Posted on 02/18/2005 3:36:08 PM PST by FreeMarket1
CRIPPLED CHILD SENTENCED TO DEATH WITHOUT TRIAL
Feb 18, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
by Craig McCarthy
In Texas, a baby has been in effect sentenced to die. He is hospitalized with a disease called thanatophoric dysplasia. A website devoted to genetic disorders says that “Infants with this condition are usually stillborn or die shortly after birth from respiratory failure; however, some children have survived into childhood with a lot of medical help.” The child in question, Sun Hudson, is four months old and has obviously survived the danger of stillbirth and has not died shortly after birth. Sun’s mother wants him to live. Doctors at the hospital where Sun was born no longer want to supply him with the “lot of medical help” he needs, and plan to shut off his oxygen supply.
Powerless against the wishes of her son’s doctor, Sun’s mother Wanda found an attorney and went to court to save her son’s life. Without a single evidentiary hearing, Judge William C. McColloch has decided that the hospital has the right to take measures to end the baby’s life, if the hospital happens to want to do so. Free Market News has interviewed the attorney for the child’s mother, Mario Caballero, and reports the facts that have been excluded from every other news account of this story.
This is not about money. Sun Hudson is covered by Texas Medicaid (his mother is penniless) and the hospital is no danger of suffering financially by continuing to treat him. Under Texas law this would not be an issue in any event, as hospitals are prohibited from failing to treat a patient for lack of ability to pay or if there is an emergency condition.
This is not about a condition so rare or horrible that treatment would be inconceivable. Ironically, the website for Texas Children’s Hospital, where Sun is a patient, includes this statement about dysplasia: “This genetics clinic provides diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care for patients from birth to adulthood with abnormalities of skeletal growth and strength. A staff of geneticists with consulting orthopedists, endocrinologists, neurologists and ophthalmologists evaluate patients during their visits for routine, chronic or acute care.”
This is not about right-wing pro-life politics, either. Ms. Hudson’s attorney is a self-described twenty-year legal aid attorney who only opened his solo practice with one staff member in the last year. Attorney Caballero went so far as to state that “I’m not part of the right to life movement; in fact, personally, I’m not quite in that political camp. But in this case it is about someone who is already alive.”
This is about one judge who has by any objective standard allowed no due process to the child who may soon be killed or to the child’s mother. Attorney Caballero subpoenaed hospital records of Medicaid payments for the child’s treatment. The judge quashed the subpoena (meaning that he voided it) and refused to allow the mother to view those hospital records. Caballero subpoenaed the person in charge of records who could testify about the medical bills and payment. Judge McColloch quashed that subpoena. Instead, the judge ruled that the mother, in seeking to save her child’s life from a deliberate cessation of medical treatment, had “no cause of action”.
The judge made that ruling based only on the petitions filed, not allowing the mother’s attorney to conduct any discovery under the normal rules of court procedure.
Before the court was involved, the hospital first gave the mother notice that they intended to evict the child from the hospital. Under Texas law, a hospital must give ten days notice of intent to make Sun leave the hospital despite his medical needs. In this case, they gave Ms. Hudson notice just before the weekend prior to Thanksgiving week.
By the time she found an attorney the next day, he was left with only three working days in which to get into court. During weeks of legal under a supposed agreement by the hospital that it would not remove the child from child support before a court hearing, the hospital changed its mind and informed Caballero that they intended to go ahead and remove child support. Only a temporary injunction temporarily delayed the hospital’s action.
Finally before the probate court, the mother was not given the opportunity to call any witnesses or present any evidence in an evidentiary hearing. Instead, the judge ruled that the hospital may discontinue treatment of the child, based on facts not even alleged by the hospital, specifically that the judge believed the child was suffering “significant pain.”
According to Caballero, when he asked how the judge had reached that finding of fact without ever having heard any testimony or conducting a hearing on the merits of the case, the judge replied, on the record, that he “probably got it from the newspaper.”
Having visited the baby in the hospital, Caballero flatly denies that the child is in pain. After reflection, Caballero asked Judge McColloch to recuse himself from the case. McColloch refused.
This left the mother with only one issue to present to the court, whether or not any other hospital would be willing to admit the child as a patient.
It is not clear what the scope of that question is legally. Should the court consider whether another hospital within city limits has a bed for the child before removing child support, or whether there is another hospital reasonably available in the State of Texas or the rest of the country? ......................Full Article www.FreeMarketNews.com
I posted a link to some medical information about the condition in post #79. I'm sure you're already aware of the information, but others might want to check it out. It does say that *several* children with this genetic defect make it to early childhood.
http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic2233.htm
Have you ever had to make such a decision concerning a loved one?
I understand that now. I didn't see the prior articles until you posted them. Highlandbreeze said (s)he has seen this disease too.
I feel terrible for them mother.
I'm just sorry it couldn't be a different answer.
It may not have been "empathetic", and I'm sorry that I offended you, but there really is a time, and you will know it, when it is the right thing to do.
He who has the cash or the insurance gets the care.
The only alternative is to leave it to a bureaucracy with the soul of the IRS or the Judiciary.
So9
The baby is suffocating because the lungs can't sustain him. I don't know if suffocating is painful or not. Anybody?
Yes, it does, but not many.
And thank you for reposting it up here, I could have used it a few posts back.
=0)
I disagree. First of all, this child is on completely artificial life support. Secondly, this condition is terminal in all cases. ALL cases. In fact, the way I read the information on this condition, even the life support itself will eventually fail. So basically what is happening here is that this child is suffering purely because the mother is insistent upon continuing a line of treatment that isn't even effective.
Secondly, in this case, it may be propaganda, but the proponents indicate that they don't believe the child is in pain.
Well, you know that this article is certainly filled with propaganda. A quick search on Google news reveals other info too. Look, you don't need to trust the doctors in that hospital, trust the 40 other hospitals that have refused to admit the patient. Texas law requires a doctor to continue care as long as there is a reasonable probability that another hospital would admit the patient. So even if the doctor believes that what he is doing is unethical, he can't stop doing it if there's a decent shot that another hospital would too.
So, in either case, I'd say that the pain thing is a strawman. You'll have to come up with something better than that.
No, I will not. It is sufficient in this case.
Yes. We have done at home hospice with all extended family when time came.
As well we all do.
Thank you. And I'm sorry. But I couldn't handle that remark in this subject.
It is the hardest desicion that you will ever make...
To be blunt, it sucks.
The doctors talk to you to tell you how it can be done so, well let's just say that no matter what is said, you know what you are doing.
Look at this for a second:
Instead, the judge ruled that the hospital may discontinue treatment of the child, based on facts not even alleged by the hospital, specifically that the judge believed the child was suffering “significant pain.”
That 'fact' was not even brought up by the hospital. It wasn't presented to the court at all. The hospital never said that at all, but it was the main reason the judge OKed the termination of life support.
Several things here tick me off:
1. The child only had a few days left to live and then they would have turned life support off anyway. Why did they take the child away sooner? The judge wasn't even sure of his main fact.
2. The mother had no say in this. She didn't get a word in; the hospital might have been able to sit down with her and talk her into humanely letting the child go, but they didn't. Where did they go?: The court! Never mind trying to talk to the mother; let's just get a court order and tell her to buzz off.
*siiigh* It seems to me that your question implies physical abuse; if that were the case and a parent was physically abusing their child, then no, I would not excuse it.
And again: My problem with this article is the fact that the court simply said, "Go ahead and pull life support" without even hearing from the mother. That sends up red flags for me.
You were fortunate to have at home hospice. My mother was in intensive care and finally a skilled facility. We were spared some of the decision because she had made a living will. But it was still very difficult.
Dear God, for us it was a granddaughter, she was five and a half months old. If one has not faced that situtation with a loved one, they cannot know the internal hell we go through. Saying to do it is easy if you don't know the person. It's a whole different ballgame when you love them and watch them take their last breath in this world.
Umm, 4mycountry, are you aware that the hospital is paying her attorney's fees? Do you really think that they just ignored the mother's wishes and went straight to court without talking to her first?
Please don't trust just this article. It is clearly a slanted propaganda piece. Do a Google News search on "thanatophoric dysplasia" and read some other takes on the subject.
Texas Children's Hospital officials said Sun was born with a fatal genetic defect known as skeletal dysplasia that will not allow his chest cavity and lungs to grow. Sun is slowly suffocating to death because his lungs lack the capacity to support his body, according to hospital officials.
Doctors claim the child is in pain and that it is unethical to prolong his life.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1345350/posts
Well said. I made a similar point in an earlier post. We simply cannot afford to provide the kind of end-of-life care that people are insisting on. The dirty little secret of the health care debate is that more than 70% of our health care dollars go to end-of-life care. Spending untold amounts of other people's money simply to have a family member around for another month is not moral. We have gotten a lot smarter with our technology and a lot dumber with our approach to life and death.
We did lose some family in hospitals too. Some how, it is easier at home. You get to be with them.
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