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Haleigh Poutre...

More pressure comes to air the unusually long detention of Haleigh.

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BOSTON - Haleigh Poutre, at the center of one of the state’s most highly publicized end-of-life case, has spent more than two years in a rehabilitation hospital.

That’s 12 times longer than the typical patient, who stays about two months.

Critics say the state is reluctant to place Poutre in a permanent home after her adoptive mother and stepfather were accused of beating her.

They say that reluctance stems in part from the fact that the Department of Social Services initially pushed for permission to remove her from life support. Poutre’s health improved before they could act.

Other child advocates say the long hospital stay shows the state is trying to do all it can for Poutre.

Critics: Poutre spending too much time in state care

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Sam Golubchuk...

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Asked by The New York Times in 2005 what today-taken-for-granted idea or value he thinks may disappear in the next 35 years, Professor Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, responded: “the traditional view of the sanctity of human life.” It will, he explained, “collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments.”

This past January 30, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, Canada issued a policy statement that may come to permit the professor to add “prophet” to his curriculum vitae.

In that document, the governing body of the Canadian province’s medical profession directs that doctors have the final say with regard to ending life-sustaining treatment of patients – regardless of the wishes or religious beliefs of the patients or their families. It also establishes a baseline for justifying life-sustaining treatment – including a patient’s ability to “experience his/her own existence” – below which a doctor is directed to end life-sustaining treatment, regardless of the wishes of the patient’s family. The new policy paper has garnered much attention, and may well have ramifications throughout Canada and, conceivably, elsewhere.

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More recently, doctors at Manitoba’s own Grace Memorial Hospital sought to disconnect Samuel Golubchuk from the ventilator that was helping him breathe, claiming that he was unconscious and unresponsive – presumably never to recover. Mr. Golubchuk’s children, Orthodox Jews whose religious convictions opposed terminating their father’s life, promptly sought and obtained a court injunction. The judge in that case recently announced that there were sufficient grounds to doubt the hospital’s analysis of the patient’s condition, and Mr. Golubchuk’s children report that he is now alert and making purposeful movements.

Neither those cases, nor scores of similar ones, seem to have given the Manitoba College of Physicians pause before arrogating to doctors the final say in matters of life and death. One thing is certain: In the wake of Manitoba medicine’s new rules, physicians in that province will in the future be spared such embarrassing outcomes. Dead patients tell no tales.....................

BRAZEN NEW WORLD

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