Disabled babies killed because of a "lack of imagination"

John Smeaton, SPUC director: Disabled babies are killed because of a "lack of imagination": Louise was born in 1979 and immediately found to have both spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Her paediatrician, Dr. Donald Garrow, persuaded her parents that she would be "better off dead" as she would be unable to walk, and would thus compare herself unfavourably with her two able-bodied sisters. He then sedated her so she was too sleepy to cry for food, and she eventually died of starvation and dehydration. Dr. Garrow made a video of her last days which was shown on daytime TV, and which I saw. Louise's face was grey, her eyes sunken. She had stick thin arms and legs but a bloated stomach, and looked much like the victims of starvation due to famine which elicit our sympathy, and often our financial help, whenever they are seen on TV.

I wrote to Dr.Garrow at the hospital and explained that I was disabled to just the extent that Louise had been, and that I felt he had made a horribly wrong decision.

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