Chris Dunn is a patient at Houston Methodist Hospital and is facing denial of treatment against the expressed wishes of his Medical Power of Attorney and family members. This is not a case of a brain dead or comatose person. (not that that should matter). Chris Dunn is fully conscious and aware, and wants to live and is capable of communicating this. But the hospital wants to pull his plug, effectively killing him.
However, Houston Methodist has invoked the statutory process found in the Texas Advanced Directives Act (TADA-Chapter 166.046 of the Health & Safety Code), which allows the hospital to override medical directives of a patient and provide only ten days’ notice before withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.
For this helpless patient, the ten-day period was supposed to end on
Monday, November 23. Texas Right to Life is serving as the patient
advocate and working to secure care at another facility while
ministering to the distraught family.
(Family protecting hospitalized relative from imposed death, Monday Nov. 23, 2015)
Back 1999, The Texas Legislature unanimously passed the
draconian Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA). Under TADA, when a doctor and a
patient (or his/her surrogate) disagree about appropriate end-of-life
treatment, the disagreement is taken before an ethics review committee.
TADA only provides a ten day period for the patient's family
either to find another facility to accept the patient or to obtain a court
injunction to extend their life. If no other facility will accept the patient
within the period of time and the family is unable to obtain a court
injunction, then the hospital is legally permitted to withdraw life
sustaining-treatment from the patient, and simply let them die, regardless of
their wishes, their living will, or the wishes of their family. Folks, this is one of those “death panels”
about you have been warned.
Texas Right to Life has been lobbying since 2005 has to end
these death panels. You would think
that any real pro-life organization, would be working with them to end this
“death panel” system in Texas. But that
is far from the truth. When
opportunities to reform this act have presented themselves, Pojman’s Texas
Alliance for Life has run interference.
For example in the 84th Texas Legislative session (2015)
Texas Alliance for Life actually supported House Bill 2351, which was supposed
to be a bill to reform these death panels, but in reality this Bill only
perpetuated the death panels.
HB 2351 by Representative Patricia Harless (R-Spring) will
also be heard today in the House Committee on State Affairs. The stated purpose of HB 2351 is to reform
hospital ethics committees (death panels), which currently hold unlimited power
to remove medical treatment from patients after providing ten days notice to
the patient or family. Under the
current Texas Advance Directives Act, hospitals may remove life-sustaining
treatments including a ventilator, dialysis, food, and hydration from patients,
even if the patient or their family has expressed a desire to continue such
care and treatment. Treatment can be
withdrawn from any patient for any reason, including discrimination against a patient
who is elderly, terminally ill, or disabled.
Rather than actually reforming the draconian ten-day law, HB
2351 instructs the hospital committees to write and circulate their own
regulations about conflicts of interest for their own ethics committees about
their own decisions on withdrawing treatment from patients. HB 2351 also instructs facilities to write
and implement policies for withdrawing treatment from patients with
disabilities. However, this section
establishes yet another dangerous loophole through this provision by adding: “unless
the disability is relevant in determining whether a medical or surgical
intervention is medically appropriate.”
HB 2351 does not actually provide specific details about what the
policies should be, just that hospitals should adopt policies on these topics.
(Committee to hear dangerous bills masquerading as Pro-Life, April 8, 2015)
Thanks to Joe Pojman and the Texas Alliance for Life, death
panels are alive and well in Texas.
There is blood on their hands.
If you want to support the pro-life movement in Texas,
please do it through Texas Right to Life, do not be fooled by groups who have
sold their souls to the Austin Establishment and the healthcare lobby.
You need to do two things:
First and immediately call Dr. Marc L. Bloom Pres and CEO (713) 441-2671
and also email him at mboom@tmhs.org to tell the hospital this is
unacceptable! The hospital needs to know that the world is watching and
is outraged!
Secondly, on March 1st you need to vote for State Representatives and State Senators who will vote to eliminate death panels in Texas. Look for candidates who are endorsed by Texas Right to Life. Do not be fooled by "fake" Pro-Life endorsements from Texas Alliance for Life and
or TAL director Joe Pojman because this is the very organization which has perpetuated death panels in Texas for years!
I dont Understand if this man is not on hos death bed and is functioning and saying he wants to live....how can they kill him????? This makes no sense to me. Please elaborate on this man and his condition.
ReplyDeleteHe is conscious and alert. They want to withhold life sustaining treatment such as supplemental oxygen and nutrition which is keeping him alive right now. They are also denying treatment for his illness that would extend his life considerably.
DeleteFrom the Texas Right to Life: "Many have asked what Chris’s medical diagnosis is. In short: no one – including his doctors – knows. This is not because Chris is suffering from an inexplicable illness, but simply because his physicians refuse to investigate his symptoms to find a cause. Chris was admitted with a mass on his pancreas which, to date, the hospital has not biopsied.
DeleteWhat we do know about Chris’s medical state is that he is not brain-dead; he is conscious and responds to commands and answers questions by nodding his head and waving his arms. He has persisted in his condition with little change since his admittance at Methodist two months ago. Chris’s condition may be treatable, but the hospital has discriminated against Chris by ruling treatment futile based on an arbitrary “quality of life” judgment, and they have done this without even investing due diligence in diagnosing him.
The hospital has not predicated this decision on Chris’s inability to pay. Instead, the hospital has focused on subjective quality of life judgments as the reason for denying Chris life-sustaining care. Although he did not have insurance when admitted, Chris is eligible for emergency Medicaid, and Chris is receiving other treatment at Methodist. The issue at hand is the hospital’s insistence on removing Chris from a ventilator, which would kill him."