Infanticide for handicapped infants: sometimes it's a metaphysical dispute.

Infanticide for handicapped infants: sometimes it's a metaphysical dispute.

Since 1973 the practice of infanticide for some severely handicapped newborns has been receiving more open discussion and defence in the literature on medical ethics. A recent and important argument for the permissibility of infanticide relies crucially on a particular concept of personhood that excludes the theological. This paper attempts to show that the dispute between the proponents of inf...

Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn

Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn contributes yet more timber to the blazing debate over decision making in the neonatal intensive care unit. Controversy still rages over Baby Doe, a boy born in April 1982, with Down's syndrome and a tracheo-esophageal fistula. His parents refused to allow intravenous feeding and corrective surgery. The baby died at six days of age, survived by such troub...

Infanticide for the handicapped newborn--a secular rejection.

Correspondence Infanticide for the handicapped newborn-a secular rejection SIR Thomas Long's article on Infanticide for the Handicapped Newborn seemed to assume that Ramsey's religious stance is the only valid opposition to Kuhse and Singer's utilitarianism. I do not think this is true; from a secular humanitarian point of view killing is also wrong. Kuhse and Singer's definition of a 'person' ...

Handicapped infants: medical ethics and the law.

The main purpose of this paper (1) is to draw attention to a gap between the principles of Common Law and the principles accepted by many leading medical practitioners on the ethics of allowing severely handicapped infants to die. The Common Law principles are shown in Court of Appeal judgements on two cases. The contrasting principles of many paediatricians were illustrated at the trial of Dr ...

Infanticide by males and its implications