Baby Alexandra

This is with reference to the discussion wrt the UNCRPD article on right to life, specifically the case of Baby Alexandra. I mentioned about surgery to save a Down's Syndrome baby, to which was raised the issue of whether a Down's Syndrome baby can be saved through surgery since it's a chromosomal deficiency. Here is the relevant quotation:

"The case of Baby Alexandra in 1980 and the trial of Dr Leonard Arthur in 1981, are two of the British examples on which a great deal of public and professional attention has been focused. In the former, a local authority applied for a child with Down’s syndrome to be made a ward of the court after her parents had refused to give consent to life-saving surgery. One hospital had attempted to protect the child and ensure that she had the treatment by alerting the local authority. However, when she was subsequently transferred to another hospital for surgery, the surgeon declined to operate having heard the parents’ wishes. The local authority was eventually successful and the child survived.

In the second case, a consultant paediatrician was charged with murder, (later reduced to attempted murder) and acquitted after having prescribed sedation and nursing care only for a baby with Down’s Syndrome whose parents did not wish him to survive. The procedure inevitably resulted in the child’s death."

from DISABLED PEOPLE AND EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS: A review of the implications of the 1998 Human Rights Act for disabled children and adults in the UK by Luke Clements and Janet Read, 2003, The Policy Press, UK

Further:
Some medical conditions seen in children with Down syndrome require surgery. For example, about 40% of children with Down syndrome have congenital heart defects. Some of these defects are mild and may fix themselves, and some heart defects are more severe and will require
surgery. Children with Down syndrome can have intestinal defects that also require surgery.

So we can conclude that it's not that Down's Syndrome can be cured by the medical problems associated with being born with an extra Chromosome can be overcome by a variety of ways and surgery is one of them.