Denying the Rights of the Retarded: The Phillip Becker Case

The Down Syndrome child in need of treatment is a medical ethics paradigm. In a film distributed by the Kennedy Foundation, for example, a Down Syndrome newborn is allowed to starve to death because his parents will not consent to surgery to correct a duodenal Artesia. And it is to detect and abort fetuses affected with Down Syndrome (trisomy 21) that amniocentesis is most often used. Down Syndrome children are also better than dogs to practice surgery on, as William Nolen reminds us in his The Making of a Surgeon. He recounts a conversation between a pediatrician and a young surgeon about a sepal defect repair-a major heart operation-the latter is going to perform the next day. The young surgeon says he's "not worried a bit," and wouldn't wear even if his patient died on the table. "Oh, now I get it," replies the pediatrician, "you're doing a mongoloid."