Respond to Risks Not Just to Disasters

For some time, the United States has been known around the world as one of the few countries with advanced reproductive technologies but hardly any legal regulation of those technologies.  Consequently, the United States has been a destination for women from China and India, for example, who want to undergo pre-implantation genetics diagnosis (PGD) to screen out female embryos.  Little regulation has been forthcoming.  The general defer-to-the-paying-patient position is summed up by Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine:  "A lot of people will say if you have six children, you already have enough. . . .  The problem is, who gets to make that determination?"   (Columbus Dispatch)

Now comes 33-year-old Nadya Suleman, a single mother with six children.  Ms. Suleman just had octuplets, some of whom are sure to have severe disabilities.  Such an intuitively obvious disaster prompts reflection on the current framework.  Arthur Caplan rightly states that it is "complete and utter nonsense that physicians say they won't police their patients. . . .  Medicine is not a restaurant, and doctors are not waiters.  They need to have some professional responsibility when it comes to patients."

Perhaps it will similarly take some sort of disaster to prompt change concerning end-of-life disputes.