to keep the baby here so we can kill it.
I know this sounds hyperbolic, but…I don’t think it is. Read the article.
Absolutely deranged behavior.I understand that in socialized medicine countries there is some calculation about how much life support will cost, and famously in Canada sometimes this means the government just tries to get you to kill yourself, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The Catholics are being pretty Catholic about this and just trying to save the baby. The UK government won’t let them and insists that they should just kill her.
Insanity.Now wait a minute, the order is to stop actively keeping the baby alive, which seems pretty different from killing the baby, even if the end result is the same.
The court point of view is that they're ordering the parents to stop torturing their child, and that they can't condone the parents moving the baby to a different country that is willing to torture it. Obviously there's clear disagreement over whether the medical care is comparable to torture.
I don't think the court is obviously right here, but I think you're being unreasonable in claiming they're obviously wrong.
When there are available other ways to provide resources and methods to keep the baby alive, and the court and hospital refuse and actively fight against it, that is exactly the same as killing the baby.
It would be more honest if the court and hospital directly argued in your manner that the parents are torturing the baby in keeping the baby alive. The have chosen instead to argue that more treatment is not in the baby's best interest, and just leave conclusions obvious but nebulous.
I don't agree with the parents here, but I think it would be monstrous and unjust to prosecute the parents for torturing their baby. Even if you think it's dishonest to do otherwise.
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If the issue is pain, that's easy to fix with enough painkillers and sedatives. Of course, that probably has terrible side effects on babies, but the alternative is death. Even if the medical care is literal torture there are ways to make it humane.
Seems pretty clear the underlying motivation to end care really is about money, and forbidding the family from leaving is more about control and optics than about the wellbeing of the child.
Do you believe that every human, no matter how unviable, has to be kept alive at any cost?
If someone wants to try to do that and use their own legitimately acquired ressources to do it, trying to stop them seems monstrous.
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No, but I think if the parents are willing to pay the price, and it's possible to do so without causing too much suffering (e.g. by using tons of painkillers), then it's usually immoral to step in and stop them.
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Not the person you replied to, but here's my opinion - no, every human does not have to be kept alive, and certainly not at public expense. However, if the parents are willing to pay out of their pocket for a chance at keeping their baby alive, I don't think anyone else should have a say in it. Probably a more moral use of their money than buying a sports car or having a destination wedding.
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