Posted on 07/06/2017 7:39:53 AM PDT by Heartlander
Some have commented on the case as if that is a product of the UKs socialized medical system. Its not. It is a product of utilitarian bioethics advocacy for the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatmentcalled futile carebased on the doctors or a hospital bioethics committees values on the moral worth of the ill patients life and/or the high cost of care
Similar authoritarian care withdrawals as has been imposed on Charlie Gard have happened here tooand to very ill patients of all ages. I get into a few of these cases involving infants today over at First Things.
In Canada, doctors treating Baby Joseph insisted on the right to remove life support from a terminally ill baby and refused a tracheotomy that would have permitted the baby to go home to die with his family. Priests for Life eventually paid for the baby to be flown to the USA for the procedure, which was successful. Joseph died several months later in his parents arms.
The Charlie Gard case is unique in only one respect: It is the only futile care case I know of in which the hospital and the law is preventing discharge to another facility or allowing the patient to go home to die. From, Whose Baby is Charlie Gard, Anyway?
The refusal to allow Charlies parents to remove their baby boy from the hospital is an act of bioethical aggression that will extend futile-care controversies, creating a duty to die at the time and place of doctors choosing.
And that raises a crucial liberty question: Whose baby is Charlie Gard? His parents? Or are sick babiesand others facing futile-care impositionsultimately owned by the hospital and the state?
Again. This isnt about socialismalthough that issue is relevant. More, it is about cost containmentincluding in free market systemsand the attempt by the bioethics movement and medical intelligentsia to replace the equality/sanctity of life ethic with a more utilitarian quality of life view.
For more on the danger posed by bioethics generally, hit this link.
And It happens more frequently with older folks. We will be having dinner tomorrow night with friends, where the wife ( age 82) was told by five of six doctors that she needed to just go to a hospice and prepare to die. She had had a mechanical Aortic Heart Valve replacement and is was malfunctioning, which was leading to Pulmonary Edema. Only the one doctor, an Indian BTW, said that he saw no reason why she could not successfully undergo the replacement of the mechanical valve with a “pig valve” even though that procedure does involve cracking the chest. She has survived the surgery and has never felt better. So I would say that we all need to beware of “Liberal” doctors who think we need to “move over” to make room for the younger folks. The idea that doctors think it’s “their duty” to “decide” who gets what kind of care should be of major concern to us all.
Terri Schivo (sp) Yeb Bush murdered her.
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