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this case rocked the med center, particularly texas children's hospital and ever ethics professor in the city.
just teaches you -- know WHEN to intubate. this child should NEVER have been intubated. he never had any chance for life. and yet, HE GOT ICU Level care, [thousands of dollars a day] for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, while other kids, who could've used those resources and that money, were denied it. AND HE WAS FULL CODE. 😕 which is totally ridiculous. it would be like stopping the hospital and calling in everyone to resuscitate a corpse. totally ridiculous.
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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3047420
No villains in this sad story
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
If any of you think Texas Children's Hospital is hard-hearted in going to court to seek to take 4 1/2 -month-old Sun Hudson off life-support machines, consider this:
Texas law allowed them to do it months ago without going to court.
What's more, some experts in medical ethics consider the Texas law to be a model.
If you haven't kept up with the story, Sun was born with a form of dwarfism that is almost always fatal not long after birth. What's more, it typically restricts the growth of the rib cage and lungs, so that as the rest of the baby grows he slowly suffocates.
Doctors at Texas Children's came to the conclusion last November that keeping Sun on a ventilator would only delay his death, possibly painfully.
But Wanda Hudson, the baby's mother, insisted that Sun be kept alive. Discussions with her did not get far. Among other things, she says her son was not conceived by a man but by the sun and that he will never die.
Last week, Probate Judge William McCulloch lifted an order barring doctors from removing Sun from the ventilator. That the order was put in place in the first place was somewhat extraordinary.
No takers for case
Under a law passed in 1999 and refined two years ago, the hospital had a clear process under which it could take the action it deemed best without going to court.
It was required to give the mother at least 48 hours' notice that a meeting on the doctors' recommendation would be held by the hospital's standing ethics committee.
She would be permitted to participate in the meeting if she chose. If the committee agreed with the doctors, which it did, the hospital was required to make a good faith effort to find a physician or a facility that would take over care of the baby. If none could be found within 10 days, the hospital could remove the baby from the ventilator.
Instead, the hospital offered to pay for a lawyer for Hudson so she could take the case before a judge.
Hospital officials say they contacted 40 institutions, but none would take the baby. Nor has any doctor or institution come forward in the wake of considerable publicity.
John Paris, Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College and a leading expert on end-of-life issues, calls the Texas law "a terrific statute." He says only California has a similar law.
The virtue of the law, he said, is that it is based on a reasonable process, not on heart-wrenching questions of whether the child can live and, if so, what kind of a life he will have.
Mothers cry, judges punt
"The problem is that very, very few judges will order the cessation of life-sustaining treatment in the face of a crying mother," he said. "The judge says, 'They don't pay me enough to do this.' He figures whichever way he rules, his decision will be appealed. The appeals judges, who don't have the mother in front of them, can make the decision."
The Texas law supposes that if no other doctor or institution will take the patient, then the doctors and ethics committee that dealt with it are very likely to be right.
Paris said in such cases, doctors are not "playing God," but trying to be ethical. And the notion that letting a person die may be the right thing to do is not new.
In one of the papers he has authored or co-authored on the question, Paris quoted Hippocrates: "To impose treatment on the patient overmastered by disease is to display an ignorance akin to madness."
Paris says another argument for the law is that family members are often paralyzed by such a decision. They are afraid of the guilt associated with the responsibility of choosing death.
Looking out for parent
Joan Krause, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and co-director of the Center's Health Law and Policy Institute, said she thought Texas Children's was taking a chance with this case out of "a concern whether the mother truly appreciates what is happening."
This is Texas, she said. They might have found a judge who would say, "The statute allowed you to do that but you took a different route and now I'm going to order you to continue."
Hudson's lawyer, providing vigorous representation, is appealing Judge McCulloch's decision. An expedited hearing is scheduled Tuesday at Houston's 1st Court of Appeals.
Then, perhaps, this sad story with no villains will come to an end.
just teaches you -- know WHEN to intubate. this child should NEVER have been intubated. he never had any chance for life. and yet, HE GOT ICU Level care, [thousands of dollars a day] for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, while other kids, who could've used those resources and that money, were denied it. AND HE WAS FULL CODE. 😕 which is totally ridiculous. it would be like stopping the hospital and calling in everyone to resuscitate a corpse. totally ridiculous.
===============
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3047420
No villains in this sad story
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
If any of you think Texas Children's Hospital is hard-hearted in going to court to seek to take 4 1/2 -month-old Sun Hudson off life-support machines, consider this:
Texas law allowed them to do it months ago without going to court.
What's more, some experts in medical ethics consider the Texas law to be a model.
If you haven't kept up with the story, Sun was born with a form of dwarfism that is almost always fatal not long after birth. What's more, it typically restricts the growth of the rib cage and lungs, so that as the rest of the baby grows he slowly suffocates.
Doctors at Texas Children's came to the conclusion last November that keeping Sun on a ventilator would only delay his death, possibly painfully.
But Wanda Hudson, the baby's mother, insisted that Sun be kept alive. Discussions with her did not get far. Among other things, she says her son was not conceived by a man but by the sun and that he will never die.
Last week, Probate Judge William McCulloch lifted an order barring doctors from removing Sun from the ventilator. That the order was put in place in the first place was somewhat extraordinary.
No takers for case
Under a law passed in 1999 and refined two years ago, the hospital had a clear process under which it could take the action it deemed best without going to court.
It was required to give the mother at least 48 hours' notice that a meeting on the doctors' recommendation would be held by the hospital's standing ethics committee.
She would be permitted to participate in the meeting if she chose. If the committee agreed with the doctors, which it did, the hospital was required to make a good faith effort to find a physician or a facility that would take over care of the baby. If none could be found within 10 days, the hospital could remove the baby from the ventilator.
Instead, the hospital offered to pay for a lawyer for Hudson so she could take the case before a judge.
Hospital officials say they contacted 40 institutions, but none would take the baby. Nor has any doctor or institution come forward in the wake of considerable publicity.
John Paris, Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College and a leading expert on end-of-life issues, calls the Texas law "a terrific statute." He says only California has a similar law.
The virtue of the law, he said, is that it is based on a reasonable process, not on heart-wrenching questions of whether the child can live and, if so, what kind of a life he will have.
Mothers cry, judges punt
"The problem is that very, very few judges will order the cessation of life-sustaining treatment in the face of a crying mother," he said. "The judge says, 'They don't pay me enough to do this.' He figures whichever way he rules, his decision will be appealed. The appeals judges, who don't have the mother in front of them, can make the decision."
The Texas law supposes that if no other doctor or institution will take the patient, then the doctors and ethics committee that dealt with it are very likely to be right.
Paris said in such cases, doctors are not "playing God," but trying to be ethical. And the notion that letting a person die may be the right thing to do is not new.
In one of the papers he has authored or co-authored on the question, Paris quoted Hippocrates: "To impose treatment on the patient overmastered by disease is to display an ignorance akin to madness."
Paris says another argument for the law is that family members are often paralyzed by such a decision. They are afraid of the guilt associated with the responsibility of choosing death.
Looking out for parent
Joan Krause, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and co-director of the Center's Health Law and Policy Institute, said she thought Texas Children's was taking a chance with this case out of "a concern whether the mother truly appreciates what is happening."
This is Texas, she said. They might have found a judge who would say, "The statute allowed you to do that but you took a different route and now I'm going to order you to continue."
Hudson's lawyer, providing vigorous representation, is appealing Judge McCulloch's decision. An expedited hearing is scheduled Tuesday at Houston's 1st Court of Appeals.
Then, perhaps, this sad story with no villains will come to an end.
