title: Withholding treatment from Baby Doe: from discrimination to child abuse.
abstract: Questions surrounding withholding treatment from severely impaired newborns have elicited three significantly different substantive and procedural responses: from the Reagan administration's Department of Health and Human Services through the Carter President's Commission on Ethical Problems, and subsequent congressional legislation on child abuse. Movement from a rigid and simplistic application of medical imperatives to ambiguous and abstract criteria of the child's "best interest" represented limited progress. A new legislative compromise principle is an imperfect but practical accommodation to moral and medical realities.
authors.forename: N K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Rhoden
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Arras
mesh_terms: D026683:Advisory Committees; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000628:therapy*; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D028741:Ethics Committees, Clinical; D004991:Ethics, Institutional; D005065:Euthanasia; D005066:Euthanasia, Passive; D035082:Federal Government; D033161:Government Regulation; D040821:Human Characteristics; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007882:Legislation, Hospital; D028681:Moral Obligations; D033282:Parental Consent; D018579:Patient Selection; D011287:Prejudice; D011367:Professional Staff Committees; D011788:Quality of Life; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D014481:United States; D014483:United States Dept. of Health and Human Services; D026712:Value of Life; D028761:Withholding Treatment