Need Help from Texas Freepers

4-19-06 | Sue Bob

[Sue Bob]

Do any of you Texas Freepers know any pro-life Texas attorneys who would be willing to participate in a group that helps families against hospitals that want to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the family and patient? Most of these families have little money and some or all of the work would be pro bono.

The issue has to do with the Texas Futile Care Statute. The physicians are, sometimes, wanting to withdraw treatment for quality of life reasons rather than purely medical.

I hope I did this announcement correctly.

[Iwo Jima]

I'd like to help.

[hocndoc]

I would like to know more about the problem, Sue Bob.

I know that there have been very rare instances when the futile care law has been invoked. But I haven't heard of any 'quality of life' complaints.

All of the problems I've heard about were disaggreements on the facts of futility. And there seem to have been a few times when the communication between the families and the hospitals or doctors broke down.

[pax_et_bonum]

Can you help here?

[Sue Bob]

The law allows withdrawal, not only for terminal conditions, but for irreversible conditions--which would include cognitive disabilities. When these physicians talk in ethics committee meetings, they often talk about the quality of the patient's life rather than medical conditions. This can lead to situations like withdrawal of feeding tubes from Alzheimer's patients who are still capable of assimilating food and water--but who, obviously, cognitively impaired.

When the providers speak of communication between families and providers breaking down, what I am discovering they mean is that the providers lend absolutely no weight to the families religious and cultural beliefs--or to their observations of the state of the patient family member. The level of arrogance on the part of the doctors is staggering to me.

[hocndoc]

You sound as though you know about specific abuses in a lot of cases that I haven't heard about.

There's a committee made up of all sorts of lawyers, doctors, hospital and patient advocate groups that is looking into to this very issue, right now. If you have concrete evidence of abuses of the law, you should contact me by FReepMail or, if you'd rather, Texas Right to Life or Texas Alliance for Life.

A copy of the law is at
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/HS/content/htm/hs.002.00.000166.00.htm


The law allows for the resolution of disputes when the two parties disagree about whether or not treatment is appropriate - both when the doctor believes that treatment should be stopped but the patient or family wants to continue and when the doctor wants to continue but the patient or family does not.