Children's Hospital of Philadelphia 
To our Facebook community:

We hear you.

We feel and understand your frustration, but we are unable to comment publicly on individual cases.
Each child is unique, and our goal is always to provide the best possible medical care for each individual patient.
Please know that CHOP strives to partner with families and make appropriate decisions based on input from many sources, none more important than the patient’s family.
Anything less would be completely inconsistent with the values we work to uphold every day.
We are also taking action to review all existing policies to make sure that they reflect the core values we live by, including our deep commitment to not discriminate in any way.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is an institution. But more important, we are a team of men and women whose life’s work and greatest passion are the care of all sick children and the support of their families. To be entrusted with the care of these children is a privilege, one we take with the utmost seriousness.

Let's hope that this will lead the ethics committee to careful deliberation and this doctor to reconsider his beliefs about those with cognitive disabilities.

Chrissy Rivera, a 36-year-old high school English teacher, says she hopes Amelia will continue to receive care at CHOP, where she's been a patient since infancy. "We've had many positive experiences at CHOP," she says. "This was one doctor and one social worker."
But she says she and her husband, a real estate agent, understand Amelia could die in six months to a year if she does not get a transplant. Right now, Amelia, who also goes by "Mia," does not talk or walk, but does smile, play, roll around on the floor, interact with people and "love her two brothers to pieces," Chrissy Rivera says. "She's a magnet when people meet her."

The doctor told them that he would not recommend a kidney transplant for their young daughter because she is mentally disabled, Chrissy Rivera said.
"And I said to the doctor, 'is this what you want us to let happen -- do you want us to let her die?' And he said 'yes,'" Rivera told NBC10 Monday.
Three-year-old Amelia Rivera of Stratford, N.J. needs the transplant because of complications from Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, described by WebMD as "an extremely rare chromosomal disorder caused by a partial deletion (monosomy) of the short arm of chromosome 4."