A 5-month-old baby with a fatal genetic disorder will be removed from life support this afternoon at Texas Children's Hospital, with permission from a judge but against the mother's wishes.
According to bioethicists, no U.S. judge has ever let a hospital discontinue life support on a living baby, reports the Houston Chronicle.
Sun Hudson has been diagnosed with a skeletal deformity called thanatophoric dysplasia, a form of dwarfism characterized by a tiny chest and lungs too small to support life. He has been on a ventilator since birth.
The child's mother, Wanda Hudson, has been fighting the hospital, insisting her baby needed more time to grow, so he could be weaned from the ventilator. On Monday, Harris County Probate Court Judge William C. McCulloch confirmed an earlier, groundbreaking decision that the hospital was not required to continue life-sustaining treatment doctors believed was futile and medically inappropriate.
The hospital, in accordance with state law, had its ethics committee review Sun's case before recommending life support be discontinued. Texas law requires families then be given 10 days to find another facility to care for the patient. In Sun's case, no other hospital agreed to provide care.
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2 comments:
In light of what is going on with Terri...I find all of what is going on in this light terribly chilling
You are right Crystal. We must realize that we may be fighting for our own lives someday and what will happen may be determined right now. It is God who gives and takes life. No other shaould have that right and it is tragic when we forget that.
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