Unreal article on something you probably won't believe parents would do

[Pamster]

I am speechless:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15517226/

Utterly speechless by this unreal inhumane 'practice'...When they said developmental disability I think they are saying autism without comingo ut and saying so. What do you all think of this unreal action by the parents and their daughter's doctors?

[Braindrain]

These "parents" (and I use that term loosely!) are only thinking about
themselves-what are "they" going to do? The real question to ask
is: what's going to happen to this girl when her parents are too old
to "take care" of her? What happens then? She spends the rest
of her life in a group home because her parents never gave her
the chance to be independent?! That just makes me sick!

[Pamster]

I am just as angry and appalled at their utter selfishness and stupidity as you are. How can they give a 6 year old girl a hysterectomy on top of radical hormon 'therapy' like this just to keep her in a childlike state perpetually? Makes me want to give these people an earful about parental responsibility.

[DoIhaveto?]

The parents sound like they could be control freaks and only care about their convenience. Sounds like the feel the girl incapable of making any choices in life. They are making her not a person, but a pet. I feel sorry for her and the life she's going to be forced to live.

The article makes it sound as if the doctors are only in it for fame and the sake of debate.

[Pamster]

I agree, the doctors stand to gain everything from the media attention this is sure to get them. I definitely think this is unethical and the doctors shouldn't be allowed to do this to any other innocent children and they should reverse what they can of what they did to this girl. It should be criminal to do this to a child.

[Lara]

Oh my. This makes me want to cry.
This sort of thing is outrageous.
Here's the abstract below.

available Abstract
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006;160:1013-1017.

Vol. 160 No. 10, October 2006
Attenuating Growth in Children With Profound Developmental Disability

A New Approach to an Old Dilemma

Daniel F. Gunther, MD, MA; Douglas S. Diekema, MD, MPH

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006;160:1013-1017.

Caring for children with profound developmental disabilities can be difficult and demanding. For nonambulatory children with severe, combined neurologic and cognitive impairment, all the necessities of life must be provided by caregivers, usually parents, and these tasks become more difficult as the child grows to adolescence and adulthood. Many parents would like to continue caring for their child with special needs at home but find it difficult to do so as the child increases in size. If growth could be permanently arrested while the child was still small, both child and parent would likely benefit because this would facilitate the option of continued care in the home. Treatment of the child with high-dose estrogen, initiated at an early age, could provide this option. High-dose estrogen both inhibits growth and rapidly advances maturation of the epiphyseal growth plates, bringing about permanent attenuation in size after a relatively short period of treatment. We present a case report and discuss the medical and ethical considerations of such an intervention strategy. We suggest that after proper screening and informed consent, growth-attenuation therapy should be a therapeutic option available to these children should their parents request it.

[milivica]

Believe it or not, I don't disagree (or agree)...it would depend on the situation.

For a kid like Vince, I would say no way. For a kid like my sister, it might not have been a bad idea. I don't know where she is now, I assume in some asylum - at about 14 she started changing, by 19 I tried to let her live with me, but I was only 23 myself. You could just be sitting at dinner, and WHAM she'd come at you with a HUGE knife cause 'the green lady in the wall told me to'. She was often crying cause everywhere she looked she was stepping on dead bloody mutilated bodies, some of them would grab her...I found that out when I asked her why she was always so b!tchy. She's ask questions like "how come when I went to California last night Uncle Gunner flipped it (california) upside down". The bigger she got, the harder it got, the scarier it got. She'd have phases where she was dead set on getting pregnant...her mom (we have different mom's) tried to get her tubes tied, some nurse said something as she was on her way to surgery, she flipped out and her mom didn't make her. She was the only sibling I am close to (of the others they are dead and in jail). Nice family aye! You should have seen our get togethers. Yeesh.

I don't think altering people without their full understanding would ever be right, but I could understand why you'd want to make your daughter unable to get pregnant. Weather it's right or not, I don't know. I really don't. The hormones to keep her small, that's a new one, I really can't wrap my head around something like that. I would think first it would have to be considered weather the girl would have a realization that she is smaller than everyone else...I mean even toddlers look forward to getting 'bigger'. I can't say it sat well with me, I'd just have to know a lot more about this to have very strong feelings about it. The reasoning behind it was just not very explanatory, they kind of made it sound like a practical convenience which of course would be dispicable.

[Pamster]

I understand the not wanting a female with a severe developmental disability to have a baby isn't offensive to me since I would be hard pressed to make such a decision. It does sound like its all about practical convenience doesn't it? That is what I found to be really obscene is that they would do such a thing for utterly selfish reasons.

[Braindrain]

"not wanting a female with a severe developmental disability to have a baby"
is one thing. But, deliberately stunting her growth, just so she can "stay a
child" all her life?? What happens when the parents are dead? Who's going
to "take care of her" then? They're not thinking about what's best for her,
they're thinking about what's "easier" for themselves.

[Pamster]

I didn't want to be the one to say that Gina, but it's exactly what I was thinking. It's just barbaric and inhuman to impose such a fundamental injusitice upon a innocent child who won't know any different but still should have rights that parents want to see respected, not taken advatage of.