Toronto Hospital Withdraws Food and Water from Disabled Infants

On January 18, 2007; Alex Schadenberg, and one other person, attended a seminar by the Bioethics Department of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto on the Withdrawal of Hydration and Nutrition (H & N) in the NICU.

The seminar was presented by Dr. Jonathon Hellmann, professor of Paediatrics (U of T) and Clinical Director of the NICU (Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto).

The criteria from withdrawing (N & H) from infants with
disabilities is:

• The parents must freely request that feeding be withdrawn. (Doctors may present it as an option to the parents.)
• The child must be “profoundly” disabled. (The criteria did not limit dehydration to children who were dying anyway.)
• The child must lack an ability to eat normally (lacks a sucking mechanism).

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto will permit infant children with disabilities to be intentionally dehydrated to death. This is euthanasia by omission. We were not given the particular circumstances that the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has applied its policy of withdrawal of H & N, only the general principles.

The Criminal Code of Canada states that: you must provide the basic necessities of life. This is an important provision in the Criminal Code because it protects vulnerable people from others who will deny them the basic necessities of life.

This is a form of eugenics. These children are being refused (H & N) not only because it is a benefit to them, but also because the infant is so profoundly disabled that the child is believed to be “better off dead” by the parents.

This also represents a form of medical abandonment.

These children often lack an ability to feed normally because they are premature. This is often a temporary condition that can be rectified by good care and by being tube-fed.

First printed in the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition newsletter.Reprinted with permission.