When the pro-life community rose in opposition to the court-ordered murder of Terry Sciavo, a severely brain damaged, but not terminally ill woman, we warned that this was the slippery slope. We warned that more such killings would follow. We were ridiculed as hysterical alarmists.
Now in Canada, a one year old boy with a rare neurological disease who is slowly dying is being threatened with one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable: drowning. Read the story here.
Baby Joseph Maraachli is on a respirator. His parents want to bring him home to die in their arms, surrounded by his loving family. They’ve been down this road before with their daughter.
Currently, Joseph is on a ventillator, with a plastic airway holding his trachea (windpipe) open and clear. In order for Joseph to go home, he would need a tracheotomy, which is a small incision made in the trachea with a trach tube inserted to hold it open. Without this simple procedure, Joseph will literally choke to death, or drown in his own secretions. The hospital wants to simply remove the ventilator and let nature take its brutal course. They refuse to do the tracheotomy, claiming it is too risky, because Joseph could….. die!
There is no rational basis for such decision making, and the courts have sided with the hospital.
If the cost of care is the issue, then dragging this battle out has been the least cost-effective avenue for the hospital to pursue. In such brutal calculus this baby could have had his tracheotomy performed weeks ago, and either have died on the table, or been home by now. So clearly, this is not about saving the hospital money.
This is about the intolerance of imperfection and the exercise of radicalized autonomy.
Baby Joseph
It’s human evil in all of its institutionalized malignancy. The request of the family is one that would have saved the hospital time, money, and effort. It would have freed the courts for other cases. It would allow baby Joseph to slip quietly and peacefully into eternity at home, rather than drowning in spasms of anxiety and despair.
When the medical establishment seeks such an ending to any life, but especially the life of a child, then the cancer has gone to civilization’s bone.
We are in the cataclysmic struggle for our very lives and for the survival of Western civilization, and we must prevail.
O Canada!
Dr. Nadal, thank you for framing this tragedy in those very true words. God have mercy.
It’s infuriating and utterly illogical what this hospital is doing. I don’t understand what is wrong with them! I sent them a polite email the other day … sometimes I wish I hadn’t been so congenial.
The only thing the hospital’s actions will insure is the maximum in pain and grief for all involved. I read things like this and wonder how anyone can NOT believe Satan is active in this world.
A doctor friend recently retired told me that sometimes folks are kept alive long enough to find purchasers of body parts. They like them to die without pain killers so there is no reaction with transplanting organs. He also said that at a hospital in western canada that with a post mortem carried out after machine catered life it was found that the brain was in a bad state of decay. Going further if hearts are transplanted what does the catholic belief of heart and soul being so tied together mean who gets what soul and if a soul is kept back is it murder if a soul is sent away before God calls it. Am I wrong well try this web page, for a medical/psycological experience
http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/papers/levi_sentient.htm
From the original article: … to avoid the possibility of death the hospital is going to ensure death.”
The mind reels.
Have doctors replaced the Hippocratic Oath with a Hypocrite Oath? I can’t fathom this situation, it’s such a strange combination of medical asininity and blind evil.