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February 20, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
You face a serious situation and a difficult decision. You
definitely need to get the best medical assessment and advice
that you can. Enough oxygen deprivation can cause brain damage
- but how much is enough, and how much damage does it take
to disable a person? At how early an age would damage become
apparent, and if a baby's development is slow does that mean
he'll never reach a normal level? And which abilities are
most likely to be impaired? Are there any reliable tests of
brain function now that can predict adult capabilities? I
rather doubt that there are - perhaps a doctor among us knows.
You are justified in being concerned, given the report of
possible oxygen deprivation. But what proportion of eventually
normal people are slow to sit up? I don't even know whether
6 months is terribly late. Lots of bright people are slow
to speak and to develop motor functions. It seems to me that
you need not only the average developmental progress but a
sense of the range of normal limits.
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/SelfHelp/info/advice/normalchilddevelopment.asp
gives an authoritative schedule for normal development, and
says that at six months it's normal to _try_ to sit up, and
at one year a child should be _able_ to sit up - so it seems
by this criterion alone this child may be perfectly OK. Another
site claims that at six months it _is_ normal to sit up. I
take the discrepancy to mean that there is a range of normal
ages for this developmental event. As the latter site says,
"All children do the same things, but not at the same
time."
I don't think there are absolute predictions to be found
with medicine in its current state - but you should try to
get the best answers you can. We each have limits to how much
care we are willing and able to give another person - but
it seems that those limits turn out to be a lot higher in
most people than they would have predicted before being faced
with the challenge. Caring for a disabled child, though, can
be very very hard on a marriage or a family. You find examples
where everyone concerned pitches in and finds the task spiritually
rewarding - and other examples of families breaking up under
the strain.
This past Sunday's New York Times Magazine had a provocative
article by Harriet McBryde Johnson , a physically disabled
lawyer, who accepted an invitation to debate Princeton philosopher
Peter Singer on the right of disabled people to live. Johnson
is clearly very smart; it's her muscles that don't work, not
her brain. But you may find the issues very relevant, I think.
The matter reduces to whether anyone has the right to decide
another person's "quality of life" is too low to
carry on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/16DISABLED.html
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