Who Should Survive? (1971)

Abstract

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Executive Vice President of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, opens the film by describing, along with a simulated depiction, a birthing scene of a Down's Syndrome infant with duodenal atresia who is born to parents who decide not to operate. The infant dies of dehydration at Johns Hopkins Hospital after 15 days without food or water. A panel consisting of Dr. Renee Fox, Professor of Sociology; Dr. William Curran, Professor of Legal Medicine; Dr. Robert E. Cooke, Professor of Pediatrics; Dr. John Fletcher, President of Inter-met Seminary (Interfaith Associates in Metropolitan Theological Education Inc.); and Mrs. Sidney Callahan, psychologist and author (Hastings Center Scholar), discuss the ramifications of such decisions. The discussion takes place and is filmed on September 9, 1971. The narrator voice is Dr. William G. Bartholome, a pediatrician, who was involved in the case as a pediatric resident. According to Dr. Albert Jonsen's Birth of Bioethics book, the film was shown at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on the evening prior to the Center's opening to the public.