Free Republic

Longtime readers of SHS and those who have read my books and other writings, know I oppose legalizing futile care theory. Futile care theory would permit bioethics committees or doctors to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment based on quality of life and/or resource husbanding purposes (as opposed to being physiologically useless).The bioethicist Art Caplan weighs in on the matter in an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. From the column “Who Should Decide When Care is Futile?”: The court [in dismissing a moot futile care litigation] did, nevertheless, understand the importance of the matter, saying: “The issues presented are profound...

LifeNews.com Note: Texas Right to Life is one of the leading pro-life groups in the state and has been working overtime to modify a futile care law. It gives families just 10 days to find medical care for their loved ones after a medical facility determines a patient's case is futile.   The journey to reform Texas’ Futile Care Law, Texas Right to Life’s number one priority for the 80th Texas Legislative Session, was a challenging and often embittered battle that ended in a disappointing stalemate in the House. However, the efforts of hundreds of activists, including families whose ailing...

It's easy to look at the case of Emilio Gonzales and make assumptions from afar. Easy to make assumptions based upon what we think is transpiring and trumped by our own bias. After all, when we are safely sitting in our own homes, with our own loved ones and friends safe, it is easy to see Emilio and his family as not actually being "people" living this experience, but rather, characters in a movie or book/story scenario. Characters that we feel we are invited to love or hate and to blast, if we wish. How wrong! I have read some...

What if hospitals could put a sign over their doors stating, “We reserve the right to refuse life-sustaining care?” People would be outraged. Yet that is precisely what Texas law explicitly grants to hospitals — namely, to say no to wanted life-sustaining treatment, on the basis of subjective judgments about the quality of the patient’s life. It is an example of a bioethical concept known as Futile Care Theory, a.k.a. medical futility. How did Texas, of all places, become ground zero for futile-care impositions? Back in 1996, a group of Houston hospitals adopted internal administrative protocols, called the Collaborative...