Man Dies After Judge Refuses Request to Reinstate Life Support

Lifenews.com ^ | November 19, 2003 | Steven Ertelt

[nickcarraway]

Portland, OR (LifeNews.com) -- Douglas Schmidt died Tuesday at a Portland hospital, just one day after a local judge refused a request by his sister and partner to reinstate life support.

Schmidt died minutes before 8 AM this morning and his mother and stepfather, Victor and Sandra Wierzba, were present at the time.

"He died peacefully and with dignity," Victor Wierzba told the Portland Oregonian newspaper.

Greg Schmidt, Douglas' older brother, said his family was drained and was just glad everything was over.

Douglas was removed from a ventilator on Sunday, despite the objections of his partner and sister. Other family members supported the decision.

However, Werth Sargent, Schmidt's partner, said the decision to remove life support was cruel.

"If God makes the decision, that's one thing," he said. "This wasn't God."

Stephanie Wight, Douglas' sister, agreed with Sargent and accused Schmidt's other family members and the court-appointed guardian of wanting to end his life when there was still hope for his recovery.

Circuit Judge Katherine Tennyson on Tuesday rejected their attempt to put him back on a ventilator.

"I see no reason to change the decision that has been made," she said.

Schmidt, 37, had been unconscious and severely brain damaged since March when he collapsed in his Portland apartment after a seizure when his medication for epilepsy ran out.

Though Terri Schiavo, the subject of a similar debate in Florida, is not in a coma and is able to breathe on her own, the seizure put Schmidt in one.

He has been in Portland Adventist Medical Center since late October when he was moved from a nearby convalescent care home because of serious medical conditions involving pneumonia, a collapsed lung, infection and kidney failure.

Sandra Wierzba, of California, said she loves her son but decided to, along with a court appointed guardian and some other family members, remove him from the ventilator keeping him alive. Unlike Terri, he is not responding to any attempts to communicate.

"If he gave me one look of acknowledgment that he knows who I am," she said, "then I would fight for his life."

Schmidt's sister says the decision was wrong.

"Somebody is killing somebody, and it's not right," Wight said. “At least to the very end I did what I could for him."

Schmidt ran out of the medication about eight days prior to the seizure. He was covered under a state program that paid $13 a day for the pills, but the program was cut from the Oregon state budget.

[nickcarraway]

Oregon Judge Rejects Woman's Request to Keep Brother on Life Support

[nickcarraway]

ping

[HiTech RedNeck]

However, Werth Sargent, Schmidt's partner, said the decision to remove life support was cruel.

Will the gays jump in on the pro-Terri side? Politics can make for very strange, er, bedfellows.

[happygrl]

Not comparable to Terry Schiavvo.

As his mother stated, he was on a ventilator, artificially keeping him alive and was not responsive. Perhaps he could have been weaned from the ventilator to breathe on his own.

As far as his medication expense, I know people who spend more than the $399 per month @ $13/day which his medication cost. If he had epilepsy, this may have interfered with his working.

All in all, a sad day for his family, but no cause to place blame. I think it was his time to go.

[Cicero]

Apart from the issue of who should have the say, a ventilator is artificial support and just not comparable with the issue of withholding food and water.

As a Catholic, I would have no quarrel with being removed from artificial heart or lung support, if there was no reasonable hope of recovery. I would not think it legitimate to withhold ordinary medicines, food, or water.

These issues are difficult, and unfortunately the Catholic Church has not yet spoken definitively on many of them. But the distinction seems perfectly obvious. You need not be kept alive by extraordinary means, but it's not permissible to withdraw ordinary means.

[Flying Circus]

It would be interesting to see what other responses there are...

My take is there is not much in common with Schiavo's case. Food and drink are basic necessities of life that we are morally obligated to assist others with. Breathing, on the other hand, should happen autonomously and we are not obligated to do it for them- especially when they are not recovering after the better part of a year.

May God have mercy on his soul... his "partner" could use some help too.

[nickcarraway]

I know people that cost 10 times or more $399 per month. But I don't think they don't deserve to live.

[ArneFufkin]

Who "taught" you the swallow reflex?

[Flying Circus]

No one. However eating and swallowing are a different class of behaviors than breathing. I need to make a voluntary decision to get food, chew and after an appropriate amount of time swallow. Breathing, on the other hand, is something happens without any decisions on my part to make it happen.

The mechanisms for eating are instinctive, but the steps to doing them require I be conscious and physically able to take the required actions. For any conscious effort I make to change my breathing, I must fight against the automatic drives of my body.

If I decide to stop breathing, as soon as I pass out my lungs go right back to breating on its own. If I choose to stop eating, I will not eat again until I decide to. If I pass out from thirst or hunger I will die where I lay (barring the intercession of someone else).

I do not eat asleep, but when we sleep, we don't stop breathing.

For every human being there is a period in our lives when we are dependent on another to take many of the steps for us to eat and drink or we would die of thirst or starvation. Within moments of birth babies begin breathing on their own or they are in serious trouble. If parents don't feel their children, they are legally responsible for neglect. If a child stops breathing, parents are only legaly negligent if by direct action, or knowing inaction they allowed the child to stop breathing.

[nickcarraway]

Well, I agree that there are differences from the Terri Schiavo case, but I think cases like these deserve closer inspection. Often doctors and hospitals are all to quick to give up hope. Plus, read what started this situation. I am against socialized medicine, and this is one of the problems I have. They getb to decide when your life is worth it.

[MHGinTN]

Excerpt from an essay here at FR:

In a recent article for First Things, Maureen L. Condic, PhD, Assistant professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, presents a convincing argument for meaning of the death protocol (used when organ harvesting is anticipated) to also be used when contemplating prenatal life. She has stated accurately that, “… the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.”

That is an accurate assessment of the meaning but there is confusion regarding this protocol because it addresses ‘brain death’, yet it doesn’t mean loss of thinking ability. It should not be assumed that ‘being alive’ as a human being is solely a function of higher brain functioning.

To paraphrase Dr. Condic’s assertion: 'to be alive as an ORGANISM, the organism is functioning as an integrated whole, rather than life being defined solely from an organ, a form within the organism.' The one organ defines alive notion was the perspective decades ago. People focused upon one organ when the heart was believed to be the center of function, before organ harvesting became a reality. When the heart stopped beating, the person was thought to be dead, thought to be no longer a functioning, integrated whole organism. Today, doctors routinely stop and start the heart, keeping the patient functioning for survival, viable as an integrated whole via artificial heart and lungs.

A person in an unrecoverable coma or vegetative state has no higher brain function, yet their body continues to function as an integrated whole [They can still breathe on their own, as opposed to be sustained by a ventilator and dopamine to make their kidneys function.]. As Dr. Condic puts it, “Although such patients are clearly in a lamentable medical state, they are also clearly alive, [so] converting such patients into corpses requires some form of euthanasia. … Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole, not by mere presence of living human cells.”

[Salvation]

Prayers for this man and his family, and thanks for the follow up article.

[Flying Circus]

You know what I think of socialized medicine (or if not, can make a very good guess). However, once getting past the source of the medicine, what is our duty towards sustaining life? If there is hope of recovery, I say take even the most extreme measures to maintain the person's life. What I am less sure about is how long, and to what extremes to take towards maintaining life when the body cannot do so itself.

This man was kept alive for 9 months by what most would consider extraordinary means. Breathing is one of the most basic operations of the body requiring no concious effort by the healthy person to sustain. If the body is no longer supporting both higher functions (awareness, voluntary action) and lower functions (breathing, heart beat) and is not in the process of recovering those functions are they actually alive anymore? After nine months of not recovering to the point of maintaining the most basic functions autonomously, what is there to hope for?

If there is some evidence of this man recovering lost ability in the time he has been on the respirator, or was showing some higher functions I will get with the cause of denouncing the court and hospital's actions. But from this article, I don't see that.

[ArneFufkin]

If Terri Schiavo's condition worsened, tonight, to a state where she required a breathing apparatus to survive ... yet her parents STILL wished and offered to maintain ongoing care of her while on such a dvice ... would you consider Michael Schiavo's opposition to Terri's breathing device, and refusal to transfer her custody to her parents for maintanance on that device a valid custodial decision?

[Flying Circus]

Micheal Schiavo has already demonstrated himself unsuitable and untrustworthy as a custodian for Terry. I would take any claims he made as to her condition with a grain of salt and I doubt that if Terry ever deteriorated to the point of needing a respirator he would even allow it to be done for her.

Next consideration: why prompted the need for the respirator and how reasonable is it to expect recovery to the point of not needing it? If recovery can be expected, I believe we are morally responsible to maintain the support. If recovery cannot be expected, then it starts becoming an extreme measure that we are not required to provide. However, if someone wished to provide the resources to maintain that person on the machine, they should be allowed to do so.

[ArneFufkin]

However, if someone wished to provide the resources to maintain that person on the machine, they should be allowed to do so.

OK, I'm going to keep YOU on a machine forever. Don't make any heavenly plans. I have the resources to warehouse you for 200-300 years.

[Flying Circus]

Thank you for the offer! It would be quite interesting if they find a way to fix me and I get to see the world at that time.

When in doubt, it's better to be alive than dead. Anyway, 200-300 years is nothing compared to an eternity in heaven- if that is what God wills (by way of your funding), I accept it. My only question is to what point are we morally responsible for trying to keep each other alive.

[ArneFufkin]

I promise I'll provide you the exact level of awareness, vitality and dignity of life you are gifting to Terri Schiavo. Lot's of anonymous creeps on an Internet message board celebrating your vegitative cause and slandering your loved ones.

[Flying Circus]

As long as you don't take it upon yourself to reduce me to that condition, I don't mind you supporting me in it. Better to have people cursing the fact they haven't killed me yet than celebrating my death and slandering those who worked to keep me alive.