[BreakABone]

wow that is a tough question.. We actually have a class in my school where we discuss this type of stuff.. Biomedical Ethnics

Anyhow onto the subject on hand.

As a doctor, you are responsible for life and death, but at the same time you are only human which means you have a sense of mortality. The simple fact is not only are you responsible for life and death but you are also responsible for doing what you think is ethnically correct. You can only give someone so much care, but what is it worth if their life was nothing more than suffering.

This case would be very hard to call. On one hand, you have the choice to preserve someone's life. It won't be the grandest of lifes and you know it will be an extreme burden on the parents. I mean the parents (hopefully) will love it the same as if it was a normal kid, and will probably have some of the same problems.

Then, you have the fact that if you do preserve this life. It will be full of ridicule. Do you want to be responsible for creating a mental unstable child. I mean this is a cruel, cruel world we live in. No matter what, there will always be someone to make fun of those less fortunate then them (I myself could be accused of this on occassions). As a doctor, you may think it right to preserve the life, but as a human being with a sense of deceny would you really want to be the one who allows someone to go through life like this? There is also the point that the person will be no more than a shell of a real human. I mean it won't be able to do much, won't be able to teach much, urinate or even have much mobility skills. Is it really important to allow such a thing to happen.

On the flip side of that all, you can kill the baby and much like allowing it to live there are some factors that are both good and bad. The simple fact is if you kill it when it's an infant you will somewhat better it's life. For it could have lived for as very little as it could, life to the best of it's abilities and not seem to be that different.When you are a kid, not much is expected of you. Yet this kid with all his abnormalties would be consider almost normal in behavior at his age. You also eliminate that burning desire to live life with a little bit of hope. There isn't wrong with living life with hope. We all do it in some way or another, but the simple fact is it begins to tear you apart when you know that you hope, your goal, your desire is further and further then you expected.

Then, we have the ethnic reasons. Is this baby beyond help? No there is a way to allow the child to live, it won't have a normal life but it will live. So a doctor should do his best to preserve the life if they are able to even if the results in the long run aren't too beneficial. You also have the parents. You could say if they had a child and it was killed that it "was better to love and lost then to never have loved before." But like it's been said time and time again, "Parents shouldn't have to bury their kids. Kids should bury their parents." I know a couple of families who have had infants die a little after birth and no matter what happens in their life the image, the memory of the child is never gone. No parents whether rich or poor, good or evil, mean or nice or anything else should go through this. And how should the doctor feel.. Going through life knowing that he didn't give it his all... That he could have saved the child.

Like you said this would be a tough decision, but I would have to say I would make the kid live. I know it is a somewhat cruel thing to do, but it is better for everyone around him then just killing him without giving him a chance to live.