This blog is started to show how an intensive and extensive review of pertinent literature indicates a possibility that doctors of the Seattle Children’s Hospital might have gone along with Ashley’s parents’ requests knowing that the procedures were ethically questionable ; that it might have been a political decision rather than an ethical or medical one on the part of the hospital and the university that have been very close to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ashley’s father is very likely to be a Microsoft executive.
I wonder if the real quesion raised by this case is not whether the so called “Ashley treatment” procedures are ethically permissible or not, but rather whether the Seattle Children’s Hospital’s ethics committee really functioned duly or not, and ultimately whether a hospital ethics committee really is a good enough safeguard for protection of the profoundly mentally disabled in medical decisions.
Findings from this research will be laid out under the following categories. Some others might be added later.
Mysteries and Questions around the JAMA Article
Mysteries and Questions around the special ethics committee (May 5, 2004)
Mysteries and Questions around the breast bud removal
Mysteries and Questions around the Seattle Times
Mysteries and Questions around Dr.Diekema’s explanations
