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Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support[W:315]

Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

Good lord i hope the family wins and sues the pants off the hospital
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

People can chose to abort perfectly healthy pregnancies at 14 weeks and beyond.

No reason a dead woman should have to carry and undead baby - healthy or otherwise. No need play the "they just don't like the disabled" card. A family is stating their wishes. When you die...you get to die and be buried and give your family closure. The fact that the child will likely be severely disabled if he/she lives is really beside the point.

Beside the point - really? That's why the family's lawyer is making an issue of the fetus's health?
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

Is the attending physician a certain Dr. Frankenstein?
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

An attorney who helped rewrite the state law being used to keep a pregnant Haltom City woman on life support said lawmakers never discussed it being applied to a brain-dead person.

Thomas Mayo, an associate law professor at Southern Methodist University who helped draft the latest version of the Advanced Directive section of the Texas Health and Safety Code in 1999, said that he does not recall discussing that aspect of the law.

“It never would have occurred to us that anything in the statute applied to anyone who was dead,” Mayo said in an interview. “The statute was meant for making treatment decisions for patients with terminal or irreversible conditions.”

Debate about the law will be at the heart of a court hearing today when the family of Marlise Muñoz asks state District Judge R.H. Wallace to force John Peter Smith Hospital to remove her from life support that would also end the life of the fetus.

Texas law didn’t anticipate Muñoz case, drafters say | Fort Worth | News fro...
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

That is called the spirit of the law, and is most likely going ti be argued by his attorney.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

This is from that section....


They are not sustaining her life. Unless reports are wrong, she is legally dead. I say again. They are not sustaining the life of the patient. She is dead.

Beat me to it.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

She is on life-sustaining medical equipment.



She is on life-sustaining medical equipment.

She has been declared legally dead. That law does not apply. The hospital is misinterpreting the law and the court should make that judgement soon.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

An attorney who helped rewrite the state law being used to keep a pregnant Haltom City woman on life support said lawmakers never discussed it being applied to a brain-dead person.

Thomas Mayo, an associate law professor at Southern Methodist University who helped draft the latest version of the Advanced Directive section of the Texas Health and Safety Code in 1999, said that he does not recall discussing that aspect of the law.

“It never would have occurred to us that anything in the statute applied to anyone who was dead,” Mayo said in an interview. “The statute was meant for making treatment decisions for patients with terminal or irreversible conditions.”

Debate about the law will be at the heart of a court hearing today when the family of Marlise Muñoz asks state District Judge R.H. Wallace to force John Peter Smith Hospital to remove her from life support that would also end the life of the fetus.

Texas law didn’t anticipate Muñoz case, drafters say | Fort Worth | News fro...

I can see how it can be read both ways. I don't blame the hospital for acting as it has - it is vague language.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

She is on life-sustaining medical equipment.



She is on life-sustaining medical equipment.

They are not sustaining her life. She is a corpse.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

I can see how it can be read both ways. I don't blame the hospital for acting as it has - it is vague language.

Not vague.
A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.

Acts 1989, 71st Leg., ch. 678, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1989. Renumbered from Sec. 672.019 and amended by Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 450, Sec. 1.03, eff. Sept. 1, 1999.

She is dead, her life cannot be sustained.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

Good grief. 82 pages of "She's not dead!" and "Yes she is!"

:roll:
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

They are not sustaining her life.

The success is not a requirement.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

Not vague.


She is dead, her life cannot be sustained.

It is not specified in the law to whom is being referred to in "life-sustaining treatment". There is still one individual who is clinically alive and that's who is being treated.

I don't doubt it wasn't intended to be read in that way, but it can be read in that way.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

It is not specified in the law to whom is being referred to in "life-sustaining treatment". There is still one individual who is clinically alive and that's who is being treated.

I don't doubt it wasn't intended to be read in that way, but it can be read in that way.

It says "from the pregnant patient".

The patient is dead. Dead.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

It says "from the pregnant patient".

The patient is dead. Dead.

I know the patient is dead. The law simply states "life sustaining treatment", not whose life. The fetus is alive.

Do you honestly believe this situation would exist if weren't for poorly worded legislation?
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

I know the patient is dead. The law simply states "life sustaining treatment", not whose life. The fetus is alive.

Do you honestly believe this situation would exist if weren't for poorly worded legislation?

Not poorly worded. It clearly states life sustaining equipment from the pregnant patient". The patient is dead.

Poorly worded, no. People with an agenda reading into the law perhaps. Can you imagine our legislation having to add "oh, but the way, this does not pertain to a corpse"? We would never write that, because it is idiotic.

The law clearly was intended for incapacated patients. Not corpses.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

Not poorly worded. It clearly states life sustaining equipment from the pregnant patient". The patient is dead.

Poorly worded, no. People with an agenda reading into the law perhaps. Can you imagine our legislation having to add "oh, but the way, this does not pertain to a corpse"? We would never write that, because it is idiotic.

The law clearly was intended for incapacated patients. Not corpses.

You can clearly see from my posting in this thread that I do not have an agenda of keeping this woman on life support.

You just seem incapable of understanding that it says life sustaining treatment shall not be withdrawn in the case of pregnancy. In obstetric care there are two patients. It is quite understandable to read into the law that life-sustaining treatment shall not be removed from the mother or the fetus, if one is alive.

And no, obviously I wouldn't write it like that because it doesn't clarify anything.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

You can clearly see from my posting in this thread that I do not have an agenda of keeping this woman on life support.

You just seem incapable of understanding that it says life sustaining treatment shall not be withdrawn in the case of pregnancy. In obstetric care there are two patients. It is quite understandable to read into the law that life-sustaining treatment shall not be removed from the mother or the fetus, if one is alive.

And no, obviously I wouldn't write it like that because it doesn't clarify anything.

If the law pertained to a dead patient it would say so. The law pertained to a living, but incapacitated pregnant patient.

Put it this way. Death by cardiac causes is legally, morally, and medically just as dead as death by "brain death". The laws have gone out of they way to prove this. See the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Since this is a give....why not treat them the same way? What would we do if this woman was dead by cardiac death? If the fetus was near or past the point of viability outside the womb, they would do a crash C-section and deliver the baby. This should be the rule, not the exception. If a family wants to petition the court to keep the dead body on machines (like the McMath family) - so be it. But keeping corpses on machines should not be considered a reasonable response - especially in anything but the very short term.(ie long enough to get family together and to understand the concept of brain death as death or to harvest organs)

From the Uniform Determination of Death Act

Determination of Death. An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

From the actual law that the hospital states is making them keep the corpse on the machines.

(10) "Life-sustaining treatment" means treatment that, based on reasonable medical judgment, sustains the life of a patient and without which the patient will die. The term includes both life-sustaining medications and artificial life support, such as mechanical breathing machines, kidney dialysis treatment, and artificial nutrition and hydration. The term does not include the administration of pain management medication or the performance of a medical procedure considered to be necessary to provide comfort care, or any other medical care provided to alleviate a patient's pain.

The patient is dead.

The woman is not a life support machine. The patient is the woman, not the fetus. The law is clear. It is disgusting that it is taking this so long to get to the courts.
 
Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

If the law pertained to a dead patient it would say so. The law pertained to a living, but incapacitated pregnant patient.

Put it this way. Death by cardiac causes is legally, morally, and medically just as dead as death by "brain death". The laws have gone out of they way to prove this. See the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Since this is a give....why not treat them the same way? What would we do if this woman was dead by cardiac death? If the fetus was near or past the point of viability outside the womb, they would do a crash C-section and deliver the baby. This should be the rule, not the exception. If a family wants to petition the court to keep the dead body on machines (like the McMath family) - so be it. But keeping corpses on machines should not be considered a reasonable response - especially in anything but the very short term.(ie long enough to get family together and to understand the concept of brain death as death or to harvest organs)

From the Uniform Determination of Death Act

Sweet Jesus. I know she is dead. Try reading what someone is saying. In obstetrics, there are two patients. The life sustaining treatment is keeping the fetus alive.

Why do you think the law exists in the first place - because they view the fetus as patient.
 
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Re: Texas Hospital keeping pregnant dead lady on life support

according to the family's lawyers, the fetus is "distinctly abnormal"

Yahoo!

According to the medical records we have been provided, the fetus is distinctly abnormal," attorneys Heather King and Jessica Hall Janicek said in a statement Wednesday. They cited extreme deformation of lower limbs and brain abnormalities.

If this is the case, the time has come to pull the plug.
 
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