Yesterday’s newspaper carries a story about a doctor couple from down south who allowed their 15-year old son, studying in class 10, to perform a caesarean operation. The proud father apparently showed a video of the operation to his colleagues claiming it to be some kind of a world record.
What kind of a sick mind would let a unqualified kid perform an operation that could have terminal repercussions? Can parents be this blind when it comes to their children’s legal authority or competence?
Its not about the simplistic reasoning that a kid should not have been allowed by people who were supposed to know better. Its about violation of human dignity. Its about misplaced arrogance and delusions of grandeur that could have cost an innocent life, two lives as a matter of fact. Neither of which were in any position to speak for themselves at the time the operation was done. One was the mother under anesthesia and the other a new-born totally incapable of expressing anything.
The father, most likely suffers from an inferiority complex and is perhaps trying to make up for a deprived childhood through his son.
The medical profession is generally regarded as being a noble profession since its practitioners experience the human body and spirit at their weakest moments. That is one of the reasons most people look up to doctors and surgeons. They elevate both the quantity and the quality of our lives. This case is about human dignity and our right to expect certain levels of competency from the medical professionals we entrust ourselves or our loved ones in our moments of physical weakness and incapacity.
This also highlights in India a fairly recent trend of parents handing over to their children the reigns of modern symbols of affluence without inculcating any concept of responsibility. Parents spoil them and the mass media desensitizes them. You see kids who aren’t old enough for facial hair driving around powerful vehicles recklessly endangering innocent lives, not the least their own.
But still, the two are not the same. A fellow driver or pedestrian facing a rashly driven vehicle at least has a chance to use his faculties to defend himself and take evasive measures. He has a chance to fight for his own life and well-being. A person laying unconscious in an operation theater or her unborn child have no chance of self-preservation and have no choice but to trust the doctor with their lives. When this power is given to a human being over another, there is also an intrinsic condition that the doctor will carry out this responsibility to the best of his capacity.
I believe that the medical community should stand up against this type of blatant disregard of time honored medical ethics and stand united against those involved. Human life and health are not platforms for deranged to show off unqualified and unearned talents of their progeny irrespective of the paternally presumptuous levels of skill.
You can view the news item here:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=8fce6b3c-0b08-42d5-807f-ed5ebabad67a
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