Father of Potential Euthanasia Victim Lauren Richardson Asks Gov for Help

Life News ^ | 5/7/08 | Steven Ertelt

[wagglebee]

Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Lauren Richardson continues to press her case and is now calling on the governor of Delaware for help to save her life. Richardson has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether she should live or die.

Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.

Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death.

Edith Towers, Lauren's mother, wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and dehydrate her to death in the same manner that Michael Schiavo subjected Terri.

On the other side is Randy Richardson, Lauren's father, who is fighting to save her life and wants to be appointed as her guardian to ensure she receives appropriate medical care and treatment.

Richardson recently said the fight to save Lauren continues and that he is "totally committed to a path that includes rehabilitative treatment and therapy with the hope that Lauren can recover significantly from her disability."

He hope that, one day, Lauren may be able to "participate in the raising of her daughter that she gave birth to while in her current condition."

Randy Richardson says, "Lauren’s mother, after convincing one Delaware judge to declare that she should be Lauren’s guardian, remains resolute in her assertion that Lauren is vegetative and cannot recover."

"Her mother has withheld authorization for any rehabilitative medical treatment and therapy for Lauren, and intends to have Lauren’s feeding tube halted" if his effort sot save her fail.

"We cannot understand her reasoning in refusing a path of hope, healing, and restoration for Lauren, and insisting on causing her death by withholding food and water from her," he added.

"The issue in Lauren’s case is the eternal truth that all people, no matter what their medical condition, bear the image of God and deserve basic care and an opportunity to be restored to health," he said.

Richardson's family is calling on Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to intervene and save Lauren from an expected court order dictating her euthanasia death.

As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state -- something Terri's family called dehumanizing and medically inaccurate as patients have recovered from it.

Noted attorney and author has written about Lauren's case and he says he viewed a video Richardson's father released and he says she seems reactive particularly when her father attempts to interact with her.

"Whether she is conscious or not is irrelevant to her equal moral worth as a human being," Smith adds.

"The fight in this case is over whether she lives as a profoundly disabled woman or is made to die slowly over two weeks by dehydration--as Terri Schiavo did," Smith explained. "If we did that to a dog, we would go to jail. Do it to a disabled woman who needs a feeding tube and it is called medical ethics."

ACTION: Contact Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner at governor.minner@state.de.us and ask her to help Randy Richardson save his daughter's life.

Related web sites:
Life for Lauren - http://www.lifeforlauren.org

Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Lauren Richardson continues to press her case and is now calling on the governor of Delaware for help to save her life. Richardson has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether she should live or die.

Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.

Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death.

Edith Towers, Lauren's mother, wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and dehydrate her to death in the same manner that Michael Schiavo subjected Terri.

On the other side is Randy Richardson, Lauren's father, who is fighting to save her life and wants to be appointed as her guardian to ensure she receives appropriate medical care and treatment.

Richardson recently said the fight to save Lauren continues and that he is "totally committed to a path that includes rehabilitative treatment and therapy with the hope that Lauren can recover significantly from her disability."

He hope that, one day, Lauren may be able to "participate in the raising of her daughter that she gave birth to while in her current condition."

Randy Richardson says, "Lauren’s mother, after convincing one Delaware judge to declare that she should be Lauren’s guardian, remains resolute in her assertion that Lauren is vegetative and cannot recover."

"Her mother has withheld authorization for any rehabilitative medical treatment and therapy for Lauren, and intends to have Lauren’s feeding tube halted" if his effort sot save her fail.

"We cannot understand her reasoning in refusing a path of hope, healing, and restoration for Lauren, and insisting on causing her death by withholding food and water from her," he added.

"The issue in Lauren’s case is the eternal truth that all people, no matter what their medical condition, bear the image of God and deserve basic care and an opportunity to be restored to health," he said.

Richardson's family is calling on Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to intervene and save Lauren from an expected court order dictating her euthanasia death.

As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state -- something Terri's family called dehumanizing and medically inaccurate as patients have recovered from it.

Noted attorney and author has written about Lauren's case and he says he viewed a video Richardson's father released and he says she seems reactive particularly when her father attempts to interact with her.

"Whether she is conscious or not is irrelevant to her equal moral worth as a human being," Smith adds.

"The fight in this case is over whether she lives as a profoundly disabled woman or is made to die slowly over two weeks by dehydration--as Terri Schiavo did," Smith explained. "If we did that to a dog, we would go to jail. Do it to a disabled woman who needs a feeding tube and it is called medical ethics."

ACTION: Contact Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner at governor.minner@state.de.us and ask her to help Randy Richardson save his daughter's life.

Related web sites:
Life for Lauren - http://www.lifeforlauren.org

[wagglebee]

The baby is doing fine, Lauren’s mother has custody and WILL NOT take the baby to see her.

The overdose was very early in the pregnancy and there were no adverse affects (heroin, especially in the first trimester generally doesn’t harm the fetus like alcohol or cocaine).

[Caramelgal]

What are you talking about? Since when is food and water "artificial life support"?

A feeding tube is “artificial” in the sense that a feeding tube is medical procedure where in a tube is inserted directly into the stomach of a patient who is unable take food and water orally and nutrients are artificially forced into the patient. This technology was not available until the late 1800’s and only perfected enough in the last 25 years to make it a viable course of treatment to sustain life for patients who cannot take nutrients otherwise.

Feeding tubes definitely have a place in sustaining life just as ventilators and other means of artificial life support do and I’m not against their use when the patient has any reasonable or even remote chance of recovery or of recovering any quality of life or one who has cognitive brain function but with a physical disability that necessitates a feeding tube.

But to keep a person or better stated a “body” alive, a body with no higher brain function or cognitive awareness or any chance of recovery seems rather ghoulish and selfish to me. I’m sorry we disagree but in the case of my mother in law, I think it would have been more merciful and more moral and ethical to allow her to die a natural death, kept comfortable with the use of sedatives and pain medication presuming that she had any rudimentary sense of pain or sensation left, rather than to see her suffer the great indignities her body endured during the last four years of her physical life.

First, yes, we have been in that predicament, for twenty six years with a child many would say was PVS, and yet he lead a happy loving life, severely retarded and no way would we give him up. We are pro-life with no buts.

I am sorry about your child’s severe retardation and I absolutely applaud you and your family for caring for and loving your child. I in no way support “euthanasia” for the mildly or even the most severely disabled. But a person with Downs Syndrome, no matter how severely afflicted is not the same a person in a PVS. A person with Downs Syndrome, in even the most severe forms, still has some cognitive functions and a sense of self and awareness.

I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding about a PVS and those coma patients in a minimally conscious state. When there are “miraculous” stories about people coming out of long term comas, they are patients who have been in a minimally conscious state and not patients who have been in a PVS. Patients in a minimally conscious state have a much better chance at realizing some level of recovery even after many years in that state than do patients in a persistent vegetative state. After being in a PVS for more than a year there is statistically no hope for any recovery. While patients in a PVS are not technically brain dead, it is only that part of the brain, the brain stem, the part of the brain responsible for heart rate and rhythm, respiration, gastrointestinal activity that still functions while the rest of the brain responsible for awareness ceases to function.

Recent functional neuroimaging results have shown that some parts of the cortex are still functioning in 'vegetative' patients. Such studies are disentangling the neural correlates of the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state, and have major clinical consequences in addition to empirical importance for the understanding of consciousness (Laureys, 2000). The minimally conscious state (MCS) is a recently defined clinical condition that differs from the persistent vegetative state (PVS) by the presence of inconsistent, but clearly discernible, behavioral evidence of consciousness (Boly, 2004). Researchers have analyzed functional neuroimaging results and demonstrated that cerebral activity observed in patients in an MCS is more likely to lead to higher-order integrative processes, thought to be necessary for the gain of conscious auditory perception. (Sara et al, 2007).

Maybe be it’s me; however, usually somebody says, “I’m pro-life, but,” it turns out that they are pretty much okay with killing any person for any reason. It’s the same as saying abortions should be “safe and legal and rare.”

Neither of you know me well enough and where I stand on abortion to make such a rash and uninformed opinion of me.

[wagglebee]

A feeding tube is “artificial” in the sense that a feeding tube is medical procedure where in a tube is inserted directly into the stomach of a patient who is unable take food and water orally and nutrients are artificially forced into the patient. This technology was not available until the late 1800’s and only perfected enough in the last 25 years to make it a viable course of treatment to sustain life for patients who cannot take nutrients otherwise.

No, they were developed at least 400 years ago, and they were perfected because of antibiotics. Do you consider penicillin to be "artificial life support"?

While patients in a PVS are not technically brain dead, it is only that part of the brain, the brain stem, the part of the brain responsible for heart rate and rhythm, respiration, gastrointestinal activity that still functions while the rest of the brain responsible for awareness ceases to function.

Actually, they are not "brain dead" in ANY sense of the term and there have been several people in worse shape than Lauren who have recovered in just the past few years.

Neither of you know me well enough and where I stand on abortion to make such a rash and uninformed opinion of me.

Neither of us offered any opinion about your views on abortion. I made an analogy, nothing more.

[8mmMauser]

Just to clarify... My son did not have Downs syndrome nor was he mildly retarded. He was severely retarded from birth far worse than Terri or Lauren and he lived anyway for 26 happy years in spite of medical advice. He was considered by many to be PVS but we knew better and witnessed through the fog of bias.

Also, he was given tubes during times he was under medical care at a facility, and we stopped it. They swore he could not eat, but he did. It took patience. They had the tubes for their convenience, not his. My opinion is neither rash nor uninformed. Those tubes were to feed him the easy way.

That is just plain eating in a different form. I have tons of experience and know what is pro-life and what is qualified pro-life. Abortion is one slice of it, only. You are talking down to people who know better. I stand by my earlier assessment.

If you want to enlighten yourself on my perspective try the Terri Dailies threads. I have been posting non-stop daily for three years chronicling virtually all stories related, like that of Lauren, and was on scene in Pinellas Park, having gathered a huge amount of factual information on Terri’s plight. You may learn something.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Every few years or so there is a mining disaster in this country. The MOMENT that happens, EVERY necessary resource is made available by federal, state and local governments to save the trapped miners. Millions of dollars are spent to save a handful of people. Sometimes it is successful, but some generally die. Should we, as a society, decide to stop doing this? If the mine owner doesn't have the resources or money should we just say, "too bad"?

Mine accidents are actually illustrate my point rather well: such efforts almost never rescue miners who do not make it out in the immediate aftermath of an explosion of fire, but they do stand a good chance of injuring or killing would-be rescuers. (1)

This fact is forgotten from disaster to disaster, only to be relearned when rescue efforts result in additional deaths and injuries... at which point those responsible for directing the rescue almost always abandon such efforts as too dangerous. (The risk, of course, is likely very similar to the risk before the additional loss: too high in relation to the very low probability of a successful rescue). (2)

It’s useful to contrast this with the SOP of a typical fire department, which faces these risks and makes these decisions on a daily basis, and thus would be more frequently reminded of the wasteful futility of such efforts were they frequently undertaken.

Such SOP’s will invariably apply a more realistic standard, a typical example reads: “A higher level of risk is acceptable only in situations where there is a realistic potential to save known endangered lives. This elevated risk must be limited to operations that are specifically directed toward rescue and where there is a realistic potential to save the person(s) known to be in danger.”

FDs devote considerable effort to cultivate a culture where violating such standards is seen not as heroic, but rather as unnecessarily risking not only the safety of the firefighter violating the SOP but potentially the lives of other emergency responders at the scene. (3)

Thus dramatic rescue efforts mounted in the glare of national publicity after mine explosion and fires are generally irrational and often counter-productive, as is demonstrated by the fact that they violate the standards set by organizations which because they must make such decisions on a daily basis have to create rational policies or face the consequences frequently enough to learn the necessary lessons.

(1) MINE RESCUE AND RECOVERY: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T WORK, Mine Safety and Health Administration , http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/MEO/MINERESC.pdf

(2) The most recent example was the loss of 3 men at the Herrington , UT mine, after which “Utah Gov. John Huntsman, who hurried to the scene… urged federal mine officials to make sure that safety of rescuers is "a paramount concern" in any resumption of rescue efforts. “Let us ensure that we have no more injuries. We have suffered enough.." “http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-16-utah-mine_N.htm”

(3) See for example the discussion in section 307.00 here: http://www.jonesboro.org/Fire/JFDStandardOperatingProcedures.pdf

[wagglebee]

Mine accidents are actually illustrate my point rather well: such efforts almost never rescue miners who do not make it out in the immediate aftermath of an explosion of fire, but they do stand a good chance of injuring or killing would-be rescuers.

Actually, you illustrated NOTHING.

My point about rescuing miners was meant to illustrate that as a society, we have always been able and willing to devote our resources to saving lives (which you further illustrate with fire departments).

You go on to talk about the inherent risks that rescuers take (risks they VOLUNTEER for and are TRAINED for), but there is ZERO correlation at this level to the case of Lauren or other euthanasia victims. There is NO DANGER to society in saving their lives.

You seem to have employed a classic liberal tactic of taking ONE PART of a comparison OUT OF CONTEXT and then using a conclusion that has nothing to do with the comparison to discredit everything else.

Additionally, you and all of the others who seem to smell blood in the water and are circling around to cheer on those who want to kill Lauren still haven't grasped another simple fact:
There is NO REASON to suspect that ANY tax money will be necessary for Lauren's care.

[floriduh voter]

Free Republic happens to be pro-life. How many morons don't realize that?????? They're spewing venom, they show up from a dark place and want to poison Lauren with their darkness.

Trolls-be-gone. You have no power here...

[floriduh voter]

Regarding JUDGE GREER, he's a corrupt Republican who was a zoning commissioner who turned into a killing machine.

www.judgegeorgegreer.com.

I would say it to his face too but I don't lurk in downtown Clearwater for various and sundry reasons.

[floriduh voter]

It appears lots of people are emailing Governor Minner... I have and am encouraging others to email her. Why should a disabled person surrender their civil rights as if by default? Life isn’t a contest where if you become impaired, you forfeit your life! That means disabled people, injured people and seniors.

[floriduh voter]

PVS is a catchall term that means SQUAT. Stop eating and drinking for five days and get back to me with a report. MMMMMkay? If you aren’t willing to do this yourself, you have no business recommending it for any other human being.

[floriduh voter]

What's next? Bumping people off who have wheelchairs because wheelchairs are just too expensive to maintain? They are going to reach for whomever they can and use any excuse they can. After that: nearsighted people because glasses are too expensive and after that: people with hearing aids because hearing aids are too expensive.

Once the ACLU and activist judges get started, if you ain't perfect, you d-e-a-d.

[floriduh voter]

Lauren is not trapped like a miner. She is trapped only by a legal system where she is considered prey. How does it feel to be on the same side as the ACLU? They are killers.

[floriduh voter]

DEHYDRATION REMINDER: http://www.lifeforlauren.org/dehydration.html

[floriduh voter]

NOT DEAD YET Statement: http://www.lifeforlauren.org/DisabilityRights.html

[dbwz]

Many years ago my dad had cancer, and toward the end my mom pulled him out of the hospital (or hospice, or whatever it was) and brought him home to be with his family. I guess in some people's eyes she'd be a murderer, because if he'd stayed in the hospice they'd have forced a tube down his throat and given him "life" for just a bit longer.

At some point it's just time to let go. You have people who believe in God and Christ and the eternal realm, yet they'll fight tooth and nail to keep souls from returning home. I don't understand it.

Maybe this girl's mother just wants to let her go back to God.

[floriduh voter]

Give me a break. Have you never heard "from natural conception to natural death?" There is nothing natural about starving and dehydrating disabled people which are note same as terminally ill patients. Terminally ill patients lose their appetite (usually) as part of their dying process. It is not the same as purposefully withholding nutrition and hydration from disabled people who are candidates for therapy and are deserving of love and dignity. If candidates for rehabilitation are exited out, it is MURDER. Natural death isn't murder and of course you must realize we know that. We do not fear or deny death.

We oppose MURDER.

[floriduh voter]

Since you brought up God, Thou Shalt Not Kill is still a commandment last time I looked. A feeding tube is just a way to eat Unfortunately, death lawyers have found a way to turn a feeding tube into an excuse to bump off disabled people. They are called death lawyers for a reason.

[dbwz]

OK... So, somewhere there are groves of trees that bear lush crops of feeding tubes, so that workers might harvest them and send them to hospitals where they're used to extend life naturally?

I'm being sarcastic, of course. But really... I see nothing "natural" about keeping someone in permanent limbo between earth and heaven.

And having said my piece, I'll take my leave. May the young lady and her family find peace.

[mbj]

No, my argument still stands: if all the money that was mis-spent, overspent, misappropriated were correctly channeled, we would NOT have to choose between care for PVS and the folks in uniform who need health care.

Note that subsides, incentives and tax exemptions for Planned Parenthood AND so on were more than 89 million, never mind the other “inequities” that you didn’t mention but to which I referred. How many dollars do our State and Federal governments spend? No other waste in there? I think we can agree that with proper priorities that there could be funding enough for both.

I /agree/ with you that we must choose very carefully when deciding where to spend the peoples’ tax monies. We MUST fund our military in order to ensure care and to support those who support our safety. But we needn’t make a blanket decision that people in comas shouldn’t be treated: we may yet find a cure.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/man-who-awoke-from-10year-coma-dies/2006/02/22/1140563841796.html

I don’t think this man’s children would agree with you that his life wasn’t worth fighting for, any less than our troops are worth fighting for.

False dichotomy.

Also, if a man has worked all his life contributing to this country, what makes you think he cannot possibly have /earned/ a cardiac surgery? What if he himself is a veteran?

Regards,

[floriduh voter]

Feeding tubes are OFTENTIMES a temporary measure. Learning to swallow can be re-learned and speech therapists have that training.