Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Murder, She Wrote Or Was It Merely Selective Nontreatment?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will both explore and thereby establish the medical, ethical, and legal validity of selective nontreatment of severely handicapped newborns. A construct for principled decision-making, tied to a basic recognition of the right of self-determination, as shaped by compassion and validated principles of triage and cost-benefit analysis, will be seen as the most effective means for the states-and not the federal government-to evaluate the intensely complex issues associated with allocating scarce medical resources to defective infants. Governmental intrusions into the familial decision- making forum in these circumstances must be kept to a minimum and allowed only in grave cases.