SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

A couple doctors decide they have a hard case where a patient could die or might present a credible probability of misdiagnosis. Behind closed doors the committee decides the patient should die - treatment is to be removed. Suppose, for example, they think the patient has Leigh's disease but they aren't sure. The patient, looking like they will probably die if treatment is withdrawn, neatly solves the doctor's problem. If the doctors can declare the patient to be near dead, killable, then all the potentially messy malpractice over misdiagnosis can be persuaded to vanish in a fortnight. A crime of convenience.

Think of this power. Any patient who would die on their own but who presents a substantial risk to a million dollar lifestyle can be persuaded, via a cabal of, you guessed it, doctors, to be offed in the night by withdrawing treatment. We are already seeing in Texas that prophecies, even by physicians, sometimes need to be self-fulfilling: they often withdraw treatment to hasten death before any committee has reviewed the case. By the time the committee looks at the patient all professionals agree, "Oh yes. Nearly gone, nearly done."

Today, baby Emilio Gonzales and his family fight for his life against the sneering arrogance of Brackenridge Children's Hospital (512-324-8000). This toddler has a condition, they think, which cuts short children's lives and often allows them to live only until the age of seven or so. But why spend the money when you can kill him now? Why risk letting him live? Or why risk the malpractice of wrong diagnosis? That's the callousness of Brackenridge: 'Yes, we may have misdiagnosed, yes he may live for years, but we think it best he die. April 10th we pull the plug. Sorry. We're doctors you know.'

But this is the time when families and the individual are most vulnerable in life and least capable of fighting back. One pits the most powerful professionals (doctors, lawyers), the most powerful institutions (say, state university teaching hospitals with billion dollar endowments) and the state government against the non-professional, vulnerable, emotionally distressed family members and their sick, possibly near death, relative. The bureaucrats then benevolently offer that if the family can successfully fight the bureaucrats, the bureaucracy might allow you to transfer your loved one out of state so that the state will not murder your loved one. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of trying to transfer your loved one in the state of Texas - they have all agreed ahead of time your loved one is to die no matter what hospital you go to in-state. Gallows humor from their arguments against moving your loved one are little comfort: she might die in transit on the flight! Better leave her here where we can kill her definitely!

That's the George W. Bush signature law in the state of Texas today. It is called the Futile Care law and it is designed to make survival futile no matter how much you care. In the vernacular, it's evil. In tangible terms it is trying to take 7 years from a handicapped toddler today, right now.

Continuing their never ending benevolence, the bureaucracy and power cabal now want to 'help' 'revise' the statute. But let's get this straight: any statute that gives doctors the power to kill, especially over and above the objections of the patient or any family member, is evil itself. Don't misunderstand: a committee of doctors in Texas can decide today, legally, to kill you over your own vocal, conscious, objections. They have done it. This is no game, it is no rhetorical exaggeration.

The united, committed, position of a nation that regards the unalienable right to life as a God given basic right must be: all euthanasia laws like this, all power given to doctors to kill, shall be completely destroyed. These are evil laws and they sow the seeds of civil war, of class hatred, and of the destruction of our otherwise amazing medical science. Doctors are designed to save life - not sit in arrogant judgment over its worth. They are there to serve patients and families, not to have patients and families worship them as despots.

In Texas - End the futile care law. You cannot mend evil enough to morph it into good.

Andrew Longman is a Christian and an applied scien