BioEdge 201: Texas law relating to futile care under fire

I have been following the case of Andrea Clarke who is under a death sentence because the doctors at St. Luke's Hospital in Texas have decreed that further treatment is futile care.

Bio Edge has provided me with a new perspective on this case, including a bit more in the way of background on Andrea Clarke.

Andrea is a 54 year old woman who is being kept alive on life support equipment and a dialysis machine. She is a widow with a 23 year old son. She does not have an advanced directive with regard to her health care but her relatives insist that she wants to live. Jerry Ward, is the lawyer for the family.

What is interesting about Andrea is that she was a blue baby and she required heart surgery when she was very young. This means that she was always a person with delicate health. Andrea had health problems in November and in January she had open heart surgery. She is now in the hands of another doctor who is directing her treatment and there has been signs of improvement.

Andrea's case is one of many cases that are emerging in Texas since the introduction of legislation that was signed by George W. Bush in 1999. The way in which the hospital committees are deciding whether or not a case should be considered as futile care might in fact be open to a lot of criticism.

The original intent of the legislation was meant to apply to people who were in fact dying. Andrea is not dying and this is why it is difficult for her family to accept that her case is one where further care is futile.

I am reading about more and more cases from Texas where the doctors are telling families that they are going to cease treatment and they are giving the families 10 days to find another facility before they pull the plug on treatment that is being given to the sick person.

In Andrea Clark's case, she has insurance. Could it be that the insurance company is putting pressure on the hospital with regard to the cost of the care that Andrea requires? If this is not the situation then it might be a case of the doctors in St. Luke's hospital are too inexperienced to offer the best form of care for Andrea so that she begins to recover from her open heart surgery.

People who have been born with a hole in the heart should not have to face this kind of treatment as they grow older. Andrea's case seems to be one where the doctors are attempting to practice passive euthanasia on the patient. If the patient is responding due to the care of the new doctor, then one has to question the competence of the doctors at St. Lukes when it comes to how they have been caring for Andrea. In the months after her operation, was Andrea getting the kind of optimal care required so that she would survive and continue to progress, or has that care been substandard?

The Andrea Clarke case is yet another example of how the culture of death is gaining strength within the hospital system in the USA. The danger of this situation is that other countries are emulating the lead of those doctors who believe that they can give up on a patient and claim that further care is futile. This is an effort to clear the system of long term patients who have the potential to survive, but they have been slow to progress.

With so many cases like Andrea's case that are emerging in Texas, it might be time to have a closer look at the way in which the culture of death is gaining a foothold in that state thanks to legislation whose purpose is being distorted by the system.