Thursday, November 10, 2011

Israeli Children Sue for Wrongful Life

Israeli children with birth defects increasingly sue medical authorities for allowing them to be born. The growth in "wrongful life" lawsuits, which the medical profession estimates at 600 since the first case in 1987, has prompted an Israeli government investigation. Medical ethicists told New Scientist that these cases raise serious ethical concerns - not least about the value of disabled people's lives - and spark fears that medical professionals will become overly cautious in their diagnostic tests, causing healthy fetuses to be aborted. One ethicist alleged that lawyers looking for work are trawling communities with high rates of genetic disease and inbreeding.
Read the rest here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe I'm reading this. Doesn't this smack of self-imposed eugenics and an "Untermenschen" mentality that the Jews themselves suffered under? The world truly has gone mad.

Anonymous said...

That someone would try to pursue such a case doesn't surprise me (large quantities of shekels being a desirable thing to most persons). But that a court would would allow such a suit and not throw it out as frivolous is appalling.

That said, I echo Eurasleep's question and conclusion.