P-I Chooses Surprisingly Tame Headline

There is no doubt that the reports of a family that intentionally stunted the growth of their disabled daughter so she would be easier to care for are bizarre and surprising. But what Seattlest finds even more bizarre and surprising is that the P-I, known of late for finding one small, boozy detail of a story and then blowing it up to inappropriately Herculean proportions, chose to entirely omit the detail that the condition the 9 year-old girl suffers from--static encephalopathy--is very often the result of excessive fetal exposure to alcohol.

So maybe something along the lines of "Drunks Stuntin' Punkin'" was in order.

Are the research interns are asleep at the wheel over there, because we'd expect some Post-style headlines from the "Where there's smoke" crew at the P-I. Our gut tells us, however, that if the hospital approved the hormonal growth stunting treatments, that they must have covered this territory already. The intentionally-dwarfing-someone's-child territory, however, we're pretty sure that's uncharted so far in the land of medical ethics. What happened with that ethics board to persuade them to do this?

Update: First, we're taking a swipe at the P-I and sensationalism, and NOT trying to start a sensationalist thread of our own. We said we don't think fetal alcohol exposure was involved (especially not in a case this severe), so please be advised. Second, eagle-eyed commenter Matt pointed out a BBC article on this, and we found an MSNBC report from November of last year. Both discuss Children's Hospital bioethics board member Dr. Douglas Diekema, who was one of the authors of a scientific paper published in October about the procedure. All we can say at this point is that this seems to be quite the bioethical porcupine.