Neonatal Ethics Case Study

Introduction

Infants are unable to make decisions about their healthcare, so therefore they don’t get to choose whether they get a chance at life or not. This highly debatable and important topic, neonatal ethics, includes withdrawing or withholding treatment for newborns. When it comes to making these decisions there is some criteria that must be taken into consideration. This includes looking at the treatment choices and deciding whether they will benefit or harm the baby, the short-term and long-term prognosis and the overall chance of surviving treatment and then future quality of life (Pfeiffer 2008). In most cases if there is a good chance of survival, the parents and physicians will agree on treating, but in some cases the parents choose

Back then Esophageal Atresia was treatable and had a wonderful prognosis. Down Syndrome is a condition that anybody can live with and have a quality life filled with happiness. Baby Doe’s parents decided not to treat the condition. This resulted in them going before the hospital judge, who ruled in favor of their decision. The ruling was appealed and went to the Indiana Supreme Court and they also ruled in favor of the parents. Unfortunately it never made it to the US Supreme Court because Baby Doe died April 15th of complications from starvations and dehydration (Resnik 2014). This specific case was so controversial that it resulted in the Baby Doe Rules, which set treatment requirements for newborns and gave specific criteria that were exceptions. The exceptions are if the baby is comatose and not going to wake up, if the treatment will only prolong dying, if it won’t effectively correct all the life-threatening conditions, if it will be more futile than beneficial and if the treatment is inhumane (Michler 2013). Based on these criteria, in Baby Doe’s situation, the treatment would have corrected the condition and Baby Doe could have ended up living a long and happy life. After my research on Baby Doe I found a few smaller cases that have different situations and outcomes, but they could have gone differently if things were done

The ethical arguments consist of basically choosing whether to treat the patient or not. Some of the questions are “should treatment be started at all?”, “should life-sustaining treatment be discontinued once started?” and “Is palliative care the best option?”. These are decisions made based on each individualized case because they are all different. The principles that relate to these cases are Autonomy, Nonmaleficence, Beneficence and Justice. Autonomy is giving the patient rights to make their own decisions for themselves, but because these patient’s are too young to do that, their parents make the decisions for them. Nonmaleficence means to do no harm. This particular principle is difficult because by doing no harm the doctor’s should be treating them in order not to let them die, but also not treating them can result in their death. This is where beneficence comes in because it should be creating the maximum benefit for the patient and doing the least harm possible at the same time (Beauchamp 2007) Justice should be taken into consideration because every patient should be treated equally even in different situations (Beauchamp 2007). Unless there is an exception for their condition, they should be getting all treatment possible. The theory that applies most here is Utilitarianism. I’ve mentioned multiple times that the treatment option should be the most beneficial to the