Haleigh Poutre Almost Victim of Euthanasia, Now Making Good Progress

Life News ^ | September 4, 2006 | Steven Ertelt

[8mmMauser]

Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- Haleigh Poutre was the victim of child abuse and was nearly killed via euthanasia when Massachusetts officials gave up on her after she entered a coma. Now Poutre, once termed "brain dead" by doctors, continues to improve and is speaking a few words, her grandmother says.

Sandra Sudyka, the girl's biological grandmother, is no longer allowed to visit her granddaughter and now says she is ready to speak to the media about Poutre's condition.

She told The Republican newspaper that she last saw Poutre on July 18 but indicated she was "doing well."

"She was bright-eyed and smiling. She is always responsive to us," Sudyka explained.

Department of Social Services had asked Sudyka not to talk with reporters about Haleigh, but since they will no longer allow her and Haleigh's biological mother, Allison Avrett, to visit the 12 year-old, she said she's going to talk to the media.

"I decided since they broke the deal, I am going to talk. People should know how well she is doing," Sudyka told the newspaper.

"They don't want people to know how she is doing after they wanted to pull the plug," Sudyka said.

DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro declined an interview with The Republican but said that the visiting privileges have been suspended, not terminated.

Haleigh first began speaking in June, her grandmother told the newspaper.

"I was saying to her 'I love you,' and she was trying to say 'love' and it came out as a vibration...'ove,'" Sudyka said.

Sudyka, who is working with an attorney to adopt the girl, said she has said hello, responds to comments and questions, speaks nonverbally and is able to write her name. Haleigh can't walk and is confined to a wheelchair.

Avrett, Poutre's biological mother, lost custody of her daughter after physically abusing her. Poutre was put into a foster home where her adoptive parents also abused her. Her adopted mother committed suicide after abusing Poutre so much she had to be hospitalized.

DSS took Poutre into custody and when she appeared to slip into a coma, the agency asked the state Supreme Court for permission to take her life. That's when Poutre began responding.

Poutre has been receiving physical, speech and occupational therapy since January 26 at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Brighton.

Gov. Mitt Romney appointed a commission to look into how the state failed to properly handle the girl's case.

[T'wit]

He's a real page-turner.

[Jezebelle]

I have no doubt you are correct.

[8mmMauser]

Ping to the wagglebee thread on the Oregon boy who woke up!

GRESHAM, Oregon October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young boy, who had previously been diagnosed as being in a “permanent vegetative state,” has awakened from a 22 month-long coma and is breathing on his own.

Devon Rivers collapsed in a seizure during a phys-ed class in 2004 and his condition was never explained, though some doctors suggested it was caused by an unknown viral infection. Doctors agreed, however, that he had little hope of recovery.

His mother, Carla Rivers, visited him regularly and, in addition to physical therapy by his paediatric nursing home to keep his limbs supple, she talked to him in the belief that coma patients can retain their hearing and some understanding.

Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves

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[8mmMauser]

Ping to wagglebee thread on Organ Donation...

TORONTO, October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A doctor and assistant professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary is warning that a change in the rules defining death for purposes of organ donations could place patients in danger and ICU doctors in a conflict of interest.

Dr. Christopher Doig, director of the intensive care unit at Calgary's Foothills Medical Centre, wrote in an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that allowing organs to be removed from patients after cardiac arrest could place vulnerable patients at risk.

Organ Donation after Cardiac Death a Danger to Critical Patients - Medical Professor

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[8mmMauser]

Ping to another wagglebee thread on embryonic stem cell research...

Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) -- An MIT professor says that embryonic stem cell research is nowhere close to helping patients. He said that's because scientists haven't yet figured out how to stop embryonic stem cells from causing tumors when injected into patients.

MIT Prof: Embryonic Stem Cell Research Nowhere Close to Helping Patients

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[8mmMauser]

The wagglebee thread on the Oregon boy pinged above brought to light more info on PVS. For those who haven't visited the thread, it is a lively discussion. Here is an augmentation from ProLifeBlogs...

........................

Peter (ProLifeNews.tv) links to the story of an 11-year-old boy who woke from what doctors suggested was a hopeless condition. On Oct. 7, 2004, Devon Rivers became sickened with a mysterious illness that left in a coma:

Eventually, he was moved to a pediatric nursing care center, where he received daily physical therapy that kept his muscles from atrophying and his joints from locking up.

Yet every time doctors checked on him, they had the same prognosis: Devon was in a persistent vegetative state, and it was doubtful that he would ever recover.

His family continued to care for him and after two years Devon began breathing on his own and has "awakened" from a PVS state.

Believe it or not, some bioethicists, including the euthanasia fanatics who sponsored Terri Schiavo's death via dehydration, believe that those in a PVS state are dead and want to experiment on them.

Yet, it should be noted that along with Devon many others have come out of a PVS state. Louis Viljoen awoke from a three year coma after he was administered a sleeping pill. Note that doctors had diagnosed Louis as being in a permanent vegetative state (PVS). They told his mother he would never recover.

Doctors gave Haleigh Poutre a death sentence by characterizing her as "virtually brain dead" and in a "permanent vegetative state". Less than three weeks later, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services pushed to remove Haleigh's feeding tube and respirator and won approval from the State Supreme Court to so. Despite her "hopeless" condition, and her status as "virtually brain dead", she began showing signs of improvement and was weaned off her ventilator. She is now in rehabilitation, able to eat scrambled eggs and cream of wheat, and has tapped out drum rhythms during physical therapy.

South African researchers, writing in the NeuroRehabilitation, showed effective treatment of three PVS patients through the administration of Zolpidem. (BBC Report here)

A study of 84 patients having a "firm diagnosis" of PVS which found that 41% regained consciousness by six months, 52% by three years:

• Out of 40 patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, 17 (43%) were later found to be alert, aware, and often able to express a simple wish. The study is one of the largest, most sustained analyses of severely disabled people presumed to be incapable of conscious thinking, communication, or awareness of their surroundings. The author, London neurologist Dr. Keith Andrews, said, "It is disturbing to think that some patients who were aware had for several years been treated as being vegetative.
  
• Studies show PVS patients feel pain -- indeed, a Univ. of Mich. neurologist, in one of the most complete studies, concluded that, when food and fluids are withdrawn [to impose death], the patient should be sedated.
  
• A study of 84 patients with a "firm diagnosis" of PVS found that 41% regained consciousness by six months, 52% by three years. These statistics certainly discredit the terms "persistent" and "permanent".

In practice, the terms of PVS have become so elastic as to categorize Christine Busalacchi, a young Missouri woman, as PVS -- even though she said "Hi" to a doctor, made sounds to indicate which soap opera she wanted to watch, pushed buttons on a cassette recorder to play tapes and recognized her father on TV.

You might also check out the testimonials published at BlogsforTerri. Here are a few:

• Husband Recovers after being Diagnosed as PVS
  
• Terri is No Different than My Child
  
• Italian Coma Victim Awakens After Two Years, Says He Heard Everything
  
• She was Clinically Dead
  
• My Husband Recovered
  

See also Legalized Killing: The PVS Diagnosis

No Longer in a Permanent Vegetative State

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[8mmMauser]

Just a little bias seeps into this article. The term "anti-abortion" for example hints that abortion is the norm and "anti-" is the aberration. The article hints at division amongst Catholics, too. The Church is clear and explicit. Some who call themselves Catholic, like Kerry and Kennedy do not represent the Church position...

As three California biotech institutes find second homes in Florida, the state's anti-abortion movement has shifted its focus to give stem-cell research and other issues almost as much attention as abortion.

Long associated with its anti-abortion philosophy, the movement has responded to news events challenging Catholic Church beliefs. Followers now monitor research on stem cells, which the California-based Scripps, Burnham and Torrey Pines institutes use in their studies. And the battle over Terri Schiavo's death last year forced supporters to give end-of-life issues more prominence. The church opposed Schiavo's husband's decision to withdraw her feeding tube.

Anti-abortion group broadens its focus Stem-cell debate, end-of-life issues take prominence

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[8mmMauser]

Sheepish in Seattle as Burner gets hot: The Terri factor appears once more in political skermish...

As a U.S. representative, Reichert has taken several positions to the left of Bush and congressional Republicans.

Reichert voted against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and against Congress' intervening to keep brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive in Florida. Reichert voted to override President Bush's veto of embryonic stem cell research (the vote came after he earlier voted to prohibit the research, a vote he now calls a mistake) and has been vocal in his support of the research.

Burner, meanwhile, has staked out mainstream Democratic positions. She's pro-choice and supports stem cell research. She opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, believes the government should address global warming and has been critical of Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

Debate: Burner works to tar Reichert with GOP brush

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[8mmMauser]

Hypocrites call people they hate hypocrites...

Hypocrisy, as I've said before, is a matter of degree. Take the Terri Schiavo saga, for example. At every turn, the party of state's rights couldn't even let Schiavo's home state decide what was right and wrong. What's worse, the same president who barely lifted a finger when the terrible tsunami struck across the globe moved heaven and earth to interfere with Schiavo's final wishes. But something that got lost in the shuffle of an entire nationwide political apparatus injecting itself into one family's private affairs was the spectacular hypocrisy surrounding Tom DeLay, one of the biggest advocates for needlessly keeping Schiavo alive. DeLay, if you'll recall, was faced with a similar decision nearly 20 years ago. In that case, with his own father ailing, DeLay agreed to end his father's life. I wonder what those protesting outside of Schiavo's hospice would have thought of DeLay's behavior? Of his moral scolding despite his ties to forced prostitution and forced abortion in the Northern Mariana Islands. Of the fact that, about what was occurring there, DeLay said, "You represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America."

The party of hypocrites

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[8mmMauser]

Terri and the world awakening to PVS...

Stories are not the enemy of good science and evidence-based medicine. Physicians make crucial but subtle changes in their practices based on individual experiences. Scientists all use intuition and inductive reasoning in the nascent period of an investigation. But anecdotes cannot substitute for either ethnography or controlled study. When Terri Schiavo became the world's test case for diagnosing persistent vegetative state (PVS), the emotional intonations about Ms. Schiavo waking up began to sound like Intelligent Design.

The Plural of Anecdote is Not Ambien... Aided and abetted by the press, researchers are relying more on case reports.

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[8mmMauser]

Lib fantasies emerge in this book review. I just may not buy either the book or the book review...

Mr. Sullivan's argument goes like this: The real "conservative" is someone who "knows what he doesn't know," whose politics evince a cautious skepticism, who avoids government moralism or grand attempts at nation-building, who shudders at the Terri Schiavo affair, who loathes Senator Santorum.

This kind of conservatism, as it happens, has a long intellectual pedigree stretching back to Edmund Burke and finding another champion in the 20th-century British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, but it hasn't been very popular in America. In this country, great political leaders are remembered more for their grand political projects — think Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Mr. Sullivan recognizes this, but it doesn't faze him.

Whose Country Is It, Anyway?

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[T'wit]

>> ...despite his ties to ... forced abortion in the Northern Mariana Islands.

I heard he once stepped on a sea turtle egg on the beach at Fernando Po. The hypocrite.

[T'wit]

I make it a rule not to read liberal screeds about conservatives. Saves money that is much better spent in a saloon or at an OTB parlor or getting your body pierced.

[T'wit]

Gah, I read all the way to the end before I found out that the writer is a bioethicker. You should have warned us!

The man is flatly wrong in supposing that only group studies make good medicine. People come one at a time. We are all unique. We all have unique chemistry and traits. Reports of unusual individual cases not only enrich medical literature but inform legal and philosophical considerations concerned with medicine. They also give leads to researchers.

If Ambien wakes some PVS patients, as claimed, it sends two obvious messages. One, this may offer a promising new avenue for treating brain injuries. Two, let us not be so hasty in killing PVS patients! There is hope for them that we did not know of before.

[T'wit]

Both candidates are lousy and what else is new?

[T'wit]

>> Lamont cited the Terry Schiavo case, where both Bush and Lieberman favored federal intervention...

I wonder what the liberals would have found to grumble about if the feds had intervened to save Nicole Simpson or Laci Peterson?

[T'wit]

>> The party of hypocrites

Is there any other party, anywhere? :-)

[T'wit]

>> The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests For Life, will start a new religious order, the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, devoted to opposing abortion.

I'd be glad to offer my support to that!

[syriacus]

Thanks for the ping to all these great stories, 8mmMauser.

Support for euthanasia leads to (surprise!) increasing numbers of "medical failures" (aka, deaths).

If the euthanasio-fascists had their way, these alert people would be dead.

In general, the pro-life medical personnel (and families) are making much more medical progress than the pro-death people.

Show me a doctor who believes in euthanasia and I'll show you a doctor who contributes very little to medical advancement.

[8mmMauser]

68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub, A great freeper and great American is in need of our prayers.

We hope all on Terri's List, if not yet pinged by other lists, can visit the thread, and also review his profile. We offer our prayers for his recovery.

Prayer Requested for 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub

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