Posted on 03/16/2005 6:12:01 AM PST by Crackingham
The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children's Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died.
"I talked to him, I told him that I loved him. Inside of me, my son is still alive," Wanda Hudson told reporters afterward. "This hospital was considered a miracle hospital. When it came to my son, they gave up in six months. ... They made a terrible mistake."
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.
"It's sad this thing dragged on for so long. We all feel it's unfair, that a child doesn't have a chance to develop and thrive," said William Winslade, a bioethicist and lawyer who is a professor at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Paraphrasing the late Catholic theologian and ethicist Richard McCormick, Winslade added, "This isn't murder. It's mercy, and it's appropriate to be merciful in that way. It's not killing, it's stopping pointless treatment."
The hospital's description of Sun — that he was motionless and sedated for comfort — has differed sharply from the mother's. Since February, the hospital has blocked the media from Hudson's invitation to see the baby, citing privacy concerns.
"I wanted y'all to see my son for yourself," Hudson told reporters. "So you could see he was actually moving around. He was conscious."
On Feb. 16, Harris County Probate Court Judge William C. McCulloch made the landmark decision to lift restrictions preventing Texas Children's from discontinuing care. However, an appeal by Hudson's attorney, Mario Caballero, and a procedural error on McCulloch's part prevented the hospital from acting for four weeks.
Texas law allows hospitals to discontinue life-sustaining care, even if a patient's family members disagree. A doctor's recommendation must be approved by a hospital's ethics committee, and the family must be given 10 days from written notice of the decision to try and locate another facility for the patient.
"Oh my God."
Seems to be the role the judge played here.
Social Security...
This probably sounds mean but given her statements I wonder if she was on drugs.
"The mother thinks the baby was the Sun."
"I was told what to do by Sun," she said. "I don't understand all this legal stuff. But please give Sun time to allow Sun to create Sun."
Hudson has not seen her son in more than a month but believes she communicates with him telepathically"
ok
Whose privacy?
She was a COMPLETE whackjob; in all my days, I've NEVER seen such an insane woman talking on TV.
After that interview, if I had had the power, I would have kept HER away from that child.
"May God comfort this baby in his loving arms and then help our sad and lost world.
Muleteam1"Thank you
No room for personal vacuous attacks.
Are you kidding? That's one of their main talking points!
She had certainly been on drugs; a whole lot of them.
And if heart surgery had not come about, all those people would have died years ago, so I guess they better all check in to a nearby morgue.</sarcasm>
The maximum check she would have received from SSI would have been $30.00 a month.
well, it would help if I post on the right thread, wouldnt it?
Well, since you didn't know that she was entitled to a check, how is it you know the amount?
And you asked me that absurd and ridiculous question because..............???????
He who has the gold makes the rules.
Nope. Social Security would not pay one dime to this child or his family.
I welcome challenging viewpoints here.
But just because you work in a hospital environment doens't give you expertise on how a profit and loss statement does or doesn't fit into the decision process.
I can also see the benefits of keeping this baby alive for research and training purposes. It seems that this might have been done as long as they could without causing the baby too much discomfort.
A sad event in any case.
Still "friends"?
Because that is the only amount SSI recipients are due when they are in a hospital or nursing home.
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