Save Baby Emilio!
What follows is absolutely scary and unbearably sad.
URGENT ACTION ALERT: Urge TX Gov. to Stop 10-day Death Countdown
Dear Readers,
The following action alert comes to us from Bob Kafka of ADAPT/Not Dead Yet of Texas. A news article with background information on the child, Emilio Gonzales, and his mother, Catarina Gonzales follows underneath the action alert.
Child to be Killed in Texas
Activists:
There is a 16 month old child in a Children’s Hospital in Austin, Texas that has an extremely severe disability.
The mother of this child wants the doctors and the hospital to continue treatment. The doctors say it is “futile” and have started the 10 day clock, that which at the end of these ten days unless the mother has found another doctor or facility to treat her son, the doctors in Austin will discontinue care and he will die. They say care is “futile”, the mother says give her more time!!!
Though the medical specifics are complicated and the legal issues byzantine, the disability rights issues are not.
Simply stated the hospital and the doctors are going against the stated wishes of the legally responsible person, the mother, who has stated her opposition to their “godlike” position.
The disability rights movement was founded on the fundamental concepts of “choice and control.” Our medial diagnosis shouldn’t allow the medical community to override our wishes or the wishes of our legally authorized representative.
A person on death row in Texas gets more protections than the child in Austin is allowed by Texas’ “futile care” law. The hospital ethics committee has met and the ten day death clock is ticking.
Ten days and you’re dead!
We must speak out. There is a bill in the 80th Legislature that would change our current “futile care” law to “treatment pending transfer”.
The doctors and hospitals are against it.
This disability community represented by the Texas Disability Policy Consortium has a position supporting “treatment pending transfer”.
However while these political wranglings go on, it is likely the child in the Austin hospital will be dead, caused by the arrogance of the medical professions not to listen to the wishes of his mother.
Why are doctors in Texas allowed to overide our decisions?
PLEASE ACT TODAY!!! TIME IS CRUCIAL.
The Ten day death clock is ticking!
Please contact Texas Governor Perry’s office and ask him to give the child in the Austin hospital a reprieve. He can give reprieves to death row inmates. He can save the life of the child in Austin.
The person to contact in Governor Perry’s office is Nora Cox:
Thank you,
Bob Kafka
NOT DEAD YET of Texas
www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/13/13emilio.html
Doctors Say They Plan To Cut Off Baby’s Respirator
Mother has 10 days to find another hospital for son, but odds don’t seem good.
By Mary Ann Roser
American-Statesman Staff
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Saying that continuing treatment would be hopeless and possibly painful, doctors at Children’s Hospital of Austin notified a young mother Monday that they will withdraw a respirator from her critically ill baby in 10 days unless another hospital can be found to take him.
An extensive search has been unsuccessful, and the odds of a transfer are poor, said Michael Regier, general counsel for the Seton Family of Hospitals.
The mother, Catarina Gonzales of Lockhart, vowed to “do everything that’s possible,” including seeking an out-of-state hospital for 16-month-old Emilio.
“It’s really hard because you see your son moving, and you see him opening his eyes,” Gonzales, 23, said after receiving the five-page report from Seton’s ethics committee about ending treatment. “He’s fighting. . . . If I have to take him out of state, I will.”
Her attorney, Jerri Ward, said she would be surprised if a hospital in Texas agreed to take Emilio.
Doctors say Emilio has Leigh’s disease, which causes the central nervous system and muscles to degenerate. They say that Emilio’s brain is shrinking and that there’s no hope of recovery.
Gonzales and doctors at Children’s Hospital have fought bitterly over the boy’s treatment. Gonzales says he is responding to her, and doctors say he is comatose and near death.
State law allows doctors to say that treatment is “medically futile” when they believe that it prolongs dying.
An ethics committee reviewed Emilio’s treatment Feb. 19, and doctors agreed to continue treating him in case a transfer facility could be found or he could be made strong enough to return home, Regier said.
But Emilio got worse, and doctors could not resolve treatment issues with his mother. A second ethics panel Friday said treatment should stop.
“The current aggressive treatment plan for Emilio amounts to a nearly constant assault on Emilio’s fundamental human dignity, and with little, if any, corresponding benefit to Emilio,” it wrote.
If no transfer is found in 10 days, Emilio’s respirator will be stopped, and he could die within minutes or hours. He would get comfort care so he does not feel pain, Regier said.
Gonzales, a single mother, said that because of childbirth complications, Emilio is the only child she will ever bear.
Here is the letter that I wrote yesterday, when I read this:
Dear Ms. Cox,
My name is Anita Cameron, and I am a Systems Advocate from Rochester, NY. I am writing to ask you to convey to Governor Perry my sincerest hope that he will intervene to save the life of little Emilio Gonzales, age 16 months. Emilio has a condition called Leigh’s disease, and now has less than 1 week to live. After that, he will be removed from the respirator because his doctor says that treatment for his condition is futile.
Please issue a “stay of execution” for Emilio so that his mother will have the opportunity to transfer his care to another doctor. I cannot believe that a doctor, whose first concern is to SAVE a life, should be so intent of ending one. This appears to me to be a form of euthanasia. What will this lead to in the end? Will parents of children with severe disabilities have to live in fear for their children’s lives if they get sick?
Little Emilio is worthy of life, and should be given every chance to live. No child should be put on “death row” because of the “crime” of being born with a severe disability.
Please save Emilio!
Sincerely,
Anita Cameron
Rochester, NY