Children: “Where is my Autonomy, Mommy?”

So this week, while I was catching up on Grey’s anatomy on Netflix, I stumbled upon an episode where one of the pediatric surgeon had to make a decision, on behalf of the parents of newborn twins, on which twin gets to live because both twins were suffering from liver failure at birth. The reason why it came down to who gets to live is because only the father of the child was deemed a viable donor to his children and the transplant list did not consider the twins healthy enough to be healthy enough to accept organs. I liked this episode because it focuses on the idea that even though these children did not have any ability to practice their autonomy they were still treated as if they had access to autonomy. Even though they could not make their own decisions, they had other candidates to do so for them. It was like watching one of those intervention scene where there is a pillow that is passed along the room and only the person with pillow can talk. Whoever gave the best idea would go on to take care of the situation. After the parents were deemed not able to choose between their twins, the surgeons became the only viable candidate to choose what happens to the twin. In the episode, it emphasizes how important it is for a doctor to save the child’s life. The surgeon did not sleep for 24 hours to constantly look over scans of the twins to see which baby had a better chance of living after the procedure was down. He look extensively for ways to save both babies but ultimately he knew only one could make it with only one donor available. Watching this made me believe that autonomy is not always perfect. Patients do not carry the same knowledge and experience that doctors have. It made me feel like there are just certain issues that we need to leave to the doctors and choosing treatment plan for children should belong to the doctors. Both parents and doctors have the same goal when it comes to children and that is to take care of that child. I was looking up some articles on the issue and I found that these situations where parents’ and doctors’ views often conflict when it comes to saving a child’s life. The article I read pretty much stated that the only way that these children can be saved is by implementing policies that can support the doctor’s case for performing the procedure. I believe this is the right way to go because just like the parents in the episode of Grey’s anatomy, these parents are often hit with a state of shock when given the status of their child. They often do not know what to do but point fingers and this can distract parents from making the right choice. Doctors only carry their knowledge and experience when they come to work. They only know how to help people. It is their job, so it should be up to them to decide what is best when the parents do not know what to do. Of course, this is only in reference to children. Adults, for the most part can practice all the autonomy they want because this is a free country and as long as you are aware about the situation you should have an opinion on the matter. Or should you? We will see next week :)