Shades of Schiavo: euthanasia case of girl nagging at Mitt Romney

Shades of Schiavo: euthanasia case of girl nagging at Mitt Romney | Naked Politics: On the day Mitt Romney announced the support of social conservatives, the Republican blogosphere buzzed with reports about how a state agency under the former Massachusetts governor tried to pull the plug on a brain-damaged girl who ultimately came out of a coma. The report about Haleigh Poutre surfaced on The Shark Tank blog in a sign that some conservatives – and especially social-conservatives – aren’t comfortable with the Republican frontrunner.

Romney said little about the case at the time, according to news reports. “Gov. Mitt Romney,” The Boston Globe wrote in 2006, “wouldn't directly respond to a question about his stance on the right to die in general, saying in a statement: 'At the present time, my concern is with this young girl and her current status. In light of reported improvements in her medical condition, it should be clear to everyone that no action should be taken to end this girl's life.' "

In a written statement, Romney's campaign says he didn't just stand quietly by: "Gov. Romney criticized the state's handling of the case, ordered an investigation and put in place safeguards to prevent it from happening again. His actions speak for themselves."

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'Baby Joseph,' focus of treatment dispute, dies in his sleep

Joseph Maraachli, the infant who became the center of an international end-of-life debate, died peacefully in his sleep at his Windsor, Ontario, home, a spokesperson for the family said Wednesday.

Joseph's family had refused to accept a recommendation by a Canadian hospital to remove the boy's breathing tube and allow him to die. In March, the infant received a tracheotomy at a children's hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. "By providing him with this common palliative procedure, we've given Joseph the chance to go home and be with his family after spending so much of his young life in the hospital," said Dr. Robert Wilmott, chief of pediatrics for SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in St. Louis.

In court papers, doctors in Canada said there was no hope for recovery. They would not perform a tracheotomy because they considered it to be invasive and not recommended for patients who require a long-term breathing machine.

Parents Moe and Sana Maraachli refused to accept the recommendation. The Maraachlis' daughter, Zeina, had died at home in 2002 after a tracheotomy after suffering similar complications, and the family wanted to offer the same care to their son.Joseph was "very peaceful, in no pain whatsoever, no distress," when he died.

The family countered assertions that Joseph was nonresponsive, blind and deaf, she said. Instead, the boy could hear the parents' voices and look for them. The family believed that, after a tracheotomy, Joseph could be freed from machinery. The parents said that they, rather than physicians, should make a judgment on quality of life.

Nurses helped the family provide 24-hour care for Joseph in his final months. The child was on almost no medication and apparently was in no pain. CNN

Removal of life support may occur too early in some cases

There are notable differences in mortality rates after traumatic brain injury from hospital to hospital. The results of a new Canadian study have found that those differences may be attributable to individual hospital practices; specifically, how different hospitals handle the removal of life support from such patients.

. . . In a number of cases of death due to withdrawal of life support, death occurred within the first three days of care. In most cases, life support was removed because the patient had a poor chance of survival, poor long-term neurological prognosis, or a prognosis which was not compatible with his or her wishes.
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Though all are legitimate reasons to cease life-sustaining therapy with a patient, researchers warned that some trauma centers may be making these calls too early. Especially given that many traumatic brain injury cases – often the result of car accidents, assaults, etc. – occur in young people whose chances of recovering from such injury are greater than someone who is older, three days of care may not be enough time to give an accurate prognosis.

The authors admitted several limitations to the study, among which was the reliance on patient medical records which may have led to an underestimation of the frequency of life support withdrawal. However, the results leave us with important things to consider. Researchers encourage doctors to communicate frequently with families of severe brain injury patients if removal of life support or life-sustaining therapy may become necessary. Healthwatch MD

Baby Joseph Futile Care Case Has Emotional Non-Futile Care Wrinkle

Baby Joseph Futile Care Case Has Emotional Non Futile Care Wrinkle » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: The request for a tracheotomy raises different ethical issues than requesting that life support be maintained in hospital. In my view, refusing the tracheotomy surgery is not a futile care imposition, since the surgery is not primarily intended to maintain the baby’s life, but rather is an elective procedure, to allow the parents to bring him home to die. That is a completely understandable, nay, laudable, desire on their part, but it presents a different wrinkle to the situation than the usual futile care dispute. And let me emphasize: It wouldn’t be an issue if the hospital weren’t trying to force the baby off life support.

Liberty Counsel Obtains Emergency Order for Food and Water to Elderly Patient

On May 22 a judge in Brevard County, Florida, issued an emergency injunction ordering a hospital to provide food and water to an eighty-three-year-old woman. Carrie Johnson recently suffered several strokes and was hospitalized. Against the objections of her son and granddaughter, the hospital stopped giving her food and water. Johnson did not execute a Durable Power of Attorney or any directive prior to her hospitalization. Throughout her life, Johnson told her son and granddaughter that she wanted to be kept alive with basic medical intervention and treatment, including artificially provided food and water, if she became unable to care for herself.

On May 18, the hospital terminated food and water to Johnson. She is beginning to show signs of severe dehydration, including severely cracked lips and discoloration. She is in pain. After the hearing, the Judge called the Hospital to advise that the order to reestablish food and water was on its way and the hospital should obey it. The administrator on duty said it would be "passed up to someone higher." When the attorney hand delivered the emergency order to the hospital this afternoon, the hospital authorities escorted him off the property. It is still not clear whether the hospital has obeyed the order. Liberty Counsel

On Both Sides of the Atlantic, a Debate Over Quality of Life

Two legal cases dealing with the rights of family members to decide life or death for a critically injured loved one have touched off a storm of controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, landing one mother in prison for life, and locking a young couple in battle with the very doctors charged with keeping their infant alive. FoxNews

Someone's there

Men and women in extremis often find themselves facing the question of life's meaning. Not all of us at the end of our life-journeys will experience epiphanies, but all of us have the potential to be so blessed. And many of us, even if immobile, physically unresponsive and without reasonable hope of recovery, might still engage most important matters — things like forgiveness, repentance, acceptance, commitment, love, God — perhaps the most momentous matters we will ever have considered over the course of our lives. Are such vital encounters worth less than running and jumping? Is ending a life of pure contemplation less objectionable that ending one that includes physical activity? JWR

Doctor Refused Care to Baby Girl Born at 22 Weeks

Necie Franklin of Flowood, Mississippi, told LifeSiteNews.com that Dr. Kenny Robbins of River Oaks Hospital refused to treat daughter Jessa Mackenzie after she was born suddenly in May, because she was three days shy of 23 weeks gestation - at which point he would have considered treating her at the hospital's Level II neonatal intensive care unit. She says Jessa's heart beat for about an hour and a half before she died, during which time the family pleaded for treatment, to no avail.

Dr. Robbins said "resuscitation was not indicated" for Jessa. Only after 23 weeks would parents be allowed to choose whether to permit resuscitation, said Robbins, "because outcomes are very poor in this age range and even those who survive have a high risk of permanent complications."

Dr. Paul Byrne, M.D., the Director of Pediatrics and Neonatology at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Oregon, Ohio, disagrees. "There is no specific gestational age at which a baby cannot survive outside the uterus." He has known of infants as young as 18 weeks' gestation to survive. The limiting factor is related to whether the baby's trachea is large enough to allow a 2.5 millimeter tube to be inserted to aid breathing. Byrne said that Robbins' use of the term "potentially viable" was "not the correct approach."

End-of-life care: Who decides when to pull the plug?

The notion that a patient or family member can require any type of care, regardless of its propriety, has long been disavowed by the American Medical Association. The AMA's Code of Medical Ethics has recognized this principle since at least 1994, when it published an opinion that states: "Physicians are not ethically obligated to deliver care that, in their best professional judgment, will not have a reasonable chance of benefitting their patients. Patients should not be given treatments simply because they demand them." In the same opinion, however, the AMA also found that "Denial of treatment should be justified by reliance on openly stated ethical principles and acceptable standards of care . . . not on the concept of 'futility,' which cannot be meaningfully defined." Modern Medicine

Care burden 'makes patients ill'

Some chronically ill patients are so overburdened by treatment that it makes their health worse, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. BBC News

Withdrawing Nutrition from Children Ethical Within Limits

Nutritional support can ethically be withdrawn or withheld from certain children with terminal illnesses or with severe, irreversible disabilities, the American Academy of Pediatrics has determined. Withdrawing Nutrition from Children Ethical Within Limits

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Ethics on Value of Life the Dilemma for Health Care Reform

Oncologists often face the questions about life and death often because they deal with a disease, cancer, that kills many people. Some therapies promise only to give a few extra months of life. Some of those therapies are painful, invasive, or debilitating. The ethical concerns about cost of a procedure vs. the length of time it can prolong a person’s life is an issue many physicians face with their patients. So how does a doctor make those choices? Digital Journal

Is Obama the first pro-euthanasia president?

The government already knows that medical care in the last weeks of life is where most medical dollars get spent. Same goes for money spent on people with significant, although not necessarily terminal disabilities. Marry that to the President’s commitment to cut health care costs, a society that increasingly thinks helping people die is just dandy, and a medical profession that is increasingly utilitarian, and you have the perfect plan to make people with severe medical problems, including those with disabilities, into useless eaters. Disability Matters

Critics try to undo futile care law

Legislation pushed by Texas Right to Life requires life-sustaining treatment to continue for patients deemed futile by doctors until a transfer to another medical facility can be arranged, if their family requests it. Currently, hospitals can stop life support treatment after 10 days in certain cases if the patient is terminally or irreversibly ill and cannot express his or her wishes about treatment. "No other state in the country has a law that Draconian," said Rep. Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican. "The balance of power is completely shifted against the patients and the families." Houston Chronicle

The Coming Medical Conscription to Require Doctors to be Complicit in Assisted Suicides

The day may be coming, and it might not be that far away, when doctors who are asked to help kill a patient--that is, to intentionally cause the patient's life to end--will be forced to either do the deed or refer to a doctor he or she knows will do the deed. Wesley J. Smith This article is VERY alarming...though I'm afraid to say, not unexpected.

Prof Accuses Hospital of 'Culture of Euthanasia'

A key report has accused a Hampshire hospital of a “culture of involuntary euthanasia on the wards” after questions were raised over the deaths of several patients. A senior doctor, Dr Jane Barton, in charge of the ward known as the ‘end of the line’ where almost 100 patients died at the time, faces a hearing with the General Medical Council later this year. The Christian Institute

Couples Forced Into Abortions or Have Disabled Child as NHS Refuses to Fund Tests

Couples with serious genetic conditions in their family have been forced to face the agonising decision to bring up a disabled child or terminate a pregnancy because the NHS is refusing to pay for testing, experts said. Telegraph.co.uk

NHS Meltdown: Blow the Whistle on Neglect of Elderly Patients--and You Take the Fall

Our world is so upside-down. A nurse secretly filmed terrible neglect of elderly UK hospital patients--and she is sanctioned for misconduct! Whistle-Blower Elder Neglect From the Original Story

Kaylee Wallace – Disturbing Coverage and Unasked Questions

Once in awhile, a story hits the news that is so heartwrenching and tragic that it seems rude and cold to ask questions - let alone challenge - elements of the story. Often, this is exactly the time that hard questions should be asked. Kaylee Wallace Further Wallace Update

Competing Medical Futility Bills Introduced in Texas -- One to Stop it, One to Defend it

HB 2964 is an explicit defense of Futile Care Theory. The only bill that would eliminate most of the injustice that is the heart of futile care is HB 3325. My worry is that like last time, the real point of HB 2964 is to cynically confuse and divide the anti futile care forces, thereby allowing the current unjust law to remain firmly in place. Texas Futility Bills