Pro-Life Update

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July 2006

Although the Pro-Life movement often has much reason to celebrate, we are still fighting the Culture of Death, which is unfortunately quite strong.  Human life is being attacked both at the beginning and at the end of life—by prominent figures and institutions.  Texas futile care law currently allows doctors and hospital ethics boards to make life-or-death decisions for patients, even against their will or written directives.  Harvard has begun attempts to clone humans for the purpose of extracting embryonic stem cells (and thereby killing them).  A prominent medical ethicist in England has recently suggested that doctors be allowed to perform non-voluntary euthanasia on patients nearing the end of their lives.  News stories such as these remind us that we must work and pray harder each and every day to restore the sanctity of innocent human life.

Futile Care in Texas
According to Wesley J. Smith, “Texas has become ground zero for futile-care theory.”  In 1999, Texas passed a law that explicitly permits a hospital ethics committee to refuse wanted life-sustaining care.  Under the Texas Health and Safety Code, if the physician disagrees with a patient’s desire for treatment, the doctor can ask the hospital ethics committee to review the decision.  A futility review meeting or ethics committee meeting is scheduled during which all interested parties explain their positions (including the family of the patient), and then the members deliberate in private.  If the committee decides to withdraw treatment, the patient and family receive written notice.  The letter informs the family that the patient and family have a mere ten days to find another facility willing to provide care, after which, according to the statute, “the physician and health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment.”  Prior to the passage of this law, no notice was provided to patients or families of the intent to withdraw treatment.

Texas Right to Life has been involved in numerous cases involving medical futility.  Elizabeth Graham, Director of Texas Right to Life, described one case in which an attending physician recommended that all medications, blood tests, and nutrition and hydration be stopped:

During a futility review meeting (to which I was invited), the attending physician stated that the patient was definitely NOT brain dead, simply brain damaged from a stroke.  The patient was NOT experiencing organ failure, meaning her lungs, heart, kidneys, liver … everything was working.  The patient had a trach collar, but she breathed on her own, and she processed food and hydration appropriately.  She was free from infection.  During the meeting, I pointed out that the withdrawal of food and water would effectively dehydrate the patient to death, and the doctors dismissed me as if I did not understand medical science.  At this point, the family of the patient left the meeting in disgust.

Texas Right to Life receives calls regularly from families thrust into this situation.  We are working to change the futility laws in Texas so that families will not face such difficult battles while trying to care for their loved ones and to protect patients from involuntary euthanasia.  Doctors or other medical professionals should not be able to determine what lives are worth saving.  As German physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland wrote in 1806, “It is not up to [the doctor] whether… life is happy or unhappy, worthwhile or not, and should he incorporate these perspectives into his trade… the doctor could well become the most dangerous person in the state.”

Harvard Begins Human Cloning and Embryonic Stem Cell Research
On June 6, 2006, Harvard University announced that they are trying to clone human embryos and extract embryonic stem cells in an attempt to cure many now-incurable diseases.  The work is privately funded and therefore not affected by President Bush’s prohibition on public funding of embryonic stem cell research.  Harvard’s work is still in the very early stages.  Their press release stated that “it will be many years—at best—before patients benefit directly from the work.”  In other words, many human embryos will be created and then killed while Harvard perfects the technology.

Dr. George Daley of Children’s Hospital Boston, a Harvard teaching hospital, is conducting research using unfertilized eggs from an in vitro fertilization clinic and DNA from embryos that were unable to produce a pregnancy.  Later, his team hopes to use newly harvested eggs and DNA from patients.  Drs. Douglas Melton and Kevin Eggan, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, will use DNA from skin cells of diabetes patients and eggs donated by women.

Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers commented on the controversial nature of this project: “While we understand and respect the sincerely held beliefs of those who oppose this research, we are equally sincere in our belief that the life-and-death medical needs of countless suffering children and adults justifies moving forward with this research.”

Prominent English Medical Ethicist Calls for Non-Voluntary Euthanasia
Professor Len Doyal, professor emeritus of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, and a leading expert on medical ethics, has called for doctors to be able to end the lives of some terminally ill patients “swiftly, humanely and without guilt”—even if they have not given consent. 

Prof. Doyal argues that doctors are already able to remove life-support (including nutrition and hydration); since some will suffer a “slow and distressing death” as they dehydrate to death, doctors should be able to actively end their life.  Doyal states: “Clinicians who starve severely incompetent patients to death are not deemed by law to have killed them actively, even if they begin the process by the removal of feeding tubes.  The legal fiction that such starvation is not active killing is no more than clumsy judicial camouflage of the euthanasia that is actually occurring.”  Interestingly, Prof. Doyal uses this observation to argue that doctors should be able to legally and openly perform non-voluntary euthanasia, rather than recognizing that doctors should not be actively killing patients in the first place.

The Pro-Life movement still has much work to ensure that all people throughout the world are welcomed into Life and respected.  If you would like any additional information on the topics discussed above, please send me a note or log onto www.TexasRightToLife.com.  If you ever have questions about any Pro-Life issues, please be sure to let me know.

Yours for Life,

Dr. Joseph M. Graham

President