Retracted Article: Growth attenuation and young people with profound disabilities – why we need to talk about Charley

Abstract

In 2004 an intervention known as the Ashley Treatment (AT) was sought on behalf of Ashley X, a girl with severe developmental disabilities. A discursive interpretive framework is used to investigate use of the AT in the case of Charley Hooper in New Zealand in 2009. This investigation found that use of the AT is intimately bound up in ideas about worthiness of life related to the ability to act as an autonomous agent within social structures. Questions this case raises about ethical decision-making and future physical and social requirements for profoundly disabled young people in the future are posed.

Keywords:

• growth
• attenuation
• profound
• disability

View retraction statement:

Statement of Retraction

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the University of Tromsø, Faculty of Humanities, Social Science and Education for providing an audience to talk about Charley in 2014. The author is also grateful to Dr Jan Walmsley, Dr Maria Kecskemeti and Associate Professor Lise Claiborne for their insightful comments on content and format of a number of earlier drafts, to Jenn Hooper for discussion and to the reviewers of a previous draft of this article who rightly suggested that the article needed to develop more clarity in its theoretical position.

Notes

1. I am indebted to Reviewer 1 for making this point.

2. Eva Feder Kittay’s (2011) article is highly recommended, as is a guest post by Robert Newsom, for a detailed response to Kittay’s (2011) position. Sollied (2009) is recommended for an extended view of the role of medical diagnoses in the assessment of future potential for young people with profound disabilities.

3. A commentary is now being published about this new case (Kerruish, N., et al. 2015. J Med Ethics. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-10913).