Posted on 08/21/2006 3:43:35 PM PDT by wagglebee
DALLAS, Texas, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The children of a comatose woman are challenging in court the “compassionate reasons” for a Texas hospital’s decision to remove their mother’s life-saving treatment, asserting that their mother, a devout Baptist woman, never would consent to anyone but God ending her life.
On August 8, just days after 61-year-old Ruthie Webster's insurance stopped full coverage of her long-term care, the Regency Hospital’s bioethics committee in North Dallas, Texas, unanimously told the Webster family that they would discontinue life-preserving dialysis treatment for their mother within 10 days. The hospital claimed that Ruthie Webster's physician "has seen no appreciable change in your mother's medical condition" and that continued treatment was an exercise in futility.
The decision shocked family members, since their mother is not brain-dead, but comatose, and has been making slow progress, breathing now on her own without a ventilator, ever since she suffered a bad reaction after undergoing kidney dialysis in June rendering her mostly unresponsive. The family, however, has said their mother told them to take care of her in such a situation, saying that she believes only God has the right to take life away.
"My mom spent her life in the church. She always felt like, 'Who are we to decide? God decides,'” said Lacresia Webster on Thursday. "If this is the way she's going to be, she's still my mom. I'm not giving up on her."
However, the Regency Hospital board defends its decision citing a 1999 statute in Texas' Health and Safety Code that gives a hospital’s ethics committee the last word about continuing a patient's care. Under the law, if the ethics committee decides to end a patient’s medical care, including life-saving treatment, a family has only 10 days to transfer to another medical facility that will care for the patient.
Although Regency has offered to help find another medical facility for Ruthie Webster in Atlanta or Indiana, the family does not want to move their mother, unless they can help it.
"I find it hard to believe this is a law, because you're basically saying if this person is a burden to someone, let's just kill them, and that's unacceptable," Lacresia Webster told Dallas’s NBC 5.
"When God is ready for her, God will take her, not anyone else," Lacresia Webster vowed.
Intent on keeping this vow, Lacresia and her family have enlisted the aid of pro-bono attorneys who have filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott challenging the constitutionality of the state's “end-of-life” law. The family then won a temporary restraining order imposed on Regency Hospital to keep Ruthie Webster alive there until a hearing set for August 28.
Robert Bennet, a lawyer for the Websters said the law “allows a doctor to completely ignore what I’ve told them I wanted to do.” He added, “Mrs. Webster was a Baptist. She told her daughters very clearly that God would take her when it's her time to go. This statute violates her freedom of religion."
"My mother, she's breathing on her own, just like you and I are today," said Helena Webster Hill, who lives in Atlanta. "As long as she's fighting to live, we believe we ought to stand with her and fight with her."
This is entirely different from the Schaivo case. In this case, "the system" simply isn't paying for additional care, but anyone - including the family - has the option of doing so if they have the resources. In Schaivo's case, the government actually compelled her death.
Are you being sarcastic?
Yes, God's will has morphed into the free use of every technology invented and the free labor of medical attendants. Jesus would still be around today...
Hasn't it been only a few short months since the death cult insisted it was just a matter of choice? They declared that it was Terri Schiavo's choice to be tortured to death, even though the evidence showed it wasn't. They insisted they would only kill those willing to be killed. It has already morphed into a duty to die. That was quick!
I hear ya loud and clear!
Of course.
Judging from some of the knee-jerk reactions I've seen to this, I'm sure they're hoping for another Terri Schiavo fiasco.
"Hasn't it been only a few short months since the death cult insisted it was just a matter of choice? "
It still is. The family can choose to move mom or let her die. That's the choice.
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art - if they desire to learn it - without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
-- Original Hippocratic Oath
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
-- Modern Hippocratic Oath
If the hospital and the doctors are only concerned about financial costs, they chose the wrong profession.
It is inconvenient, one presumes, for the family now.
Mom lives in Bowie County, which is 200 miles to the east, one daughter lives in Atlanta, and somebody else lives in Indiana. Nobody lives in Dallas, where Ruthie is.
That is why I suggested a Catholic of Baptist hospital - both are huge organizations with many hospitals. They have a moral code of ethics consistent with the patient and her family, and I am relatively certain that if the family cannot provide financially for her care that benevolent funds could be found to assist the family through one of those institutions.
I find it troubling that a bioethics committe would meet after a termination of insurance funds to discuss life and death issues. If the article is correct - the determination was made not based on medical questions only, but that the availability of financing may have been a part of the equation.
What did the great medical ethicist Hippocrates have to say? "I will give no advice nor prescribe any medicine which will cause my patient their death..."
I looked in vain for "and I will do it for free."
This is shameful.
How can MEDICAL people MURDER their patients like this?
If for-profit hospitals are not concerned about financial costs, there will soon be no for-profit hospitals, or any place but charity and county hospitals for these doctors to practice.
Webster's insurance stopped full coverage of her long-term care. No need to say more, this says it all. As long as someone is willing to pay, the hospital is will to take the money. No money your of no use to them anymore so you are left to die. Great, just f------ great.
If social services wasn't paying for care for illegal immigrants, medical costs wouldn't be so high.
I'm sure Texas is giving illegal aliens plenty of health care at the expense of Americans. I bet you that there are illegal aliens who are receiving dialysis too. Does the Texas Futile Care Law apply to illegal aliens?
Probably not.
My God, how horrible. It seems the culture of death marches on. The do no harm oath that medical people take means nothing. God help this family.
As long as the feds don't urge Fox News to call charity givers vigilantes. Fox News will call Americans whatever the feds need them to be. We learned so much at Terri's 2005 Vigil. Fox News and the Feds run a great network.
Uh, you must be talking about another situation.
In THIS situation, Regency Hospital is willing to transfer Ruthie to a long-term hospital, and pay for the move.
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