What would you do?...

Bells

Bells

Staff member
Imagine that you have a son, born with no eyes and mentally disabled. Your blind and mentally disabled son has a great love, and that is music, which he listens to all the time with the aid of a headset.

When your son is 28 years of age, you discover he is going deaf. There is an operation that can save your son's hearing, but having it will result in his being deaf for 3 months and he will only come out of that with 10% of his hearing intact. Not having the operation will mean that your son becomes completely deaf.

What do you do?

This was the dilema facing Margaret and Raymond Sutton.

They killed him.

Claiming that the killing was done out of love, the mother has recounted to a court that the prospect of her son no longer being able to listen to music was too troubling for her. After all, here was a mentally disabled man who was born with no eyes and who liked listening to music on his headset, and he was about to lose the ability to do that as well, with or without the operation. His mother claimed in court that sound was the only link her son had with the outside world.

So again I ask.... What would you do in their situation?
 
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Also if he only has 10% of his hearing after 3 months of no hearing, he would be thinking BONUS. I am sure he would not complain and he would appreciate his 10% hearing. Humans adapt very well and I am sure he would be just as happy given time with the 10%.
 
You don't kill somebody at 28 without his concent.
The fact is that it would be non of my busniss even if it where my own kid.

I would say something like
Well matey bugger isn't it sorry life hasn't been good to you, wat do you want to do, and then suport that.

Perhaps I would note that even the compleley deaf can still feel music try going to a fair the music literally goes to the hart

I certainly wouldn't kill him yust like I wouldn't snap the neck from some hungry kid somewhere in africa
 
Bells said:
Imagine that you have a son, born with no eyes and mentally disabled. Your blind and mentally disabled son has a great love, and that is music, which he listens to all the time with the aid of a headset.

When your son is 28 years of age, you discover he is going deaf. There is an operation that can save your son's hearing, but having it will result in his being deaf for 3 months and he will only come out of that with 10% of his hearing intact. Not having the operation will mean that your son becomes completely deaf.

What do you do?

This was the dilema facing Margaret and Raymond Sutton.

They killed him.

Claiming that the killing was done out of love, the mother has recounted to a court that the prospect of her son no longer being able to listen to music was too troubling for her. After all, here was a mentally disabled man who was born with no eyes and who liked listening to music on his headset, and he was about to lose the ability to do that as well, with or without the operation. His mother claimed in court that sound was the only link her son had with the outside world.

So again I ask.... What would you do in their situation?
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Wait and see. You could always kill him later. I mean who knows what he might do after his hearing goes. He might become curious about textures and smells. Perhaps swimming, or floating.

Just to kill without seeing what would happen seems like the worst kind of hasty I can imagine.

I sympathize and I can respect the idea that not being alive is better than some kinds of life. I can also easily believe it was an act of love. But to presume and act on that presumption so fast, that was wrong.

What if he would have chosen life just to get those hugs?

For the taste of food.

(all this assuming he was unable to respond to the question himself)

I am sure Christopher Reeves family might have thought he'd be better off dead than paralyzed, but shooting him in his hospital bed, however well-intentioned, would have been wrong.

Wait and see. Life is often pretty damn flexible.

I would also wonder if I was putting my child out of MY misery and not his if I'd killed him that fast.

But if he seemed in misery after the operation. If his soul left and he had no joy in life, then, after a time, I can imagine making the same decision.
 
I would never want to be the parent of a mentally disabled child. The child’s physical deformity would have made me even more reluctant to be his legal guardian. I would have tried to convince the mother of the child to give it up for adoption. I also would have tried to convince her to have an abortion if it was possible to detect the deformity or the mental retardation before she gave birth. If the woman refused to have an abortion I would end my relationship with her and I would refuse to play role in the child’s life.
 
Mental handicaps are evil, and indeed so to are humans that care after them. All those with mental disabilities (including myself - depression) must be annihilated. There is no other way.... humans are going to need to face the facts.. health care is to expensive to concern ourselves with weakened minds or bodies, the weak shall die while the strong live, it is the way of the law of the one of the world. We are in the end animals, let us behave like such and ignore those elderly, sickened, or just socially undominant humans.

PS Destroy me :(
 
orcot,

the way to approach this is to ask what would you want if all these things were suddenly taken away from you- cannot make decisions - completely devoid of cognition, cannot see and now cannot hear.

the only people who loved this child made the decision that was in his best interest...not in the interest of the bottom line. Asking him is not an option because even if you were able to establish communication he would not understand the question.
 
samcdkey said:
I would ask him what he wanted.
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I don't think he would have understood.

He did not understand what an operation was, let alone its consequences, but his parents understood too well: Matthew usually banged his head, hurt himself or became violent to others if he got angry and frustrated, his mother told the court.

"He just would not have had a quality of life," she said. Asked how she had felt about that, she broke down in the witness box.
Link
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In the end, they gave him no choice. Sure he may not have understood, but they did not wait to see how he would have coped without hearing. They assumed he would not like it.

This case is a parent's worst nightmare to be honest. I try to put myself in their shoes and I simply can't and don't want to imagine their circumstance. I don't think I would have it in me to do what they did, and then to lie about it for so long. They say you cannot know until you walk a mile in the person's shoes. In this case, I don't even want to go near the shoe to see what it would be like.

Their son was staying at their house on a home visit from his care facility. He was due to have the operation the day after.

Grantywanty said:
I would also wonder if I was putting my child out of MY misery and not his if I'd killed him that fast.

But if he seemed in misery after the operation. If his soul left and he had no joy in life, then, after a time, I can imagine making the same decision.
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That's the thing, they did not wait to see what he would have been like without his hearing after the surgery. I can understand wanting to end a child's suffering. But was it because they could not bear to see him go deaf as well, or did they do it because they knew he would truly suffer and his life would be that much worse without his hearing? It is something we will never know.

While I pity them and the hell they probably had to go through, I also find myself thinking that what they did was inherently wrong. They ended his life without his consent and while he may not have been able to voice or communicate any form of consent, who is to say that he did not enjoy other things in life aside from music. As you said yourself, what if he had a favourite meal? What if he liked the feel of certain textures under his fingertips. Instead of listening to music, feeling it through vibrations under his body or fingers. I guess if they waited to see how he coped after the surgery, things might have been different. But they did not. However there is then also the argument that they knew him best and knew what he was like. Horrible situation to be in either way.

q0101 said:
I would never want to be the parent of a mentally disabled child. The child’s physical deformity would have made me even more reluctant to be his legal guardian. I would have tried to convince the mother of the child to give it up for adoption. I also would have tried to convince her to have an abortion if it was possible to detect the deformity or the mental retardation before she gave birth. If the woman refused to have an abortion I would end my relationship with her and I would refuse to play role in the child’s life.
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Well let us hope for your child's sake that it has no mental disability as you have admitted yourself you would simply abandon it and refuse to even acknowledge it.
 
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