Terri Schiavo's Sister Says Hospital Wrong to Deny Emilio Gonzales Care

Life News ^ | 4/9/07 | Steven Ertelt

[wagglebee]

Austin, TX (LifeNews.com) -- The sister of Terri Schiavo is weighing in on the case of Emilio Gonzales, a baby plagued by Leigh's disease who has been the center of a battle in Texas over a futile care law. The law allows hospitals that no longer want to care for a patient to only give their families 10 days to find another facility that will.

Last week, a federal judge refused to grant a temporary restraining order to require the Brackenridge Children's Hospital to provide lifesaving medical treatment. The medical center says it will stop treating Emilio tomorrow.

Emilio has been diagnosed with the disease, which is an incurable disorder that causes the breakdown of the central nervous system. Without the treatments, Emilio will die in a matter of hours.

The doctors' decision last month to remove Emilio from life support and discontinue his medical treatments left his mother, 23 year-old single mom Catarina, with little hope.

"This is so sad," Terri's sister Suzanne Vitadamo said in a statement LifeNews.com received.

"That a hospital 'ethics' committee would vote to end the life of a child against his mother's wishes is unbelievable, especially since Emilio's condition has actually shown some improvement over the past several weeks," Vitadamo explained.

The Schindler family has created the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation and worked in the two years since Terri's death to assist disabled patients in getting appropriate medical care.

Because of the foundation's work, Vitadamo spoke recently with a mother from Madison, Wisconsin, whose seven-year-old daughter has a mitochondrial disease similar to the one Emilio is suspected of having.

"This little girl was diagnosed as being in a so-called persistent vegetative state for the first three years of her life," Vitadamo says.

"Her mother researched the disease and learned that hyperbaric oxygen treatment had shown some success in treating the condition," Terri's sister said. "Today the once fragile little girl now attends school, against all odds and much to the amazement of doctors who said she would not even live past the age of three."

Although there is no guarantee that similar treatment would produce such results in Emilio's case, there is hope, Vitadamo says.

"We are hoping that the hospital will grant an additional extension in Emilio's case," Vitadamo said.

"We encourage them to continue treating this little boy, making every effort to sustain his life for as long as is needed, while we pursue a facility for transfer and possibly even treatment that could save him."

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org

[Hildy]

This forum is so full of hypocrites.

[wagglebee]

Do you have a link that establishes that he is in the US illegally?

[wagglebee]

If you were to have a catastrophic injury (such as a spinal cord injury that paralyzed you), it is likely that your health insurance would run out and you would need Medicaid. Would it be “hypocritical” to use it?

[Hildy]

I’m talking about the fact that he’s an illegal immigrant.

[wagglebee]

I have looked and I am unable to find anything saying he is.

[Hildy]

I was responding to post #20 who stated that he read that the family were illegal. What’s your position on that?

[metmom]

You know, life is sacred and should be protected and nurtured. Pulling the plug on someone is wrong. But even if you can’t appeal to someone’s sense of morality for the sanctity of life, you could always argue that if someone is willing to fight for the life of their critically ill child, we can learn from that. No one knows what might develop from people who aren’t willing to take no for an answer. It can cause advances to treat debilitating conditions that otherwise would not be found. How sad that we have to approach it in those terms instead of simply the value of a human life.

[wagglebee]

I have been unable to find anything indicating that he is here illegally.

In any event, I am of the belief that hospitals should abide by their centuries-old practice of not turning people away.

[Hildy]

There's a difference between not turning people away and providing life sustaining care indefinitely. Obviously, the mother has not found another hospital willing to take the baby, because the prognosis is the same. I found this on another (pro-life)website:

However, hospitals in Texas, Oklahoma, California and New York have all turned down taking Emilio as a patient and Michael Regier, a Seton Hospital Network spokesman, says the medical center tried to find other places without success...."We have worked very hard with hospitals in Texas and hospitals out of state and New York, on the West Coast, not only to say, 'Would you take a transfer of Emilio with this kind of condition?' but also, 'Are there other things we haven't done?'" he told KENS.

Let the child go be with god.

[Popocatapetl]

The trouble with this is that it reaches beyond the tragedy of the individual. I am reminded of two parallel situations in today’s America:

The first is a person who ignores common sense and injures themselves with a product by misusing it. Then they sue the manufacturer, who is then forced to put a safety label on their product, say a shovel, such as “For gardening use only—not for insertion into bodily orifices.”

But that is not enough for the injured party, who demands that the government outlaw such an inherently unsafe things as shovels. So we all suffer because of this individual’s tragic accident, and we shouldn’t.

The other situation is what we see here. A person whose child is stricken with a terrible disease or malformation, almost invariably beyond their ability to pay; and who even if they receive expensive treatments will most likely or to great probability neither be improved or cured.

What we see is their individual suffering. What is not seen is how the vast amount of money and resources spent on them is *not* used to help dozens, or even hundreds of other people. People who are not in the news, who are anonymous, but who still deserve their rightful share of very limited resources.

The most graphic example of this that comes to mind is a condition only found in extremely premature infants, which at the cost of half a million dollars or more is treated with transplants for most of their internal organs. Yet it almost never works. As in only very rarely. It does not extend their lives by a single day.

Yet if just a single one of these tragic infants was allowed to die as they almost certainly will anyway, ironically the huge amount of money saved could provide hundreds of women with the prenatal care that would *stop* the condition from happening in the first place!

So by *not* wasting half a million dollars in a futile effort, another half a dozen children might instead be healthy babies delivered at full term.

But all we see is the tragedy of the one infant, and how miserable it has made their parents to know that there is nothing they can do to change things—and yet, if we all sacrifice the welfare of a hundred other children, we might be able to have a slight chance to save the one.

Though it would be horribly crippled its entire life, most likely severely retarded, and die at a young age, if the operation is a “success.”

[wagglebee]

I agree that it is a heartwrenching situation. I also know that in 48 other states, Emilio’s family could not be forced to terminate life support.

Have you found anything to substantiate the claim that he is in the country illegally?

[Hildy]

The answer is she is illegal and the tax payers are paying are so I read on another post several days ago.

Where did you see this?

[wagglebee]

The problem with your reasoning is that it puts society on a very slippery slope. The next step is to start euthanizing the elderly when they become infirmed on the theory that they are a waste of resources. And the paralyzed, it costs millions to treat someone for a spinal cord injury.

Once society accepts the premise that some lives are more valuable than others there’s no stopping it.

[Triggerhippie]

Let the child go be with god.

Hopefully you'd be more concerned if this was your child...

[Hildy]

I would hope that if this were my child, I’d let him go to God and not keep him in pain and anguish to appease my own selfish need to keep him with me. Do not argue with me. You don’t know me.

[Xenalyte]

If Rudy was honest when he said he would have worked to save Terri, he would go to Texas and prove it.

Except for the fact that Giulani has no power in Texas, that'd be a great idea.

[Xenalyte]

Somehow, I don’t think Mom is picking up the tab.

[Triggerhippie]

No, thank GOD! I don’t know you.

I do know your “solution” to these problems seems a bit like the “Final Solution” but that is something you’ll have to live with.

[Hildy]

The baby cannot breath or eat on his own AND NEVER WILL. Everything they do is invasive and painful. Why would you subject a little baby to that? Why?

[Triggerhippie]

The baby cannot breath or eat on his own AND NEVER WILL. Everything they do is invasive and painful. Why would you subject a little baby to that? Why?

I understand that you don't see my point of view. Personally, I would not allow my child to suffer.

I would, however, do grievous bodily harm to any hospital administrator/bean counter who tried to make that decision for me, and if I was placed in the role of the hospital administrator, would refuse to make that decision for another family.

Hopefully, we're not too far apart on this...