Baby dies after judge allows hospital to remove breathing tube.

Houston Chronicle ^ | Mar. 16, 2005 | Leigh Hopper

[Fan_Of_Ingraham]

So if it's OK to remove someone's only form of life support (i.e. a respirator) against their wishes, then someone please tell me why Christopher Reeve was allowed to live as long as he did?

[Howlin]

I don't have any questions, but I do have a statement: you don't have all the facts.

[Muleteam1]

May God comfort this baby in his loving arms and then help our sad and lost world.

Muleteam1

[Fan_Of_Ingraham]

I smell a TROLL.

[Howlin]

The baby was not really a baby. This was not life in any way you could define it.

[BibChr]

Thanks for the link.

What a heartwrenching situation. Sounds like it was not totally open-and-shut; sounds like the mother's a whack-job — but when it comes to one's children in a situation like this, I'm not inclined to be too harsh.

One of the very most terrified moments in my life was when we had to rush my then-baby to a hospital via ambulance, as he was choking and coughing up blood. I likely lost a decade in that first hour or two. (Thank GOD it turned out okay.)

Dan

[Howlin]

BTW, it was about money in a sense; she gets a check as long as the baby is in the hospital.

To buy her drugs.

[nmh]

"The resources required to keep this baby alive could have kept hundreds alive somewhere else. Choices are always tough when it comes to these issues. We live in a world of limited resources and rationing is a fact of life."

So now we play god and ration life away?

SICK!

[Clara Lou]

This link is to a picture in today's Chronicle. The baby's head appears to be a normal size. His body [not visible in this pictue] is undersized--short and very narrow through the chest. As you can see from the picture his arms are disproportionately short. He is also not awake as he is in his mother's arms.

[DaoPian]

Just for the sake of discussion, why don't we define "life".

[Skooz]

Whether or not the child should have been allowed to die--and there are thoughtful people of goodwill on both sides of the issue--that post is completely false.

This was a baby. Very much alive. As human as you or I.

[Howlin]

Life means that at some point in your "life" you would be able to function on SOME level without a machine doing everything for you.

That was not the case in this situation.

[DCPatriot]

Well to define the life as such is too broad for my tastes, but I see your point.

I wonder if they harvested the heart or eyes, etc..?

In the event the health care was not paid up-to-date, I wonder if the hospital had forms for the mother to approve that allowed the baby...er, life as you describe, to serve as a donor?

Or, with the defective organs (lungs, etc) did that make him ineligible?

[Howlin]

No it wasn't; it wasn't EVER going to function as a even near normal person.

[Skooz]

......she gets a check as long as the baby is in the hospital.

From where?

[militant2]

What an idiotic assumption! Hospitals are so regulated these days, by internal and external quality control and bioethics bodies, that what you state is virtually impossible.

You sound like a lib....ready to demonize the "evil corporation" without the benefit of the facts. Militant

[Skooz]

Yes, HE was. He was a human being by every plausible definition.

[itsahoot]

Sun's death marks the first time a U.S. judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant's life-sustaining care against a parent's wishes, according to bioethical experts. A similar case involving a 68-year-old man in a vegetative state at another Houston hospital is before a court now.

And so it begins, judges are now officially gods having the power of life and death, over the innocent. Looks like Hitler won the morality war after all.

[DCPatriot]

Me? A lib?

Get lost "newbie".

[Howlin]

I wouldn't imagine they could have; all his organs were way too small -- I think I read some type of dwarfism is involved -- to support a growing, thriving body; if I recall correctly, that was the problem: the organs were so small that eventually the baby would have "smothered" in a sense.

Most children born with this problem die shortly after birth or in utero.