Jury awards couple $50 million in ‘wrongful birth’ lawsuit

SubTruth
reply to post by freakjive

 

These people are the lowest form of life. The progressive mindset hard at work. Thankfully life will suck for these scum bags and not because they have to take care of a special needs kids that will be the only thing that might save their pathetic souls.





Being progressive is a sickness of the mind and soul.

I read both articles and I can not find any mention of the parent's political leanings? Do you have a source or just assuming? (Conservatives have had abortions so as to avoid the 'No true Scottsman' fallacy)

Wrabbit2000
I think there are two ways to read the results they got. They chose to read them how they chose ...and they got what nature delivered.

That's not quite what happened if you read from another source (one without such a pro life slant)

seattletimes.com...

After the defect showed up in the dads cousin the couple sought medical advice and found they had a 50/50 chance of having a child with this complication. As a result, later on when they actually did become pregnant they sought out genetic testing to see if their kid had it.

The company told them their kid was fine, it wasn't. Infact, the company didn't even perform the test they charged the parents for.

People sometimes get tested to make sure they're not carrying an unwanted girl child and, if they are, they abort. We're well on our way to "designer babies".
Sad case, this. The couple has a valid point in that the testing was not performed to standard and they were left with the consequences BUT.....if they knew they had a 50/50 chance of passing on their genetic flaws, WHY would they even take that chance?
I agree that they should receive some minor compensation for the botched test results but that the $50 million dollars should go to some couple that will love and care for that poor child and not leave it in the hands of people who exercised such poor judgment to start with. They should not be financially rewarded for making bad decisions.

reply to post by Aazadan


Well, I'll tell ya what. Your story looks credible. The OP story looks credible and so do the others which seem now to be taking either side in numbers.

So, I'm really not going to accept either one as valid at this point, and when they contradict. Seattle reporters are just as worthless and full of spinning B.S. as any other outlet's reporters. In this case, to see both versions? They both smell like spin in different directions.

Do you or does anyone have links to the actual court papers? I prefer original docs like that when I can get them. I haven't found any in this case yet, but it's a simple suit and the largest jury award in state history by accounts ..there ought to be a decision filing, if not transcripts?

I think I'll go back to just holding a bit until I read what the reporters are spinning their tales from and get the truth of it.

I'm shocked that some people on here think this is OK!!!

What ever happened to responsibility? ethics? morals? people like this do not deserve children, what ever happened to unconditional love? My friends have a child with the same condition and they accept her for HER!
This is disgusting and i'm guessing this is America..... you guys sue for everything, enjoy paying for there windfall, they have a beautiful child and $50 million

I can understand why the couple would want to abort a mentally deficient child. It's not as heartless as it sounds. Not only is the child a burden on them, but a burden on itself. How will it care for itself after its parents die?

Please don't give me that "miracle of life" b.s. No child wants to be born retarded. No parent wants to birth a retarded child.

The settlement money helps pay the child's medical bills, and will hopefully last long enough, granted the parents don't blow it, to provide the child with a decent means of life as an adult after its parents are no longer able to care for it.

I posted about my brush with this around page two or three. At the same time that I was pregnant a lady that I worked with had a niece who was also pregnant. She and her husband were young and this was their first child. I was 38 at the time which made the likelihood of having a downs syndrome child greater than a young mother. That young couple had a downs syndrome child. No warning no tests. They just cried and cried about that baby.
No one wants this. It's heart breaking. If testing can alleviate that kind of heartbreak why not use it. Why the hell not.

reply to post by AutumnWitch657


I believe this thread and story, right here, is 'why not' in the practical sense. It's the reasoning I've been reading from the FDA for years in looking to take these out of the consumer market area. If or when professional grade lab work can be done at a level which normal people can afford for genetic blueprinting with confidence? I suppose it has it's uses..whatever I may think of it.

However...this story represents one of the largest monetary awards to prove the failings of the technology and/or use of it ...but it's far from unique or unusual. People want complex, high level lab work done overnight and at the cost of a shelf item at Walgreens (for how some have been marketed and they'd love to have a whole isle of similar consumer diagnostics to profit off).

When failure on things hindsight says $50 Million is required to cover...isn't happening regular enough to talk about? Maybe it's solid enough for consumers to use and not be misled or gain false confidence by?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


As much as I don't subscribe to genetic screening to determine the future of life, isn't that already practiced by civilizations in the past? They didn't have technology as precise as DNA scanning/filtering, but some would abandon or purposely kill their offspring if it didn't "suit society's standard." But even today, maybe only for isolated cases I don't know really, some Asian countries (like Korea) do this filtering of offsprings. I think this year I've read too many cases of mothers poisoning their autistic or similarly defective children.

I've seen Gattaca a long time ago, and maybe because I was still so young and naive back then that i watched it as a be-more-than-who-you-are inspirational movie.

The difference though is the system actively promotes it, while the former is due to society's pressure. Both are disturbing to me, and I feel helpless because I don't know what I can do to make it change. I understand the difficulty in raising a "defective" child, and society can be very cruel. It takes a level of dreaming to shield one's self from the suffering that reality brings...and I don't think everyone is capable of doing that. That said, a part of me cannot help but conform to this.

nixie_nox

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by tomoe723

 

I'm really quite disturbed by the whole genetic screen to determine the future of life itself, once the process is well underway.

I have mixed feelings for just one area ..and that is profound birth defect. There are babies born all the time, and all over the world who live a short time ..and mercy would have been to save them that much suffering when medical tech allows for it. That's a class of small and extreme conditions, IMO tho. The boutique approach to child birth? I guess I'm just getting too weary to fight the trend anymore ...

I've accepted in this area? We are going to become a society that looks more like Gattaca than it does anything we've known as free Americans in the past. Heck, the only BIG difference NOW between America and Gattaca (See movie for context) is portability. I think hard about the tech shown in that nightmare version of 1984 life ...and really, that IS all that's missing. Portability and speed.

When DNA scanners can be handheld and results can process and pop within reasonable time to stand and wait for the result? We'll be able to watch that movie and relate to almost everything else.

Scary, huh?

its not a trend, it is the product of a for profit medical system. Hate the player, not the game.


If you had a child tomorrow that would require expensive medical care and nurses for the rest of its life, how would you pay for it?


And don't say you would figure something out.

this "expensive medical care and nurses" is sometimes conditioned by the industry that profits off of it..

sometimes, no matter how ideal and off in the clouds it sounds, a lot of love is really that's all that's required. you only resort to "expensive medical care and nurses" if you don't want to do the caring yourself.

reply to post by tomoe723


You're right on past societies. In fact one of my favorite of the last semesters history course was Sparta. Only one time period for that one to be really interesting and they had a brutal and exceptionally cold way of culling the defects, as they saw it, from their perfect Military society. Infants were left on a cliff edge to die of exposure ..if not given the mercy of going over outright. Almost unthinkable by modern society ....or is it? Science is the cliff edge, isn't it?

I picked up the trailer for Gattaca. I should have posted this with the reference since it was something of a sleeper for people either really knowing it, or having no idea what it was. Others might be helped for knowing what I meant.



You're right about it having the other message to it. It definitely does. It was something of an inspirational story of someone making it, literally, against scientific "fact" that he couldn't. It was the science side which I thought made the other half of the movie and the really disturbing part.

reply to post by freakjive


What would you rather have?

This couple taking care of their disabled child child with rightly earned money that is more than enough to take care of his expenses or have them mooch off of an already stretched thin medicaid program?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


maybe their methods are unthinkable to us now, but the end result is still the same.. as you've said it, science is the cliff edge. like for example, in livestock, old ways of killing chickens are not acceptable anymore now, so science has invented more "humane" methods of killing them. but people are behind the science, and i do not like to blame a tool for the bad things it can potentially do... so in the end, i suppose it's just people trying to make it more acceptable, and less "violent"??

again, even though i disagree with it, two times already on occasion have i condoned abortion to friends. these cases weren't even with defects. once was when my friend confronted me with an unwanted pregnancy problem, i told her the truth, life is difficult and harsh... blah blah blah.. i told her if she decides to do abortion, i wouldn't blame her. in the end, she decided not to.. reverse psychology wasn't my intention but it happened. second occasion was with another friend, and it already happened. all i could do was give her some "justification" based on how difficult reality is. she was already ridden with so much guilt, i couldn't really "justify" much.

if it was my child to-be then even with genetic abnormalities, i wouldn't let go.. even if he/she would later on blame me for allowing him/her to live. but that's just me.

Is it me? I just think its wrong to abort a baby because of a condition!
Next thing people will be aborting a baby because of there eye color, Sorry i just think its wrong, Im 33 and ill never get genetic test to see if i have to abort a child.

I'm not religious, I just think this is morally wrong! In hindsight that means they can never look after this child properly because its an unwanted child? are they adopting it? NOOO there keeping it, does anybody see the contradiction here?

Well I am not clear about what people here are faulting the parents for.

Is it because they had the test done to determine if there were defects?

or

Because they sued the company they paid to do the tests.(which incidentally failed to do so properly)


Maybe neither or both are the issue for some.