Related Research Articles
Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
Paralysis is a loss of motor function in one or more muscles. Paralysis can also be accompanied by a loss of feeling in the affected area if there is sensory damage. In the United States, roughly 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed with some form of permanent or transient paralysis. The word "paralysis" derives from the Greek παράλυσις, meaning "disabling of the nerves" from παρά (para) meaning "beside, by" and λύσις (lysis) meaning "making loose". A paralysis accompanied by involuntary tremors is usually called "palsy".
Spina bifida is a birth defect in which there is incomplete closing of the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord during early development in pregnancy. There are three main types: spina bifida occulta, meningocele and myelomeningocele. Meningocele and myelomeningocele may be grouped as spina bifida cystica. The most common location is the lower back, but in rare cases it may be in the middle back or neck.
Utilitarian bioethics refers to the branch of bioethics that incorporates principles of utilitarianism to directing practices and resources where they will have the most usefulness and highest likelihood to produce happiness, in regards to medicine, health, and medical or biological research.
The right to die is a concept based on the opinion that human beings are entitled to end their life or undergo voluntary euthanasia. Possession of this right is often understood that a person with a terminal illness, incurable pain, or without the will to continue living, should be allowed to end their own life, use assisted suicide, or to decline life-prolonging treatment. The question of who, if anyone, may be empowered to make this decision is often subject of debate.
Neonatology is a subspecialty of pediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn. It is a hospital-based specialty, and is usually practised in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The principal patients of neonatologists are newborn infants who are ill or require special medical care due to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, congenital malformations, sepsis, pulmonary hypoplasia or birth asphyxia.
Voluntary euthanasia (VE) is the ending of a person's life at their request in order to relieve them of suffering. Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in recent years.
The Groningen Protocol is a medical protocol created in September 2004 by Eduard Verhagen, the medical director of the department of pediatrics at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in Groningen, the Netherlands. It contains directives with criteria under which physicians can perform "active ending of life on infants" without fear of legal prosecution.
Neural tube defects (NTDs) are a group of birth defects in which an opening in the spine or cranium remains from early in human development. In the third week of pregnancy called gastrulation, specialized cells on the dorsal side of the embryo begin to change shape and form the neural tube. When the neural tube does not close completely, an NTD develops.
Fetal surgery also known as antenatal surgery, prenatal surgery, is a growing branch of maternal-fetal medicine that covers any of a broad range of surgical techniques that are used to treat congenital abnormalities in fetuses who are still in the pregnant uterus. There are three main types: open fetal surgery, which involves completely opening the uterus to operate on the fetus; minimally invasive fetoscopic surgery, which uses small incisions and is guided by fetoscopy and sonography; and percutaneous fetal therapy, which involves placing a catheter under continuous ultrasound guidance.
John Lorber (1915–1996) was a professor of paediatrics at the University of Sheffield from 1979 until his retirement in 1981. He worked at the Children's Hospital of Sheffield, where he specialized in work on spina bifida. He also wrote on the subject of medical ethics regarding the use of intensive medical intervention for severely handicapped infants.
Euthanasia in the Netherlands is regulated by the "Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act" which was passed in 2001 and took effect in 2002. It states that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care. These criteria concern the patient's request, the patient's suffering, the information provided to the patient, the absence of reasonable alternatives, consultation of another physician and the applied method of ending life. To demonstrate their compliance, the Act requires physicians to report euthanasia to a review committee.
Non-voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia conducted when the explicit consent of the individual concerned is unavailable, such as when the person is in a persistent vegetative state, or in the case of young children. It contrasts with involuntary euthanasia, when euthanasia is performed against the will of the patient.
The legality of euthanasia varies depending on the country. Efforts to change government policies on euthanasia of humans in the 20th and 21st centuries have met limited success in Western countries. Human euthanasia policies have also been developed by a variety of NGOs, most notably medical associations and advocacy organizations. As of 2022, euthanasia is legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and all six states of Australia. Euthanasia was briefly legal in the Northern Territory between 1996 and 1997, but was overturned by a federal law. In 2021, a Peruvian court allowed euthanasia for a single person, Ana Estrada.
The MOMS Trial was a clinical trial that studied treatment of a birth defect called myelomeningocele, which is the most severe form of spina bifida. The study looked at prenatal and postnatal surgery to repair this defect. The first major phase concluded that prenatal surgery had strong, long-term benefits and some risks.
Child euthanasia is a form of euthanasia that is applied to children who are gravely ill or have significant birth defects. In 2005, the Netherlands became the first country to decriminalize euthanasia for infants with hopeless prognosis and intractable pain. Nine years later, Belgium amended its 2002 Euthanasia Act to extend the rights of euthanasia to minors. Like euthanasia, there is world-wide public controversy and ethical debate over the moral, philosophical and religious issues of child euthanasia.
Euthanasia in Canada in its legal voluntary form is called medical assistance in dying (MAID) and it first became legal along with assisted suicide in June 2016 to end the suffering of terminally ill adults. In March 2021, the law was further amended by Bill C-7 which permits assisted euthanasia in additional situations, including for certain patients whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable, subject to additional safeguards. In 2021, more than 10,000 people died by euthanasia in Canada.
Karin Marie Muraszko is Julian T. Hoff Professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Michigan. She is the first woman to head a neurosurgery department at any medical school in the US. She specializes in brain and spinal cord abnormalities. She has a spinal cord abnormality, spina bifida.
Critics of euthanasia sometimes claim that legalizing any form of the practice will lead to a slippery slope effect, resulting eventually in non-voluntary or even involuntary euthanasia. The slippery slope argument has been present in the euthanasia debate since at least the 1930s.
Baby M was the pseudonym of an Australian girl named Allison who was born with severe birth defects, whose treatment and eventual death caused significant controversy and international discussion about the medical ethics of disabled newborns. Right to Life activists accused her parents and the hospital of murdering the infant, leading to a lengthy legal inquest.
References
- ↑ prof. dr. A.A.E. Verhagen at the University of Groningen
- ↑ de Jong TH (2008). "Deliberate termination of life of newborns with spina bifida, a critical reappraisal". Childs Nerv Syst. 24 (1): 13–28. doi:10.1007/s00381-007-0478-3. PMC 2092440 . PMID 17929034.
- ↑ Kodish, Erick (2008). "Paediatric ethics: a repudiation of the Groningen protocol". The Lancet. 371 (9616): 892–893. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60402-X. PMID 18348350. S2CID 28268753.
- Verhagen E, Sauer PJ (2005). "The Groningen protocol--euthanasia in severely ill newborns". N Engl J Med. 352 (10): 959–62. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp058026 . PMID 15758003.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
