Before Aidan got sick for the last time, I had blogged about the case of Baby MB, an 18-month-old boy in Britain with severe, and most likely fatal, disabilities.  The national health service wanted to discontinue his care, seeing his life as "intolerable," while his parents fought to keep him on a respirator and maintain his life for the months he had left before his affliction took his life.

    I had argued, on Confucian grounds, that the parent’s view should prevail.  From this point of view, the loving context provided by the parents should be understood as a key element, perhaps the defining element, of Baby MB’s "quality of life."   

    While we were in the hospital, it turns out that the parents have won the court case and will be able to keep Baby MB alive for some time longer.  The judge made recommendations that could amount to a "do not resuscitate" order, which sounds right to me.  But, more importantly, he recognized the importance of the parents’ love and care.  I will post an excerpt from the judge’s decision below, which echoes what Confucius might have said: "Cherish the young."

   From the Justice Holman’s decision in the Baby MB case:

66. There is no doubt that he has been in a bonded parent/sibling/child
relationship with his parents and brother and sister in the past. He
used, when he could, to smile at them and react positively and with
pleasure to their presence. Although he no longer has the capacity to
smile, I can see no reason which would justify an assumption that he
derives any less pleasure now from their presence and the relationship.
If he did still possess the physical capacity to smile and communicate,
the absence of smiles might tell one much about the relationship or his
sense of pleasure. But as what he lacks is that capacity to smile and
communicate, the absence tells one nothing.

67. He is blessed with parents, especially his mother, but his
father, too, who have the time and ability, and also the willingness
and commitment to spend long periods of time with him – most of his
waking day. So the pleasure which I assume he gains from the
relationship is not short lived or occasional, but is available to him
as a constant part of his life for long periods of every day.

68. The parents themselves believe they can still detect reactions
of pleasure in that his eyebrows or corners of his mouth may move
slightly upwards. The doctors are sceptical. As I found the parents
sincere and honest witnesses I do not reject their evidence, and it may
be, because of their special relationship with him, that they are still
able to detect and do detect genuine reactions which are not visible to
others; or they may now be deluding themselves. But whether they do or
do not detect genuine reactions, it does not affect my view that
neither I, nor anyone, are justified in assuming that he derives less
pleasure now simply because he has lost the capacity to react.