The Linares Affair

On August 2, 1988, 6-month-old Samuel Linares aspirated a balloon at a birthday party and was unconscious and blue when his father, Rudolfo, found him. Nine months later, his father used a gun to keep medical staff at bay while he disconnected the respirator keeping his comatose son alive. Mr. Linares ignited much soul-searching among pediatricians, lawyers, and ethicists about treatment decisions for profoundly damaged children. Public discussion of the ethics of forgoing life support in pediatric care moves like a pendulum betweeen fear of inappropriately allowing children to die and fear of unrestrained life-supporting technology. In the early 1970s, physicians’ and theologians challenged accepted tenets of law and ethics by proposing that pediatricians should allow critically ill or severely disabled babies to die without the most aggressive use of technology. By 1982, Baby Doe caught the nation's moral imagination and raised the possibility that withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining procedures amounted to sanctioned infanticide. This concern led to restrictions on the right of parents and doctors to decide to discontinue treatment. Public sympathy for Mr. Linares suggests that the pendulum may be swinging back toward a less restrictive public policy about forgoing life-sustaining treatment in children.