| |
|
BBC news story.
I knew, from a previous report on the BBC disability website, that this "treatment" had been suggested and "approved" by "ethicists", but not that it had actually been carried out...
My disgust and horror at this know no bounds, compounded by the fact that there are several places on the web where the majority of people seem to see nothing wrong with this course of action, and even regard it as "beneficial" (eg here). I've commented a bit (under the name shiva_x) here.
It's worth pointing out that labels like "mental age of 3 months" and "will never be able to communicate her own wishes sufficiently to consent to treatment" (paraphrase) are, pretty much, meaningless: people who have been presumed to have no awareness or ability to communicate whatsoever, often based on extremely biased forms of testing or simply on assumptions (of the "if ze can't do X then ze couldn't possibly be able to do Y" type) with no real logical foundation whatsoever, have been facilitated by people who bothered to put in the time and effort to communicate extremely clearly and effectively - Amanda Baggs (who has a (very partial, as it refers only to people with autism, and not the several other impairments this also applies to) list on her blog of many others) and Cal Montgomery are two such who I count among the best, most insightful and intelligent writers about disability anywhere...
I wonder how many of the same people who approve of this would disapprove of practices like "female circumcision" (which, incidentally, is often done consensually), because that's done by those dodgy, foreign, different coloured, poor people, whereas this is being done by a relatively rich family and the medical authorities (%who of course always act in people's best interests...&)?
Also worth noting is that the same sort of positive comments as those written about these parents are also used about parents who murder their children, for no other reason than that those children are disabled...
There seems to be a surprising silence from feminists on this... |
|
|
