Radical medical decisions for kids a parent's choice

Many people long to improve or enhance their physical appearance in some way, whether through surgery, exercise, or specially designed clothing.

In most cases, women and men long to be more attractive, perhaps taller, fitter, and more desirable. However, with the advent of newer technology and the research on growth hormones and similar drugs, a new concept has been developed to alter a person's physical appearance, and it doesn't involve making them better-looking.

Instead, parents of a 9 year old bedridden girl identified only as "Ashley" recently persuaded their daughter's doctors to change their daughter in drastic ways. According to a January 5 Newsweek article, Ashley, a child with severe mental and physical handicaps, has been given large doses of hormones to stunt her growth at her parents' request. She is currently only 4' 5" at 9 years of age; had she not been given the hormones, she would probably have grown to a normal 5' 6". She also weighs only 65 pounds.

Ashley's parents also decided to have her uterus and breast tissue removed in their attempt to keep their child, well, perpetually a child.

In reality, Ashley functions much like an infant, unable to sit, stand, or even roll over by herself. According to Ashley's parents and doctors, she will never improve, as her brain damage is irreversible. The surgery and the hormone treatment were designed to keep Ashley more child-like, making it easier for her parents to provide her with better care. Because she resides in their home, her parents are responsible for her day-to-day care. They lift her and reposition her in bed, and worried that as they aged, they may no longer be able to do this were Ashley to physically mature completely. Her parents have offered statements that say keeping Ashley smaller will better protect her against bedsores and allow them to more fully integrate her into their family life. The removal of her breast tissue and uterus was completed because Ashley will never make use of them and to save Ashley and her parents from the added burden of menstruation.

While there has been much public outcry about medical and parental ethics, Ashley's care and the decisions about her health and life are no one's decisions but her parents'. That does not mean that the idea of invasive surgery and extensive hormone treatment doesn't make some people uncomfortable, myself included.

The hormone treatments given to Ashley were designed to speed up bone maturation, making her bone plates fuse together. At 9 years old, Ashley has the bones of a fifteen year old. Is this painful for Ashley? Is it even possible to know when she can't speak to tell her parents so? These hormones also speed up the maturation of menstruation and breast development, causing her parents to decide to perform a hysterectomy. While I don't know if Ashley is the youngest girl to ever receive a hysterectomy, I can't imagine they are done all that often to a child so young, so the health effects of this procedure remain to be seen.

However, while the parents may be taking some risks, including extreme public criticism and health risks for Ashley, only they know whether or not these changes have benefited their care of their daughter. And, as our world changes medically, parents are making similar decisions all the time.

In our modern society, parents can choose to create babies outside of the bedroom, can now screen for diseases or the possibility of diseases, create babies with blue eyes and blonde hair, and eventually make decisions to undergo radical surgery or hormone treatments for themselves later in life. As parents, Ashley's mother and father made a decision that they thought would best serve their child, similar to decisions parents must make every day about their children's health or safety or well-being. In their eyes, these procedures and treatments were improving the quality of life of their daughter.

And, yes, exposing a disabled child to invasive surgery and extensive treatments that have not been around long enough to conduct extensive, lifelong research may be a questionable decision. As long as they're acting with their daughter's best interests at heart, the bottom line is: it's their decision.