When a Canadian child was rushed to the hospital after nearly drowning, his parents say doctors threatened to take the child off life support and suggested harvesting his organs.
“We had 14 days to prepare his funeral and say goodbye to him,” Nicolas Tétrault, the boy’s father and a former Montreal politician, told The Federalist in English, his second language. “They were promoting to harvest the organs and give them away.”
Tétrault said his two-year-old son, Arthur, drowned in October. An ambulance took Arthur to a hospital where doctors resuscitated him, and he was later transferred to Montreal Children’s Hospital, where he was stabilized. But doctors told his parents Arthur had brain damage and an abnormal breathing pattern. According to Tétrault, after approximately five weeks doctors gave an ultimatum — they would “unplug” the boy from life support on Nov. 29.
So Tétrault and his wife fled with Arthur to New Orleans, where he is being treated at Ochsner Medical Center and is off a ventilator.
The Accident
Tétrault’s family was renting a house, which came with a pool but no fence around it.
“It’s difficult to always have perfect attention, and we did not,” he said. “We should have, but at that time, we didn’t want to install a fence around the pool on the house that did not belong to us.”
It was a cold day on Oct. 8, and Tétrault had to go pick up one of his six children from an extracurricular activity at school.
“I forgot to close one of the doors that I’d opened during the day when they were at school,” Tétrault said. Arthur went outside, and “long story short, he drowned.”
The boy’s body was “almost freezing,” according to Tétrault. An ambulance came and took Arthur to a hospital, where they stabilized him, then transferred him to Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Withholding Proper Treatment
Tétrault said doctors at the Montreal Children’s Hospital began to slowly bring up Arthur’s body temperature to avoid causing him shock. They gave Arthur an MRI and told his parents the boy had brain damage and an abnormal breathing pattern. But he said they also gave Arthur a large amount of sedatives.
“They started sedating him beyond belief,” Tétrault said. “When you receive too many sedatives, then it can kill you.”
Doctors typically sedate patients after drowning to avoid seizures, according to Springer Nature. Sedatives also help counteract symptoms of “neurostorming” such as “induced muscles, high blood pressure, high heart rate, sweating, extreme tensing,” Arthur’s current American doctor, Paul Harch, told The Federalist.
“For the neurostorming, the drugs that they put him on are typical,” Harch said. “At least the Valium dose I remember is a hefty dose — and so I don’t know how long he needed those very high doses.”
Harch, a global expert in repairing brain injury, said doctors usually wean a patient off sedatives after they remove him from the ventilator and take him out of the intensive care unit (ICU). So the Canadian doctors tried removing Arthur’s breathing tube.
“When they extubated him three weeks after — just to do a trial to see if he could breathe on his own — our baby was able to breathe on his own successfully for about 18 hours or 12 hours,” Tétrault said.
But Arthur could not keep breathing because his airway had lost its form, according to Harch. He said Canadian doctors should have given a tracheostomy, which creates an opening in the windpipe to bypass the obstruction. That could have enabled him to breathe on his own.
“They wouldn’t do a tracheostomy, and instead, were keeping him heavily sedated and told the parents, ‘He’ll have no quality of life, he’s going to be a vegetable,’ etc.,” Harch said.
The doctors could not honestly assess Arthur’s condition due to the sedatives they were giving the boy, Harch said.
“Here he was, heavily sedated in the hospital up there, and they’re telling the parents essentially that he will die and or be vegetative the rest of his life,” Harch said. “They can’t make that statement. They don’t really know that for sure.”
Christine Bouthillier, Montreal Children’s Hospital communications director, provided The Federalist with a statement that said in the case of drowning victims, “survival is rare, and children often face severe brain damage.” According to the statement, this can cause a “permanent vegetative state,” but the team “follows strict protocols” when treating such patients.
“Life support is initiated in all cases, and advanced assessments are conducted to guide care decisions. Treatments are adapted as symptoms like seizures or breathing difficulties evolve,” the statement said. “When meaningful recovery of brain functions is deemed unlikely, shifting the focus to ensuring comfort and reducing suffering is recommended.”
Harch said the Canadian doctors withheld “normobaric” oxygen treatment — which repairs “neurological trauma” by administering nearly-pure oxygen — as well as “hyperbaric” oxygen treatment, which delivers oxygen at higher-than-usual pressure and has helped restore brain function of drowning victims.
“It was all about trying to get him in a hyperbaric chamber as soon as possible,” Harch said. “The parents then pulled every possible move, influence, leverage — whatever they could — to try to get their son treated, and even tried to do the very innocuous but potentially helpful ‘normobaric’ oxygen. And they just had extreme resistance from the medical staff.”
‘Harvest the Organs and Give Them Away’
Doctors were “constantly talking about” harvesting Arthur’s organs, according to Tétrault.
“They were killing him with all these drugs, and they were justifying the fact that they were promoting to harvest the organs and give them away,” he said. “They were talking about it all the time.”
Tétrault said Sam Shemie (of the pediatric ICU and advanced care unit), Samara Zavalkoff (of the pediatric and advanced ICU), and Stephen Liben (of palliative care and pediatric advanced care) — along with several nurses — suggested harvesting Arthur’s organs.
“They don’t force you, but the way it’s done, it’s kind of a strong marketing from the head of the pediatric unit,” he said. “Everybody talks about it over there.”
The hospital claims in its statement that “discussions about organ donation” are “managed by Transplant Québec” and that they “never influence patient care.” “At the MCH, we don’t ask families if they would be interested in meeting with a Transplant Québec representative or talk about organ donation before death is inevitable.”
Canadian doctors harvest organs from euthanasia victims, and some medical professionals say they should do so while the patient is alive for best organ quality, as The Federalist previously reported.
Tétrault said he and his wife met with Shemie, Zavalkoff, and Liben.
“My wife and I, they brought us in a death squad meeting and they told us basically, Arthur would be unplugged on Nov. 29,” Tétrault said.
The Federalist reached out to the three doctors, but they did not comment in time for publication. The Montreal Children’s Hospital statement says “if families wish to continue life support despite medical advice or wish to use experimental treatments that are not recommended, we offer the option of a second medical opinion and/or a potential transfer.”
Fleeing to America
Tétrault and his wife arranged an urgent flight to America, where Arthur could get treatment from Harch in New Orleans. Tétrault quickly sold assets like apartments to pay for the air ambulance and medical crew. “I asked everybody that could help me to buy some time,” he said.
Arthur’s air ambulance departed on Nov. 25 — four days before his scheduled withdrawal of medical treatment. “We were able to bring him to New Orleans at Ochsner Hospital, which was amazing,” Tétrault said.
“Think of that,” Harch said. “Flying to medically extract a Canadian citizen to come for hyperbaric treatment to actually skirt and avoid the Canadian — it’s not quite euthanasia, but — the laws that allow them to essentially terminate care on this child.”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of Canadian nonprofit Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said the nation’s socialized medical system only allows for “approved treatments,” and “even then, the system is overburdened with more patients than they can possibly treat.”
“With the case of Arthur Tétrault, the Montreal physicians refused to try hyperbaric oxygen treatment because it wasn’t listed as an available medical treatment in Canada. What is even more concerning is that the doctors were insisting on withdrawing treatment,” Schadenberg said. “Arthur is fortunate that his father has demanded treatment and that he was willing to send him to Louisiana for treatment providing hope.”
Fighting for Arthur’s Life
Tétrault said the transition between hospitals was difficult, as he felt the Canadian doctors misrepresented Arthur’s medical condition.
“The hospital in Montreal was overly negatively portraying the medical condition of Arthur so that the hospital in the U.S. will not be accepting him at all,” he said.
The medical team in America was surprised by the boy’s better-than-expected condition when he arrived, according to Harch, as Arthur was represented to them as “near dead.”
“They were led to believe that they were coming to pick up a near-dead child, that this kid had no chance — nothing,” Harch said. “When they got there and saw the condition that he was in, which was not as severe as what had been described, it was an eye-opener that they see why this father and mother went to the extremes they did.”
Since Harch has been caring for Arthur at Ochsner Medical Center, the boy has shown significant signs of improvement. Harch said doctors have now given the boy a tracheostomy, are weaning him off sedatives, and treated him with “normobaric” oxygen, which doctors refused to give Arthur in Canada.
“He is moving more and he is more alert and awake,” Harch said.
Tétrault said his son is now breathing on his own, no longer has dystonia (a movement disorder causing muscle contractions), no more “brainstorming” (or neurostorming), and he has a gag reflex — though medical staff in Montreal “said he would never have a gag reflex.”
“All the dice were rigged,” Tétrault said.
Arthur underwent his first round of “hyperbaric” oxygen treatment on Monday, according to Tétrault. He sent a video showing his wife and son during their visit with Harch, who said Arthur is gaining “purposeful movement” in his arms.
Arthur at his first round of hyperbaric treatment. Courtesy of Nicolas Tetrault
Tétrault said the difference in Arthur’s treatment stems from the difference between American and Canadian hospital systems.
“In Quebec, it’s a socialist hospital system where the patients are seen as an expense. In the U.S., a patient is seen as an income, as a client,” he said. “It makes the entire difference in the world.”