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According to a recently-released report from an independent panel, pediatric cardiologists at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London failed to make appropriate recommendations to parents of children with congenital heart disease, particularly children with Down's Syndrome. |
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The report cited in particular the doctors' reluctance to recommend heart surgery for atrioventricular septal defect, a condition for which surgery is widely held to be the best option. The report went on to speculate that doctors seemed to be more concerned for how parents would be able to cope with disabled children than they were with what was in the best interests of the patients themselves. The report stopped short of accusing the doctors of discriminating against children with Down's Syndrome, but the Down's Heart Group - an association representing families of Down's patients - still maintains there was clearly active discrimination. DrRich comments: The independent panel clearly chose to take mercy on the Brompton doctors when it chose not to accuse them of outright discrimination against the disabled, that is, of withholding life-saving surgery from them specifically because they were Down's children. Perhaps the doctors deserved such a kindness. It seems unfair to place doctors in the position of having to overtly ration health care resources (as the National Health Service clearly does,) and then take them to task just because that's what they're doing. On the other hand, perhaps the panel was also aware of what it would mean had it come out strongly against the doctors' discriminatory behavior. For, if the panel doesn't like the way the doctors are rationing health care, that would imply that someone else should do it. Nobody wants that, it seems. Let's keep rationing covert, and at the bedside. April, 2001
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