Two Doctors Fired After They Incorrectly Declare Baby Dead

NEW DELHI – An Indian hospital has fired two doctors fired for mistakenly declaring a newborn baby boy dead. The baby was born at the Max Super Speciality Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, New Delhi, last Thursday but pronounced dead two hours later, the boy’s grandfather, Praveen Malik, told CNN. His mother had given birth to twins but the boy’s sister was declared stillborn.

The parents were on their way to a cremation ground when they noticed “some movements” inside one of the polythene bags that the hospital gave them with the babies’ bodies.

“When we opened the bag, we found the boy breathing. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Malik said.

Full story here.

Wow. Seems like not a lot of time passes between declaring a baby dead and trying to cremate it. I feel like you should have to wait for long enough so that it's clear someone isn't just sleeping. Take more time, throw some more tests in there, go medieval and throw some holy water on 'em, because this can't happen!

Some close calls are ok: planes are going to try to land when others are taking off, people are going to try and cross the street without looking, and some times you're going to eat some thai food that maybe you shouldn't have- that's all fine. Where we've got to draw the line is here: burning up alive babies that we think are dead isn't great. I'll even go out on a limb and say that's unacceptable.

If you're the doctors you've got to be psyched that you got fired, right? There's no way you can correctly declare somebody dead ever again after this. So hey, this was a close one, but everybody won! A baby that was alive didn't get disposed of as if it was dead, and the doctors who almost disposed of said baby got to find new careers!