Micro Preemies: Blessing or Burden?
Caryl Rosenthal
May 31, 2007
Priorities and necessities versus morality and religion is the dilemma faced today by doctors into the tiny, but frantic universe of the micropreemie newborn. Should we save these tiny souls just because we can?
Notwithstanding his championship of life for long term coma patient Terry Schaivo, the former governor of Texas, none other than George W., signed into law a provision which enables hospitals to determine when to terminate life support in those patients whose care had reached an end and who are insured through the state. The law permits the institution to take action, while the wishes of the family are rendered irrelevant.
On April 1, 2007, a tiny baby girl, weighing less 600 gms, (a pound and a feather)born crack addicted and arriving to a young teenage mother was taken by Child Protective Services the minute she was born. Too premature to subsist on her own, she was rushed from delivery to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in a hospital in San Antonio, TX. Though they had the authority to justify doing nothing, physicians opted to place tubes, wires and machines on every speck of that child's body on the guise of fighting for her life. M So, six weeks later, still a ward of the state, she has doubled her birth weight. That's a remarkable feat, percentage-wise. The little girl has proven herself to be a fighter, though she is far from out of the woods, her job now is just to incubate. That's the warm, fuzzy human side of the story.
From the perspective of the practical side of use of government funds, the pharmacy bill alone for this "miracle" exceeded $850,000 during this past six weeks. That doesn't begin to take into account the cost for the hospital, doctors, including the micro preemie specialists on duty round the clock. A medical bill to date of $1.6 million is an estimate of the charges. That's $1.6 million per pound. In a climate where only 10% of children categorized as being under the poverty line are insured through Medicaid in Texas, with the public demanding more and more tax cuts, and an obliging governor ever ready to comply, one has to wonder what is so distinctive about this child to warrant such attention.
Even with the use of every device known to modern medicine employed in her behalf, the odds of her escaping devastating physical and mental handicaps, the cost for which will inure to the taxpayers in the state of Texas in perpetuity is far more likely than not. Understand that the costs will not abate even if this child passes in adulthood, because the precedent as been set. A week ago, an even smaller girl made the controlled panic trip from delivery to NICU, and her bills promise to be even larger.
If we ask ourselves why physicians would choose to take this path, against all sanity for the child, with untold suffering her fate, to the taxpayers picking up the bills without anything to say about it while watching so many children going without, to the religiously pious, who believe life in any form and at any cost, to the physicians, whom one has to say must know better, how were these priorities set?
An infant weighing not enough to sustain life, is where intelligent design should come in to render to God the things that are His. This is one of those natural events that isn't meant to be. Clearly, God would have taken the child down a different path had not radical intervention been imposed on her and her quiet passing would have been God's will.
The conclusions that one might draw from this are horrific, because if she was kept alive as a lab rat, it would so shock the conscience as to be, for all time, immoral. If it was done out of some acquiescence to the anti partial birth abortion proponents, then the state made religious decisions using tax dollars, equally immoral.
It appears as though there are one or two people making these life and death decisions on scene when there should be guidance from a committee from the state and from within the public hospital as well. There ought to be public hearings and input into standards, which should be subjected to the democratic process. In other words, there outta be a law.
Since the state made the choice to interpose the responsibility for the care and keeping of these unfortunate children, who once set on this path, must be kept there, upon the rest of us it should be immoral to make the trip from delivery to the NICU. There is nothing to justify intervention under these circumstances. We need to commit to those we can help become productive contributors of society. Let's endow those who have the physical and mental capacity to make the most of the incredible miracles of our age and stop investing in lost causes because we can. It's not romantic, it's arbitrary, and it is cruel.
Notwithstanding his championship of life for long term coma patient Terry Schaivo, the former governor of Texas, none other than George W., signed into law a provision which enables hospitals to determine when to terminate life support in those patients whose care had reached an end and who are insured through the state. The law permits the institution to take action, while the wishes of the family are rendered irrelevant.
On April 1, 2007, a tiny baby girl, weighing less 600 gms, (a pound and a feather)born crack addicted and arriving to a young teenage mother was taken by Child Protective Services the minute she was born. Too premature to subsist on her own, she was rushed from delivery to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in a hospital in San Antonio, TX. Though they had the authority to justify doing nothing, physicians opted to place tubes, wires and machines on every speck of that child's body on the guise of fighting for her life. M So, six weeks later, still a ward of the state, she has doubled her birth weight. That's a remarkable feat, percentage-wise. The little girl has proven herself to be a fighter, though she is far from out of the woods, her job now is just to incubate. That's the warm, fuzzy human side of the story.
From the perspective of the practical side of use of government funds, the pharmacy bill alone for this "miracle" exceeded $850,000 during this past six weeks. That doesn't begin to take into account the cost for the hospital, doctors, including the micro preemie specialists on duty round the clock. A medical bill to date of $1.6 million is an estimate of the charges. That's $1.6 million per pound. In a climate where only 10% of children categorized as being under the poverty line are insured through Medicaid in Texas, with the public demanding more and more tax cuts, and an obliging governor ever ready to comply, one has to wonder what is so distinctive about this child to warrant such attention.
Even with the use of every device known to modern medicine employed in her behalf, the odds of her escaping devastating physical and mental handicaps, the cost for which will inure to the taxpayers in the state of Texas in perpetuity is far more likely than not. Understand that the costs will not abate even if this child passes in adulthood, because the precedent as been set. A week ago, an even smaller girl made the controlled panic trip from delivery to NICU, and her bills promise to be even larger.
If we ask ourselves why physicians would choose to take this path, against all sanity for the child, with untold suffering her fate, to the taxpayers picking up the bills without anything to say about it while watching so many children going without, to the religiously pious, who believe life in any form and at any cost, to the physicians, whom one has to say must know better, how were these priorities set?
An infant weighing not enough to sustain life, is where intelligent design should come in to render to God the things that are His. This is one of those natural events that isn't meant to be. Clearly, God would have taken the child down a different path had not radical intervention been imposed on her and her quiet passing would have been God's will.
The conclusions that one might draw from this are horrific, because if she was kept alive as a lab rat, it would so shock the conscience as to be, for all time, immoral. If it was done out of some acquiescence to the anti partial birth abortion proponents, then the state made religious decisions using tax dollars, equally immoral.
It appears as though there are one or two people making these life and death decisions on scene when there should be guidance from a committee from the state and from within the public hospital as well. There ought to be public hearings and input into standards, which should be subjected to the democratic process. In other words, there outta be a law.
Since the state made the choice to interpose the responsibility for the care and keeping of these unfortunate children, who once set on this path, must be kept there, upon the rest of us it should be immoral to make the trip from delivery to the NICU. There is nothing to justify intervention under these circumstances. We need to commit to those we can help become productive contributors of society. Let's endow those who have the physical and mental capacity to make the most of the incredible miracles of our age and stop investing in lost causes because we can. It's not romantic, it's arbitrary, and it is cruel.
Print
Email
