Senior doctors of Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology are goading health professionals to give euthanasia to seriously disabled new born babies.
The proposal was kept due to the advancement in medical technology, which enables the disabled baby to survive.
The college supported ‘active euthanasia’ considering the hardships and financial pressure on families to bring up such kids.
Euthanasia, a practice of ending a person’s life who is perceived as living an intolerable and miserable life, by giving a drug overdose or lethal injections, is still a controversial issue because of the conflicting religious and humanistic views.
Euthanasia, being illegal in Britain, is given full support by these doctors and the proposal is contained in the college's submission to an inquiry into ethical issues raised by the policy of prolonging life in newborn babies.
"A very disabled child can mean a disabled family," the submission says.
"If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.
"We would like the working party to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best interests test and active euthanasia as they are ways of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns."
The college says that it is not calling for active euthanasia to be introduced, but for the society to come forward and debate on the advantages and disadvantages of mercy killing.
Although geneticists, medical ethicists and some mothers of severely disabled children are supporting the proposal, but a prominent children's doctor described it as "social engineering".
John Wyatt, consultant neonatologist at University College London, said: "Intentional killing is not part of medical care. The majority of doctors and health care professionals believe that once you introduce the possibility of intentional killing into medical practice you change the fundamental nature of medicine."
In some countries, euthanasia has been legalized. In Belgium, the parliament legalized euthanasia in late September 2002. Although euthanasia was legalized in Australia’s Northern Territory, but soon it was voided.
In Netherlands, mercy killing was permitted on April1, 2002, for a range of incurable conditions. In 1999, the state of Texas passed the Texas Futile Care Law. Under the law, in some situations, Texas hospitals and physicians have the right to withdraw life support on a patient whom they declare terminally ill.
Dr Pieter Sauer, co-author of the Dutch national guidelines on euthanasia of newborns, informed that the British doctors were performing mercy killing and the act should now be open.
Joy Delhanty, professor of human genetics at University College London, backed the proposal and said "it is morally wrong to strive to keep alive babies that are then going to suffer many months or years of ill health".
The British Council of Disabled People had dissimilar views, arguing that if euthanasia were introduced for certain conditions it would tell people with those conditions "they were worth less than other members of society".
If we start to kill
If we start to kill everything that we think can't be corrected, how are we going to learn how to correct them? The only reason why medicine evolves is because it tries to BETTER the lives of humans, not CANCEL them.