An attorney affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund has used litigation to stop a Tennessee hospital from unilaterally withdrawing life support from an infant. From the story:
East Tennessee
Children’s Hospital said it would continue caring for 9-month-old Gabriel Palmer from Sweetwater. The attorney for Catherine Palmer, the baby’s mother, said Gabriel was born prematurely. He was diagnosed with a rare disease that family members said is affecting the growth of his wind pipe.
In court papers filed Monday, the family’s attorney said Children’s considered Gabriel’s care futile. He said an agreement has been made with the hospital and believes his client’s complaint will eventually be dropped. “I filed a complaint today seeking a temporary restraining order to make sure no care is withdrawn from the child,” said Knoxville attorney John Threadgill, who represents the Palmer family. In the complaint, Threadgill claims a Children’s official told Gabriel’s mother “ETCH was going to cease Gabriel’s respirator, medications, pulse oximeter and milk feeding because they considered his care futile.” The complaint goes on to read that the mother said the staff member told her that a committee of doctors “would meet soon to make the formal decision of withdrawal of treatment, but that the decision was a foregone conclusion.”
The complaint states “Gabriel Palmer’s condition is stable. He is not dying, and he could live for many years.” Threadgill pulled the restraining order request from Monday’s court docket after attending a meeting a ETCH. “There was an ethics committee meeting of the hospital where they were to decide the future care of the child,” Threadgill said. “The decision was made that the child will remain a patient at least for now at the Children’s Hospital.”
That’s how it is done!
This is why laws that give ethics committees the power to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment–like the one in Texas–must be fought tooth and tong. If extending life, when that is what the patient or parent wants, ceases to be a fundamental purpose of medicine, if the values of doctors or an ethics committee can trump those of patients and families, none of us is safe.
November 24th, 2009 | 4:38 am
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November 24th, 2009 | 10:47 am
I suppose we can all wait for him to live a little longer and die a little more painfully. BTW, Wesley, are YOU paying the hospital bill?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am
You are a cold fish, History Writer. No, a frozen fish.
November 24th, 2009 | 10:56 am
LifeNews reports that the hospital considered his care “futile.” First Things said a long time ago that there were treatments that are futile, but no futile people/lives.
In what sense do they mean care for this boy was futile: that his life is not worth living, his life is not worth the expenditure of resources, that they don’t think it will help get to a point where his life is worth living, the treatment will will not improve his condition…
November 24th, 2009 | 12:36 pm
[...] Wesley J. Smith writing at Secondhand Smoke, First Things: “An attorney affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund has used litigation to stop a Tennessee hospital from unilaterally withdrawing life support from an infant.” [...]
November 24th, 2009 | 1:59 pm
HW-I thought you were pro choice? Oh, I guess that only applies to when a doctor dismembers a fetus and dumps it in the garbage can per it’s parents’ request, not when a parent actually wants their child’s care to continue. My bad.
November 24th, 2009 | 4:58 pm
It is interesting to me that all these cases seem to be with people who are either unresponsive due to brain injury, or babies.
Is it easier to “pull the plug” when we see the patient as not-really-there? as in: not interacting with the world. Or, put another way, not functioning “properly” by doing *stuff* for other people.
November 25th, 2009 | 7:21 am
safepres: I AM pro-choice. Hospitals make choices too, such as determining that further care is futile. And doctors make choices about whether to be OB/GYNs and/or perform abortions. Why is it that I detect the odor of Operation Rescue wafting about your posts?
November 25th, 2009 | 7:25 am
Wesley: I asked the question rhetorically about who pays. Of course, the answer is “we all pay.” I think you’re well enough aware of the economics of medical care and health insurance to understand that. What I find difficult to understand is how you can justify denouncing the projected expense of “Obamacare” while at the same time advocating policies that are known to drive up medical costs.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The two are unrelated. Obamacare’s cost–badly underplayed by the budgetary game playing–is way higher than necessary. Covering the people who want insurance but can’t afford/get it can be done for a far lower cost with less government intrusion. My model is the Medicare Part D, which relies on private competition and doesn’t require a huge bureaucracy. Some complain because it costs the Feds money. Not me. Prescription coverage is important and I think it is fine for the govt. to defray part of the cost. Moreover, it is the only government program of which I am aware that is coming in well UNDER its projected cost. We can cover the uninsured by increasing real competition options and let people but basic policies. We can and should give vouchers or tax credits to assist. We can require that all comers be taken or that an “assigned risk” pool be established with insurance company money as they do in auto insurance to make sure bad risks get insurance.
November 25th, 2009 | 2:49 pm
Wesley — You say: “Covering the people who want insurance but can’t afford/get it can be done for a far lower cost with less government intrusion.” That simply begs the question — Republicans had the White House for 8 years while George W. Bush was spending us into near-bankruptcy, and they did absolutely nothing to alleviate the lack of affordable health care. Now, suddenly, they’re just overflowing with ideas on how to save a few bucks. And, in their usual way, the “saving” will be carried on the backs of those least able to afford it. Why should they now expect people to take them (or you) seriously? When did YOU first begin speaking out about the lack of affordable health care?
November 25th, 2009 | 7:39 pm
Ah, but HW, PC applies to the individual’s right to control his or her own body, NOT the hospital’s or doctor’s right to screw with someone else’s body. I would think someone with your incredible powers of logic would know that.
November 26th, 2009 | 8:16 am
safepres: You call it “screw[ing] with someone else’s body” when a hospital decides to discontinue treatment that has no prospect of success? The kind of unlimited treatment you seem to favor requires allocation of limited and expensive resources that could be put to better use treating patients who have some chance of recovery. If all the so-called right-to-lifers who are clamoring about discontinuing futile care would agree to pick up the tab for these patients’ continued hospitalization, or would finance a couple of neonatal ICUs I might take them (and you) more seriously. Why not, as the saying goes, put your money where your mouth is?
November 26th, 2009 | 11:31 am
I make a poor living enrolling seniors in medicare advantage. the current system is very broken. Most anything would be an improvement.
Part D is a partial success but don’t ask any senior who is paying 100% ($1720) in their “donut hole” hell.
Yes I am pro life. We know more today than Roe v. Wade, 40 years ago and 50 million humans dead. PETA is more effective with whales than we are with human life. I believe in the sanctity of human life and human rights, just like MLK. I can’t have any rights if I don’t have life. That is most fundamental.
Watch in-utero ultrasonography of babies that “learn” behavior in-utero. Listen closely to that beating human heart. Count the ten fingers and ten toes and tell me that is not a human being. Because it can’t vote and we can’t hear it cry, we sleep ok when we kill it.
The emperor has no clothes. He is sitting naked in front of us and we whistle and look the other way.
I don’t want to have to pay for that with any of my tax dollars. I wish I could draw the circle in the sand much wider but I cannot.
How did we reach this level of disregard for human life? 50 million dead is 7 times worse than Auschwitz.
In 99% of the cases you had your free choice when you decided to have unprotected sex. The African American race is being decimated. I think 3 of 5 are being aborted.
Back to health care:
1- If we required the politicians and the president to have the identical plan/terms and conditions, I know they would get it ‘right’.
2- Any controversial provisions , eg ‘Hyde language’ in the bill. Put a “sunset provision” on it. And in ten years it must be reaffirmed by the general population or it goes away permanently. I’d take those odds anyday. This would help ameliorate the pain from the Stupak language that I support now.
We need a new health plan. Obamacare deserves a chance but not in its present state. I would have voted for Bushcare but he didn’t have enough guts. He capitulated and delivered part D which HAS brought prices down.
November 26th, 2009 | 7:15 pm
HW-many pro lifers DO help fund NICUs, help pregnant women with finances, feed the starving, etc. You just don’t want to admit it because the absence of such efforts would help you and others like you force your heartless agenda on patients and their families. Yes, it IS screwing around with someone’s body when you deny them a medical treatment they need to stay alive. DUH.
December 3rd, 2009 | 11:32 am
I agree, safepres. I have been away from this blog for some time, but my recollection is that HW likes to bandy about this question but does not like to entertain the answers. The last time I mentioned some folks who are putting their money where their mouths are, the response was to belittle them for not doing enough. I am sorry that we do not all individually have the finances of Bill Gates, but we do pull together; and maybe more so if we were not being raked over the coals just for doing the best we can in our circumstances.
I myself would be happy to chip in something for this little guy, but that is not what HW means. HW wants to know why I would possibly object to having an inefficient and untrustworthy middleman like the good ole Federal Government — which commits extortion and calls it social justice because they didn’t waste or mismanage ALL of your money.
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