Title:

Letter from Judie Brown, American Life Lobby to C. Everett Koop

Creator:

American Life Lobby
Brown, Judie

Recipient:

Koop, Charles Everett, 1916-2013

Date:

23 June 1982

Description:

Earlier, in April 1982, Koop had become involved in a medical, ethical, and legal controversy over the denial of medical treatment to babies born with disabling birth defects, the so-called "Baby Doe" controversy. Over the next two years, media reports of similar cases in which parents chose to withhold medical treatment from their severely disabled newborns, including cases of children with spina bifida (a defective closure of the spinal cord, leading to paralysis of varying degree) such as the one referred to in this letter, led the U.S. Congress to amend federal child abuse laws to include such denial of treatment.

Location:

Box: 14. Folder: 3

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of Judie Brown.

Genre:

Letters (correspondence)

Subject:

Ethics, Medical, Refusal to Treat, and Spinal Dysraphism

Format:

Text

Extent:

1 pages

Language:

English

Legacy ID:

QQBCJH

NLM ID:

101584930X558

Profiles Collection:

The C. Everett Koop Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584930X558

Story Section:

Congenital Birth Defects and the Medical Rights of Children: The "Baby Doe" Controversy