The “Wrongful Life” Debate
As briefly mentioned in a prior post and discussed in a Connecticut opinion released last Friday, courts continue struggling to apply standard negligence principles in the context of genetic science, especially in the area of “wrongful life.” In a typical wrongful life case, a physician or geneticist fails to diagnose a severe genetic problem in a fetus. The problem is typically so severe that the parents allege that they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known of the problem. When the child—or a parent acting on the child’s behalf—brings a claim in court alleging that the physician or geneticist was negligent in failing to diagnose the problem, it is referred to as a “wrongful life” claim.
In tort law, damages are generally compensatory in nature—they are awarded with the goal of returning the injured party to the position he or she held before the injury occurred. In a slip and fall case, for example, a successful plaintiff would recover damages calculated to compensate for medical expenses and income lost as a result of the injury. In the context of a wrongful life claim, however, compensatory damages raise logical problems. The basic claim is that the physician or geneticist made a mistake. Had the mistake not been made, the plaintiff asserts, his or her parents would have terminated a pregnancy.
