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The British Medical Journal reports that Canadian doctors are seeking Canadian Supreme Court authority to withdraw wanted life-extending treatment. From the May 10, 2012 story (abstract only): Canada’s Supreme Court will next week consider an appeal from two Canadian doctors who seek, against a family’s objections, to withdraw life sustaining treatment from a patient they originally diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, but whom they now describe as minimally conscious. Hassan Rasouli, 60, a retired Iranian born engineer, contracted bacterial meningitis in late 2010 after surgery to remove a brain tumour, and has since been on mechanical ventilation at Toronto’s Sunnybrook...

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as...

TORONTO, Ontario, May 19, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The question of whether end-of-life decisions, such as whether or not to withdraw life-support, should be made at the discretion of a doctor or family members is at stake in the Rasouli case, taken before Ontario’s Court of Appeal yesterday.  The court’s decision could dramatically change how these important decisions are made in the province in cases such as the much-publicized Baby Joseph case. Doctors at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where 59-year-old patient Hassan Rasouli has been since surgery in October, say the Iranian immigrant is in a persistent vegetative state, with...

An Australian “brain dead” woman (clearly a misnomer, about which more below) was ordered removed from life support only a few weeks after suffering brain injury.  But thanks to the efforts of her family, she is now recovering.  From the story: A TERRITORIAN has woken from the dead. Gloria Cruz was diagnosed as being “brain dead” by a team of doctors after suffering a massive stroke. But her distraught husband Tani begged them not to switch off her ventilator. “I’m a Catholic – I believe in miracles,” he told them…Ms Cruz had a stroke in her sleep on March...

This would have been a bigger story in the USA where patients still have the right to fight these things.  In New Zealand, doctors forced a badly injured teenager–Kimberly McNeill, center in the photo at left–off of life support.  But contrary to their certainty, she didn’t die.  From the story: A teenage girl whose life support was switched off by a New Zealand hospital against her family’s wishes defied the odds to recover and returned home this week — walking and talking. Doctors forecasted that Kimberly McNeill, 18, would never recover from her severe injuries and 15 days after...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

A UK bioethicist named Daniel K. Sokol, who writes nary a word in opposition to Futile Care Theory, aka medical futility (meaning, I suspect, he is a futilitarian), has nonetheless written a valuable informative essay in the British Medical Journal (no link, 13 JUNE 2009 | Volume 338) called “The Slipperiness of Futility.” For example, he defines the different “kinds” of futility: Although ethically aware clinicians need not be familiar with the vast literature on the concept of futility, they might wish to remember the following four points: • Futility is goal specific. • Physiological futility is when the...

Austin, TX (LifeNews.com) -- Texas lawmakers have introduced competing bills that would either scrap or defend the controversial futile care law that has come under national condemnation. The law allows medical facilities to give families just 10 days to find places to care for their loved ones when a medical center refuses treatment.The statute allows hospitals and other medical facilities that believe a patient is too far gone to help to give their families just 10 days to find another facility that will offer the treatment or lifesaving medical care.With names such as Emilio Gonzales and Andrea Clark making the...

Boise, ID (LifeNews.com) -- A dangerous futile care bill has been stalled in the Idaho state legislature, but one of the prime opponents say more action is still needed. The legislation is similar to a Texas law that has concerned pro-life advocates because it can easily lead to revoking lifesaving medical treatment and euthanasia.Opponents of the measure say it could put elderly, disabled and terminally ill patients at risk. The Idaho Senate has approved the bill, S 1114, and bioethics watchdog and attorney Wesley J. Smith is very concerned about it moving further.Smith says the bill "is so bad...

Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of seven columns first posted on the Illinois Right to Life Committee's (IRLC) website [http://www.illinoisrighttolife.org/] written by Bill Beckman, IRLC's executive director. The column discusses "futile care," a method of medical evaluation whereby a physician makes the decision on whether a patient is "worthy" of life-saving treatment. This column warns readers of the need to monitor the care given to loved ones. Beckman tells a heart-breaking, but true story which, for a time, ended happily, but could have concluded in disaster with the induced premature death of Andrea Clark. The IRLC...

FORT WORTH, TEXAS, May 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Peruvian man whose American doctors reportedly sought to starve and dehydrate him to death was spared Wednesday after the family alerted the Peruvian media and a pro-life Texas attorney intervened in the case. According to Peruvian media reports, Jesus Sanchez, 56, had been in a coma for over five months in John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, after suffering a heart attack after a soccer game.  After the hospital's board of ethics reviewed his case, his condition was pronounced "irreversible".  The hospital announced that it would deprive Sanchez of food and...

A Winnipeg case currently winding its way to its grim conclusion pits the children of Samuel Golubchuk against doctors at the Salvation Army Grace General Hospital. According to the pleadings, Golubchuk's doctors informed his children that their 84-year-old father is "in the process of dying" and that they intended to hasten the process by removing his ventilation, and if that proved insufficient to kill him quickly, to also remove his feeding tube. In the event that the patient showed discomfort during these procedures, the chief of the hospital's ICU unit stated in his affidavit that he would administer morphine. Golubchuk...

This is the title of an article in the current issue of Forbes. It is written by John J. Parris: Jesuit Priest and Professor of Bioethics at Boston College. The article starts with a problem. In 1999 a patient was admitted with Lou Gehrig's disease. The patient indicated she should be kept alive until she could no longer enjoy her family. She eventually became unresponsive. Her daughter refused the hospital's wish to terminate life support. A lengthy (10 month) court battle ensued. The daughter opposed but eventually was faced with the hospital taking the position (Court approved) that the daughter...

LifeNews.com Note: Texas Right to Life is one of the leading pro-life groups in the state and has been working overtime to modify a futile care law. It gives families just 10 days to find medical care for their loved ones after a medical facility determines a patient's case is futile.   The journey to reform Texas’ Futile Care Law, Texas Right to Life’s number one priority for the 80th Texas Legislative Session, was a challenging and often embittered battle that ended in a disappointing stalemate in the House. However, the efforts of hundreds of activists, including families whose ailing...

Austin, TX (LifeNews.com) -- A bill the Texas legislature that would have helped patients and their families left out in the cold by medical facilities died this legislative session. However, lawmakers, pro-life groups and disability rights advocates are still keeping tabs on the futile care situation where hospitals and quit treating patients after 10 days. The Texas House defeated the futile care bill and measures limiting abortions last week as it wound down its session. The futile care measure would have increased the 10-day window to 21 days under which families could find a new medical facility to treat a...

Texas law may change to grant families some of doctors' authority On June 10, 2006, aging and ailing, Edith Pereira was taken by ambulance from St. Dominic nursing home to Memorial Hermann Hospital. It might have been nothing that serious. Urinary-tract infections had sent the 91-year-old with Alzheimer's and diabetes to the hospital often in the previous year, and the St. Dominic's nursing staff thought that likely was the problem this time. But Memorial Hermann doctors found no infection. Instead, they said, her altered state — high blood sugar that made her too drowsy and combative to be fed —...

Wesley J. Smith blogs about the recommended guidelines adopted by a Bioethics think tank in Great Britain in light of the British Medical Society's coming out in favor of euthanizing disabled newborns. The good thing is that the think tank disagrees with the concept of euthanizing newborns. The bad part is this: "The Council also suggested that infants born at 22 weeks gestation or earlier not be given intensive care unless as part of medical experiments. At age 23 weeks, it urges that no intensive care be given unless insisted upon by the parents and doctors agree. At 24 weeks...

***This is a story about a baby born at 23 weeks*** Today Emmie-Rose’s Hospital has hit a major blow against us. I believe some of the staff believe we are not providing the correct care for her and had us meet with the “Ethics” committee. At most hospitals the Ethics committee is usually made up of staff, social workers, clergy, and parents of other children. We had a room full of the staff, 1 surgeon, 2 social workers, and Stephanie and I. Let’s just stack all the cards against us. After wasting 2 hours going over the issues, it is...

Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of columns first posted on the Illinois Right to Life Committee's (IRLC) website [http://www.illinoisrighttolife.org/] written by Bill Beckman, IRLC's executive director. The RFFM.org re-posting of the column discusses "futile care," a method of medical evaluation whereby a physician makes the decision on whether a patient is "worthy" of life-saving treatment. This column warns readers of the need to monitor the care given to loved ones. Beckman tells a heart-breaking, but true story which, for a time, ended happily, but could have concluded in disaster with the induced premature death of Andrea...

DALLAS, Texas, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The children of a comatose woman are challenging in court the “compassionate reasons” for a Texas hospital’s decision to remove their mother’s life-saving treatment, asserting that their mother, a devout Baptist woman, never would consent to anyone but God ending her life. On August 8, just days after 61-year-old Ruthie Webster's insurance stopped full coverage of her long-term care, the Regency Hospital’s bioethics committee in North Dallas, Texas, unanimously told the Webster family that they would discontinue life-preserving dialysis treatment for their mother within 10 days. The hospital claimed that Ruthie Webster's physician...