GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: How far does a right to a child extend?

sábado, 23 de septiembre de 2017

BioEdge: How far does a right to a child extend?

BioEdge: How far does a right to a child extend?

Bioedge

How far does a right to a child extend?

by Michael Cook | 23 Sep 2017 |

Photo by KEVIN SULLIVAN / Orange County Register

Another instalment in the Reproductive Revolution, this time from California and Georgia. In 2015, 51-year-old Chester Shannon Moore Jr engaged a surrogate mother in California through a broker. He was an unusual would-be father. He is a lifelong bachelor, is deaf and dumb, and even struggles with sign language. But the surrogate, Melissa Cook, was not phased. She had found the experience of surrogacy fulfilling and would earn at least US$30,000. Besides, she said, “Why should a single man who is deaf, be excluded from having a family because of his disability?”

When she became pregnant with three babies, Mr Moore was troubled and asked her to abort one. She refused because she is opposed to abortion. The triplets were eventually taken back to Georgia.

But now Ms Cook is suing for custody of the children, alleging that they are terribly neglected and that Mr Moore is proving incapable of caring for them. An affidavit from Mr Moore’s sister alleges that the babies sometimes have to eat off filthy floors and that their diaper rash was so bad that they had to be taken to hospital. The home is chaotic. Mr Moore’s elderly parents are in terrible health and the house is thick with cigarette smoke. Often a heroin addict nephew stays there.

There seems to be very little chance that Ms Cook will win the custody suit unless she can prove that the California statute is unconstitutional. For the law is crystal-clear: Family Code 7962 states: “The surrogate, her spouse, or partner is not a parent of, and has no parental rights or duties with respect to, the child or children.”

Is this a case where, in the well-known words of the Dickens character Mr Bumble, “the law is an ass”? The triplets appear to be at risk of serious harm. “Their well-being,” Moore’s sister says in court documents, “is far more important than the desires of an adult, or even my desire to maintain peace between myself, my parents and my two siblings.”

Saturday, September 23, 2017

There is a gap in the Nobel Prizes: there's no award for bioethics. There is the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. Both of them touch on bioethical issues in some fashion, but only tangentially.

True, some Nobel laureates have provoked bioethical controversies. The 1918 laureate in chemistry, Fritz Haber, was “the father of chemical warfare”. The 1956 laureate in Physics, William Shockley, was interested in eugenics and sterilizing people with IQs under 100. The 2010 laureate in Medicine, Robert Edwards, developed IVF. James Watson, the 1962 laureate in Medicine, was interested in designer babies. António Egas Moniz, the 1949 laureate in Medicine, developed the frontal lobotomy.

However, the time has come. As reported below, the 2018 Dan David Prize, worth US$1 million will be awarded “to an outstanding individual or organization in any field of the humanities or social sciences who have transformed our understanding of the moral and ethical significance of biological and medical innovations in our times.”

It appears that this will be the last time that the Dan David Prize will be awarded for bioethics. So it’s a great opportunity. Send us your nomination, with a brief explanation. If we get enough entries, we will publish them next week.