Hospitals need to back away from the authoritarian "we are doing what we do best" attitude and show more respect to patients' families.
At 11:00 am on Saturday, Royal Her London Hospital shut down her 12-year-old Archie's Battersby life support against her parents' wishes. He died by 12:15 p.m. Millions of people have followed his case since his mother found him on the floor in April.
Apparently he took the dangerous challenge advertised on TikTok and held his breath for until he passed outIt seems thatArchie has suffered brain damage and regained consciousness.
Watching Archie's family fight raise a thorny question: Will arrogant hospital staff come to dictate when you're unplugged by someone you love? Hospitals are killing and killing families.
After Archie spent months on a ventilator, his parents wanted to transfer him to hospice at their own expense. However, the hospital refused to release him and instead insisted on terminating life support. stopped the deed done. They argued that Archie's heart was still beating and that tests to confirm brain death had not in fact been done.
Archie's fate parallels that ofanother British childAlfie Evans, aged 23 months, who died in 2018. Pope Francis was ready to take Alfie to a facility in Rome for children with her brain damage. An ambulance was on standby, but the hospital refused to transfer him and ended the infant's life instead.
UK courts ruled that hospitals were free to We will do what we determine is in Alfie's best interest." It's a common phrase used by hospitals in the US and UK to defy parents' wishes.
What happened to these British families could happen here. On rare occasions, parents have disputes in court.
Texas allows hospitals to impose a 10-day deadline for her , either agreeing to end life support with the family or transferring the patient to another patient. I'm telling you to move to another place. Her three-year-old daughter, whose mother challenged the law, has recovered enough to leave the hospital.
New Jersey is one of her most flexible states, allowing families with religious concerns to continue on life support. When teenage Jahi McMath suffered a brain injury during a routine tonsillectomy at the Children's Hospital of Oakland, California, the hospital declared her brain dead. Jahi's Christian parents went to court to keep her on life support and won her right to move her to New Jersey. They sold her house and supported her care there.
Since 1981 Federal law defines "death" to include irreversible cessation of brain function, even if the heart is still beating. New York and most states use that definition, but encourage hospitals to provide "reasonable accommodation" for family concerns and religion.
Hospitals do not always comply. Families need to know that they can disagree and even go to court to buy time. One New York mother asked for a few days.
Fighting hospital legal teams can be difficult and costly, but religious and right-to-life groups often come to the rescue.
Hospitals sometimes claim that it is in the child's "best interest" to unplug without delay. Professor Julian Savrescu of the University of Oxford explains that patients with brain injuries rarely suffer enough pain to justify taking their lives.
Moreover, no one knows the best interests of their children better than parents.
The hospital claims that unplugging protects the patient's "dignity". Archie's parents were told it was nonsense. As a family friend at Archie's bedside put it, "There is no dignity in watching a family member or a child suffocate to death." It's not exactly brutal, but it leaves you deadly exhausted and unbearable for your family.
They take their lives Be careful if you argue that is "extremely complicated" and is better left to the experts as Archie said.
The Hippocratic Oath, though somewhat outdated,details what physicians should do: "Especially the question of life and death must be treated with care. I declare that I must "Above all, I must not play with God."
Health care organizations should follow this timeless advice to help families cope with death on their own terms. .
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lieutenant Governor of New York.
Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey
