Wrongful Life Case Study

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Summary: Wrongful life lawsuits are always brought up by the child and presented through a parent or representative, claiming that the child should have never been born. These cases have been, usually, either rejected or dismissed by the courts, believing that a disabled life is better than no life at all. Currently no jurisdiction allows wrongful life plaintiffs to be awarded compensation for pain and suffering caused by their condition, mainly due to it being impossible to calculate these damages. In the typical wrongful life claim, the obstetrician, radiologist or genetic counselor made a mistake and either (1) failed to diagnose a child’s injury, (2) failed to properly report the child’s injury to other health care providers; or (3) failed to properly inform the parents of the child’s injury. Plaintiff's must be able to prove that if it had not been for the negligence of their doctor, they would have had the proper information to make an informed decision on whether or not to conceive or abort their fetus. However, they must also be able to prove that, had they been informed, they would have aborted their abnormal fetus. However, the claim that the plaintiff would have had an abortion if they had known that they would be having an abnormal child is somewhat…show more content…
However, the doctor does not need to disclose all risks or recommend all available testing procedures. For example, in the case of Munro v. Regents of the University of California, the court held that the doctor was not under an obligation to recommend a Tay-Sachs test when the doctor had no reason to suspect his patients were at any more at risk for Tay-Sachs that the general population, when the risk of Tay-Sachs among the general population was between 1 in 200 and 1 in 300, and when the Tay-Sachs test was "generally useless" for the vast majority of
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