This is worrying.  I found the article on the Care 2 website, and my first thought was that a lot of Aspies take a long time to mature in our outlook on the world, emotionally and mentally.  But we do mature.  And this "treatment" would be physical and irreversible mutilation, at least to my mind.  The article was written by Kristina Chew, whose teenage son Charlie is autistic.  Here's the article:

A huge controversy arose in 2007 after details merged about the “Ashley treatment,” a procedure in which doctors used hormones and surgery to prevent Ashley, a severely disabled girl who was unable to walk or talk, from growing. Ashley is now about 14 years old; her parents, who have called her the “pillow angel,” had asked doctors at the Seattle Children’s Hospital to perform the procedures out of the belief that keeping her small would be the best way to ensure her quality of life. Doctors removed Ashley’s uterus and breast buds and gave her high doses of estrogen to cause the closure of the growth plates in her bones; they wrote about the “treatment” in the October 2006 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Growth Attenuation Treatment On the Rise

In May of 2007, the Seattle Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center admitted that it had broken state law by allowing the surgery to occur. Despite this and despite a May 2007 38-page report by the Washington Protection & Advocacy System contending that Ashley’s rights had been violated, the use of such growth attenuation treatment seems to be on the rise. In a recent article, the Guardian says that it has been in contact with two families who have had their children undergo the procedure, a family in a European country with an adopted son from Vietnam, “Tom” (not his real name), who has severe cerebral palsy and epilepsy and cannot sit, talk, walk or eat, and a now-14-year-old girl in the upper Midwest, “Erica” (also not her real name), on whom doctors at the University of Minnesota performed procedures similar to those used on Ashley.

The Guardian says that it has learned of a total of at least a dozen families who have carried out such growth attenuation procedures or are in the process of doing so and that there may be more than 100.

Disability rights activists, including parents of children with disabilities (myself included) expressed simple outrage at the procedure. As the parent of a severely autistic teenage son who can talk a little, is very athletic and almost six feet tall (i.e., almost a foot taller than me), I can understand the fears of Ashley’s parents about how to address the needs of a child with severe disabilities growing into adult with the same. But rather than physically disabling a child further, we have sought to teach and support Charlie as he has matured from a child to a teenager and into adulthood. To cut off his growth at some point that we think best seems simply to be limiting his possibilities — seems wrong, to put it bluntly. Charlie has often surprised us by revealing how much more he can do as he gets older.

Were Ashley’s Civil Rights — and Human Rights — Violated?

Curt Decker, director of the National Disability Rights Network, is preparing a report (due out in April) to call on Congress to ban growth attenuation treatment for disabled children on the basis that it violates their civil rights.
In an email exchange with the Guardian, Ashley’s father has written that outlawing growth attenuation treatment will only harm children with disabilities and their families, so that the “treatment becomes exclusive to the wealthy and powerful.” He and Ashley’s mother have continued to defend the treatment as improving her quality of life and maintaining her dignity.

Disability rights activists have argued that they have done precisely the opposite. Using medical procedures to keep an individual in a certain physical state — small and childlike, in this case — recalls the practice of binding the feet of little girls in Ch’ing Dynasty China. Whose “quality of life,” not to mention “convenience,” was the “Ashley treatment” performed for?


Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/surgery-to-k...z1wjgg7ULt

This post was last modified: 06-03-2012 03:23 PM by Alison.

Didn't we have a thread already?
Look here: http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...?tid=24115

What the ***? That's messed up. What purpose would that serve except for the parents sick entertainment?

I remember one case where the daughter was almost immobile. The parents wanted to keep her small so that she would be easier to move, and to keep her from going through puberty, which would have been very difficult in that case.

That one case by itself is tricky in the area of ethics. The fact that it would establish a precedent tends to make it more unethical in my mind. Then, you have to figure out where to draw the line, which further complicates the matter.

This reminds me of Human Centipede for some reason. God that movie was messed up.

This however is more messed up, as it is considered legal. I was almost sick, what kind of fuc*ed up world is this?!

It's official, there is no hope for the human race. We ((humans)) are clearly savages. If it weren't for the distractions of the media we would revert back completely to the medieval era within a few years.

This post was last modified: 06-03-2012 11:07 PM by Some_Bloke.

It is all about $$$$$ unfortunately.  If people had the available care required then they would probably not do these surgeries.

I can understand the motivation in cases of severe disability where this is the only way the parents will be able to care for the child, where the alternative is institutionalisation.

But I also understand what this may lead to if it becomes an "accepted" treatment.

I'm on the fence here.

Please get off of that fence.  It is experimentation and this being hte first time I am hearing of this... is making me feel ill.

I "get" the idea that smaller would be "easier" to care for - as in if someone is a parapalegic and cannot walk - it is harder to care for them to get into the bath, or wheel chair etc., (so should ANYONE that is being cared for most likely by their family be MADE/FORCED?SURGICALLY altered?
against (of course)

I saw a program where a girl (Naturally, she has not been altered by doctors) never has grown past looking like a toddler/baby.  The parents still carry her, (with them when they go out, as in do not leave her home) dress her like a baby - though she is (I think) past teen age.

A severely disabled woman could be raped and get pregnant. Anything can happen in care facilities. Maybe a weak argument, but labor would be hell on any woman, esp a disabled one.

I also saw this.  The girl here has a mutation where she does not age.  She is still the size of a one year old physically and also intellectually.  She is in her early twenties, and her younger sister is one of her carers.  Apparently she's the only person on earth to have this and doctors monitor her and try to work out how it happened.  They also do not know if she will eventually die or not, since she does not age.  

The problem as I see it with a post-pubertal woman, at least, is menstrual.  It could be frightening to her, not to mention painful and difficult to to maintain hygiene.  And in the case of a post-pubertal male, you get the added problems, not so much of hormones, but of size and muscle development.  

However, once the precedent is set, who is to say who this can and cannot be done to?  What level of intellectual ability does one need to be able to say "I don't want to be irreversably operated upon"?

Alison

What about the people that are NOT going to communicate verbally or otherwise - how will ANYONE know what they are thinking, what they want.

First Do No Harm.

I'm with 142857. I understand why it sounds horrifying, but I also understand why the parents want it.

the article I read about it a while ago (might've been the guardian one mentioned) said that the children concerned had conditions that meant they would be "babies" intelectually for their whole lives. they'd always need help dressing, washing or even sitting up. ashleys parents said that keeping her small allowed her to be present at more family events, which made her life and theirs much richer. the reality is, you can take a "child" who needs to wear nappies and can't sit up unaided to a lot of places that you couldn't take them if they were adult sized, so without treatment such people would most likely be "dumped" in front of the TV/staring at the ceiling.

but I still understand that it's a slippery slope. it's difficult.

I think its key to examine whose quality of life it is done for. Thats how you can determine whether it is ethical. I doubt Ashley would have felt her quality of life was worse because she grew bigger...but no one seemed to think about her feelings, just their own.

It's a difficult decision. I can see why they did it [in Ashleys case] - she's not mentally equipped to deal with an adult body; according to her mother, large breasts run in thr family and can be very uncomfortable, especially if you can't do much... There's a good case to be made for preventing her puberty, given the problems she would have had with menstruation and such. On balance, I'd say I have to reluctantly agree with them.

I reckon she will probably die everybody does