Surviving The Unsurvivable

Today's amazing "feel good story" involves Abigail Rose Beutler, born after a prenatal diagnosis of invariably fatal renal agenesis. Faced with this terrible diagnosis, Abigail's parents, Daniel Beutler and Congresswoman Jaimie Herrera Beutler of Ohio, elected to embark on an experimental therapy - weekly treatments of amnioinfusion, instilling solution into the amniotic sac, to replenish the meager fluid surrounding the fetus in an attempt to allow some semblance of normal lung development. After five weeks of therapy at John's Hopkins, little Abigail was born, weighing in at less than three pounds. 

A day after the fifth infusion, the congresswoman went into preterm labor. After four days of trying to prevent preterm delivery, the baby arrived.

“The doctors and nurses were prepared for the worst, but immediately after she was born, she drew a breath and cried,” Herrera Beutler said. “After a few minutes, it was clear that her lungs were very well developed for a baby born so early.  The infusions had stopped the Potter’s Sequence.”

To be sure, Abigail still needs to overcome significant hurdles including kidney transplant. However, this remarkable case is truly historic.

But riddle me this - how would little Abigail have fared had PPACA's IPAB been in place to review the cost/benefit ratio of fetal therapy? 

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam