Man, it’s almost as though when you take out all the nuance and reasons for doing it, euthanasia sounds horrible! Let’s see if this applies to anything else.
“So tell me now, should Americans be worried? Is it something a lot of American liberals favor, allowing so-called ‘doctors’ to cut into their patients because in their judgment it would be good for their health?”
“So tell me now, should Americans be worried? Is it something a lot of American liberals favor, allowing the government to kidnap people because in their judgment it would be better for them to be locked up?”
“So tell me now, should Americans be worried? Is it something a lot of American liberals favor, allowing dangerous, potentially lethal drugs to be given freely to people in the streets simply because they complain of headaches?”
I just described surgery, prison, and aspirin in terms about as fair as the ones you used to describe this case. It’s not that simple, and you can’t simplify it like that without losing crucial details - details such as that according to the experts, the only thing this treatment was likely to do was extend the child’s suffering for a short while, and that moving the child to palliative care is the only ethical option at this point.
The baby can not be saved. Every medical person involved agrees on that point.
No, it would not. In the US the next question would be “how are you going to pay for this?” In addition, parental rights in the US are not absolute and parents can and have lost custody and decision right over their children in medical cases where the courts have decided they parents are not acting in the best interests of their child.
As has been said before, this is NOT about the hospital, it’s about what is in the best interest of the child. Futile and useless treatments are not in the child’s interest. Moving a terminally ill child requiring intensive, round the clock care, is not in the child’s best interests. Whether or not the experimental treatment is in the child’s interest I don’t feel qualified to say, but even the doctors developing and promoting the therapy agree this is NOT going to cure the kid or reverse his brain damage at this point. It would be experimenting on a baby. Are you OK with volunteering babies for medical experiments?
Don’t know any poor, minority parents, do you? The US medical system is not as benign as you think it is. Also, you have this odd notion that US courts are incapable of removing parental rights from someone.
Why do you have this delusion that somehow this kid is going to live? The baby IS going to die in the near future. The cellular machinery that utilizes oxygen and provides energy to live is broken in every cell of his body.
The debate, such as it is, is NOT whether or not the child will live or die - the baby WILL die in the near future - but how to care for him in his remaining time. Should he be made as comfortable as possible for as long as possible? Should intensive life support be withdrawn? Should he be subjected to experimental treatment that will not prolong his life (much less cure him) and might permit him a bit more capability before his disease kills him but might do nothing for him at all?
There is NO scenario where Charlie Gard lives to grow up.
This is not about saving Charlie Gard’s life, it’s about whether or not to subject a dying baby to an experimental medical treatment.
Even if there would be research value, that does not meet the legal test of best interests of the child.
Adults can consent to treatment, knowing that it may not benefit them but will provide useful research information that may benefit others in the future.
Infants cannot consent to be test subjects, and the courts will not permit treatment that is only for research, unless it can be shown to benefit the child. That’s what the test of best interests of the child means.
Unresponsive infants cannot be used as guinea pigs.
That was a case about children selling religious literature contrary to child labor laws. You have a long hike ahead of you to link that to this particular case. Is there a judicial ruling in the US where the court ordered the plug to be pulled on a child when the parents did not want the plug pulled? Honest question. I really don’t know, but I can’t recall having heard of one. Not that I would necessarily have heard of it, but it seems like it would be a big deal.
Me neither but the legal framework for protecting human rights and dignities is rather different in the EU. That probably has a lot more to do with this decision than the fact that NHS is a government entity.
And that’s fine, but then folks shouldn’t make the argument that things are basically the same in both places.
Agreed. Although having a “socialized” medical system makes it easier for the state to step in, it’s not a necessary condition for the state to do so. There certainly have been cases in the US where the courts have required certain medical treatments for children, against the wishes of their parents, but again, I’m not aware of cases where the courts ruled against further treatment contrary to the wishes of the parents (when that treatment was performed by a licensed physician, and not some woo-practitioner).
Can you quote the parts you think are relevant? That’s a lot or reading, and after skimming them, they don’t appear to be applicable to this case. The NYT article talks about doctors not being compelled to continue treatment if they judge such treatment to be useless, but that’s quite different from forbidding doctors to continue treatment if they are willing to do so.
Forbidding treatment is a mischaracterization of the Charlie Gard case. From earlier linked FAQ from GOSH:
The objection is not to further treatment, it’s to moving a very fragile and terminally ill patient when the patient has no chance of cure from such a trip.
There are currently discussions underway regarding the feasibility of sending the treatment to Charlie where he currently is rather than bring Charlie to the US. GOSH has also stated they are in no hurry to turn off the life support (at the end of the linked FAQ) so presumably if the treatment can be brought to the UK there is still the possibility of Charlie receiving it. It’s unlikely, but not impossible.
I’m not quoting extensively from the NYTimes article, although I have read it, but it does cover a discussion of what is termed “futile care”. It is not possible for a doctor or hospital in the US to forbid some other doctor or hospital from providing care, but a doctor or hospital can refuse to give care that is not in the patient’s best interest, and could go to court to prevent the transport of a patient they don’t think would survive the trip as that would not be in the best interests of the patient. I can’t distill the discussion down to just one or two lines and do it justice so I’m not going to do so.
Since that’s not what’s in issue here, why do you ask? The English courts have not forbidden treatment; they’ve forbidden transporting a fragile patient for treatment that is not going to save him.
Yes, there is. From the NYT article:
Last week, Sun Hudson, a 5-month-old, died after a judge gave Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston permission to disconnect his ventilator over the objections of his mother.
I also disagree with you about the relevance of Prince v Massachusetts. ISTM a clear illustration of the principle I cited – the principle of the courts stepping in to look after the interests of those who cannot look after it themselves, specifically as applied to children, and thereby placing limits on parental rights.
The case cited by Broomstick – Dority v. Superior Court – was rendered moot by the fact that the infant died before the court could rule on it, but ISTM to illustrate the same principle of child protection over misguided parents, inasmuch as the parents’ objections to removing life support from an infant judged to be terminal resulted in the appointment of the Director of the Department of Public Social Services as the child’s temporary guardian to represent the child’s best interests in the proceedings.
The NYT article also cites compromise laws enacted in Texas, Virginia, and California that under various conditions empower doctors to withdraw life support over the objections of parents or guardians.
Anyone trying to argue that US law on this matter is different than in Europe for whatever reason would at best be able to show that judicial outcomes have been mixed, with different state laws also coming into play, but certainly not as absolutist as adaher was claiming, and that similar events as the Charlie case have occurred.
Depends on your definition of civilised, and “best interests of the child”. Most civilised countries have some provision for the supervision of the parent-child relationship by law if the child stands to be harmed - which is the issue in this case…
Still not seeing it. I already noted that there is a difference between saying that doctors are not required to provide care and forbidding doctors to provide care. The Sun Hudson case was the former, not the latter.
I don’t know if this has been explicitly raised as one of the issues in the court cases, but while it might be rational from a scientist’s point of view, it hardly seems to fit the priority established by law: the interests of the child in the case. How can keeping him technically alive on life support just to be a guinea-pig possibly be any more in his best interests
than allowing nature to take its course?
When every doctor available says “He’s dead, Jim”, I’m not seeing it as the same as there being medical facilities that are willing to “treat” the patient. Had Sun’s mother been able to find a facility willing to treat Sun, then the plug would not have been pulled.
There is also the issue of parental competence in this case. Note that the child was named “Sun” because the mother claimed the father was “the Sun”.
That seems like a stretch, because there is no substantive difference. If a court rules that doctors don’t have to provide care – and indeed that they may and should remove life support and the patient dies – this is exactly the same as saying that doctors may not attempt procedures deemed to be futile because they are harmful to the patient, and the patient dies.
Your original question was “Is there a judicial ruling in the US where the court ordered the plug to be pulled on a child when the parents did not want the plug pulled?”. The answer is “yes”, but now that you have the answer, you’re objecting to the example given, even though it’s a crystal-clear example of exactly what you asked.
If you want to base your argument on the fact that the parents are being denied the opportunity to haul Charlie across the ocean for “care” in the US, it’s because according to unanimous medical opinion including the US doctor himself, it would be futile and is therefore not actually “care” but a damaging exercise in futility. One might note that for similar reasons, doctors have deemed that Charlie should not be taken to die at home because of the need for palliative care to assure his comfort in his final moments.
I would also point that, contrary to adaher’s claims that in the US “the state” would never stand between parents and their child in such a matter as the Charlie case, to the best of my understanding that’s exactly what happened in Dority v. Superior Court. What clearer evidence can one have of “the state” involving itself than having the Director of the Department of Public Social Services acting as the child’s temporary guardian in direct opposition to the parents?
Exactly this.
Interesting additional info, thanks, and thanks for the earlier links.
I would say there’s an issue of parental competence in any situation where they oppose unanimous expert medical opinion to the detriment of the child. Calling parental competence into question doesn’t imply they’re crazy, it may just imply an inability to separate their emotions from the medical facts and make objective decisions in the child’s best interests.
No, the courts did not order the plug to be pulled. The courts allowed the medical staff to make that decision. They upheld the law, as I referenced in the wikipedia article, which allowed the doctors to terminate treatment as long as no other facility could be found that would offer further treatment. The courts did not enter the fray and say “we will not allow you to seek treatment elsewhere”.
IIRC, you’re Canadian, so flying “across the ocean” shouldn’t be seen as some unimaginable distance. London to NY is not so different form NY to SFO, except no ocean involved. It’s not at all unusual for people to be flown over long distances to receive specialized care.