Muscular dystrophy, incurability, eugenics.
The medical entity "muscular dystrophy" has been the object of a recent opinion campaign aimed at promoting a law in favour of euthanasia. This disease has become, in the eyes of the public, a media model of a particularly severe and incurable disease. This very widespread statement does not correspond to reality as far as concerns the life of these patients, to the condition that they have benefited from a very useful and fully provided empirical treatment. As already seen, the hope for life has already doubled, without clear limits. The idea of inducing an interruption when at death's door, as long as a systematic prevention prior to birth, does not conform with the motivated opinion of the majority of patients consulted. On the contrary, the dogma of incurability may lead to dramatic individual consequences which should be stressed, from a medical viewpoint, on account of the unacceptable risks of social injustice or eugenics that this would imply.
Rideau
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Y
Institut Duchenne International (IDI), Founder and Head of the Rehabilitation and Clinical Research Unit of the University Hospital Centre, Poitiers, France. institut.duchenne@wanadoo.fr
Rideau
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F
D000328:Adult; D005053:Eugenics / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D009136:Muscular Dystrophies / Q000235:genetics* / Q000628:therapy