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Baby T

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2009

David A. Goldstein
David A. Goldstein
Affiliation:
Co-Director of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The recent case of Baby Theresa has once again raised the dilemma of organ donation from anencephalic infants. Baby Theresa's distraught parents wanted to create something good from something tragic, by donating the baby's organs so that other children could live. If the physician waited for their baby to die naturally, the organs would not be suitable for transplantation. If they took them before death they could be harvested. For this reason, the parents petitioned the Florida courts to declare their baby dead at birth so the organs could be removed at an earlier, more propitious time. The court refused. The infant died, its vital organs unusable.

Type
Special Section: Organ Ethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , Fall 1992 , pp. 345 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

Notes

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