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Infant Doe Regulations and the Absolute Requirement to Use Nourishment and Fluids for the Dying Infant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

John J. Paris S.J.  and
Anne B. Fletcher
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Extract

On July 5, 1983. the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a revised version of its Proposed Rules for the so-called Infant Doe Regulations. The regulations are designed to prevent discriminatory denial of medical treatment to handicapped infants. An earlier version published last March had been struck down for procedural defects by Federal District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell. In the course of his opinion, Judge Gesell noted that the regulations touch upon one of the most difficult and sensitive medical and ethical problems facing society—the question of what, if any, life-sustaining medical treatment should be utilized to preserve the lives of severely mentally or physically defective newborn infants.

In his view not only were the original regulations procedurally flawed, but they also were substantively deficient. Arbitrary and capricious was Gesell's phrase to describe HHS's actions in establishing a toll-free 24-hour-a-day hotline on which anonymous tipsters could trigger an investigation of alleged nontreatment.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 11 , Issue 5 , October 1983 , pp. 210 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1983

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References

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