Canadian Court Decides to End Toddler's Life Against Parent's Wishes

[eduardo89]

Canadian boy moved to US over end-of-life dispute


By JIM SALTER
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110314/ap_on_re_us/us_canadian_boy_end_of_life_dispute

ST. LOUIS – A Canadian couple transferred their terminally ill toddler son to a Catholic hospital in St. Louis after an Ontario court ruled that doctors could remove the breathing tube keeping the boy alive.

Thirteen-month-old Joseph Maraachli arrived at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital on Sunday after the hospital agreed to treat the boy.

Joseph's doctors at London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario, where he had been treated since October, determined that he was in a permanent vegetative state and that his condition was deteriorating, and they planned to take him off of assisted breathing.

Joseph's parents, who lost an 18-month-old child to the same disease eight years ago, challenged the hospital's finding in court but lost. Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader contended that removing their son's breathing tube would cause him to suffocate and cause him undue suffering, and they sought to compel doctors to give Joseph a tracheotomy that would allow him to breathe through a tube inserted into his throat. They said the tracheotomy could extend his life up to six months — as they say it did for their other child who died — and would allow him to die at home.

After losing in the courts, Joseph's parents enlisted support for their cause using social media sites, but the hospital refused to reverse course. So they began reaching out to U.S. hospitals, and Cardinal Glennon agreed to care for their son.

Late Sunday, a plane carrying Joseph, his father, and the Rev. Frank Pavone of the New York City-based group Priests for Life flew to Cardinal Glennon. Priests for Life, which lobbies against abortion rights and euthanasia, paid for the chartered plane.

Moe Maraachli did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment Monday. But Pavone said the parents are simply trying to extend the life of their child and make sure he doesn't suffer.
"The parents are saying, `Look, even if the diagnosis is fatal, let's give him the best care he can get,'" Pavone said. "They're saying, `This is our child. We believe his life is worth extending.'"




I feel really badly for the parents, this is the second child they're going to lose, and a Canadian court was willing to end the child's life instead of letting them have the choice on whether to keep him alive and let him die at home in a more humane way instead of suffocating him.

[00_Pete]

:mad: Filthy rotten commie bastards :mad:

[eduardo89]

:mad: Filthy rotten commie bastards :mad:

I'm so glad I moved away from Canada

[osan]

I feel really badly for the parents, this is the second child they're going to lose, and a Canadian court was willing to end the child's life instead of letting them have the choice on whether to keep him alive and let him die at home in a more humane way instead of suffocating him.

This is the kind of shit that bastard Obama and his reach-around buddies want to foist upon us as well. May they all die as horribly as they would impose upon others.

[eduardo89]

This is the kind of shit that bastard Obama and his reach-around buddies want to foist upon us as well. May they all die as horribly as they would impose upon others.

The decision was basically all about costs...truly sickening...

"Because of the growing concerns about costs, we're going to see more of this," she said.

[mczerone]

I thought health care in Canada was free? Can't they just magically create the energy and technology to do the procedure?

[susano]

Real death panels.

[Kylie]

Fucking sickening.


I might just take his parents a casserole or something, since they're right down the road.

[aGameOfThrones]

Canada's Universal HealthCare is about the children... whoops. Sad. Really sad story.

[Petar]

What is more sadistic, quick death by suffocation, or slow death by life-extension?

Maybe the only humane thing to do would be to give him a fatal over-dose of morphine right away.

[daviddee]

...

[Kludge]

You guys are falling for the "feeling" aspect of the story... You need to look at it from the rational side.

1. The child is a vegetable
2. The parents expect free health care and are not paying with their own money
3. They lost one child from the same thing. #2 is acceptable, but if they choose to have #3 knowing what happened to #1 and #2 they should be refused service.

I have NO issues if people choose to keep a piece of meat breathing via machinery... If they are paying with their money. If you are sucking off the public tit... then the public tit is going to decide when to shut you off.

Canada was entirely justified... As would an Insurance company who was footing the bill. You want to dump millions of dollars on health care for a dead kid? You pay for it.
My take on it, too. I'd even be quietly disturbed by parents keeping a braindead kid alive using their own money. Expecting the government to is so far beyond ridiculous.... OTOH, it's worth noting that in Canada, they are mandated to pay into the healthcare system. Back on the first hand, though, I doubt the people unable to come close to paying for this braindead child to continue breathing would have the money to be able to if they weren't forced to pay into the gov't healthcare scheme, esp. considering the many operations previously paid for by the Can. gov't.

[daviddee]

...

[prmd142]

they asked for the system and they got the system. if you want government to pay your bills then you must also accept any decision they make regarding treatment options. what is sickening is not the government but the mindset of the socialists who crave such governments

[dbill27]

I'm pretty sure the same thing would have happened in America, I remember when this story came out a month ago, the parents had already talked to a hospital in michigan who said they wouldn't be able to do anything different than canada was doing.

[susano]

This is a Catholic hospital and it's CHARITY. Did you retards ever open a dictionary?

In Canada, they are constantly told they have the best health care in the Milky Way galaxy. Hastening a child's death in an excruciating manner probably didn't fit into their definition of "best". They're taxed for it so they have the right to expect better. Political arguments against socialized medicine also aren't very relevant for THESE people and their child because they live in a country that has it. They had to deal with the cards they were dealt.

Nobody here knows what that child is feeling or experiencing. You don't know what his brain activity is or is not. Common decency and compassion calls for his being as comfortable as possible and being able to die at home. If a tracheotomy would make him able to breath, why would you begrudge anyone the ability to pass on in comfort, at home?

[Kludge]

What's your point Susano? We're talking about the hospital originally at and expecting the gov't healthcare to pay for a ridiculously impractical and possibly sadistic procedure on the taxpayers' dollar. If it was my kid - especially if he DID have brain function but no chance of recovery - I would never consider sustaining his life when he has no potential and a likely current existence of extreme discomfort - and it would be even more ridiculous to expect taxpayers to pay for the "treatment."

These parents did not take the kid home and let him die. They're continuing his short remainder of existence of hospital-life in a vegetative state. I have trouble with the parents not only getting their wish, but not being punished for what they're doing to this child.

[susano]

What's your point Susano? We're talking about the hospital originally at and expecting the gov't healthcare to pay for a ridiculously impractical and possibly sadistic procedure on the taxpayers' dollar. If it was my kid - especially if he DID have brain function but no chance of recovery - I would never consider sustaining his life when he has no potential and a likely current existence of extreme discomfort - and it would be even more ridiculous to expect taxpayers to pay for the "treatment."

These parents did not take the kid home and let him die. They're continuing his short remainder of existence of hospital-life in a vegetative state. I have trouble with the parents not only getting their wish, but not being punished for what they're doing to this child.

You didn't even read the article. In what universe is a trach a "ridiculously impractical and possibly sadistic procedure"? They are from a fucking socialist country, okay? I think if you had to pay up the ass for socialized medicine, without a choice in the matter, you'd expect CARE in return.

You sound under 30. You are callous and shoot your mouth off without knowing what you're talking about. The trach allows the child to go HOME and die and to be able to breath until he passes away without suffocating. That is not extraordinary nor is it expensive.

When my father died, we knew he was going to die. Guess what? We didn't put a plastic bag over his head or withdraw water. We made sure he was COMFORTABLE. That's called compassion, asshole.

[Maximus]

They want a trach and for their child to die in the home rather than a hospital. Completely reasonable.

[South Park Fan]

The underlying problem is of course a socialized health care system. If the parents had to bear the cost of this procedure which will merely stall his death to a later date, they might think twice about it. Similarly, if moral hazard did not exist due to socialized medicine, the government wouldn't have to ration out what procedures patients can ask for.

[Kludge]

You didn't even read the article. In what universe is a trach a "ridiculously impractical and possibly sadistic procedure"? They are from a fucking socialist country, okay? I think if you had to pay up the ass for socialized medicine, without a choice in the matter, you'd expect CARE in return.

You sound under 30. You are callous and shoot your mouth off without knowing what you're talking about. The trach allows the child to go HOME and die and to be able to breath until he passes away without suffocating. That is not extraordinary nor is it expensive.

When my father died, we knew he was going to die. Guess what? We didn't put a plastic bag over his head or withdraw water. We made sure he was COMFORTABLE. That's called compassion, asshole.
I did read the article and you may be right. What I know is that the kid must be fed through a tube, and breathes through a machine. They, with the Catholic hospital against euthanasia, are forming a "treatment" plan and stated they can prolong the kid's existence for up to six months. This doesn't sound like compassion to me - it sounds like parents unable to let go and willing to harm their child due to it. I'll give you an updated opinion in 10 years, but this sounds pretty sick to me as is.

[dbill27]

Susano-I think many are commenting, as i was, on the story as it relates to the thread title more than the actual story.

[angelatc]

I did read the article and you may be right. What I know is that the kid must be fed through a tube, and breathes through a machine. They, with the Catholic hospital against euthanasia, are forming a "treatment" plan and stated they can prolong the kid's existence for up to six months. This doesn't sound like compassion to me - it sounds like parents unable to let go and willing to harm their child due to it. I'll give you an updated opinion in 10 years, but this sounds pretty sick to me as is.

Just wait.

[Kludge]

Just wait.
At risk to my own person - let me mention Amy's story. Her mom was actually a trach nurse. The procedure is extremely painful, and Amy actually was faced with the decision mentioned in the OP with her own mom. Let her live and suffer through the extreme pain if her brain indeed registered it, or pull the plug. She had doubts about whether or not to extend her mom's life the extra couple hours for her aunt to arrive, and still does, but I think she absolutely made the right choice in deciding to prevent her mom from continuing to experience the pain she was in after her mom's sister arrived, and her nurse friends agreed.

[Teaser Rate]

The underlying problem is of course a socialized health care system. If the parents had to bear the cost of this procedure which will merely stall his death to a later date, they might think twice about it. Similarly, if moral hazard did not exist due to socialized medicine, the government wouldn't have to ration out what procedures patients can ask for.

I think the underlying problem here is that nothing can be done to save the child’s life and all options are bad. The only reason we’re focusing on the government/socialized medicine aspect of it is because we have a hard time accepting that life can be really unfair sometimes.

[fisharmor]

You guys are falling for the "feeling" aspect of the story... You need to look at it from the rational side.

1. The child is a vegetable
2. The parents expect free health care and are not paying with their own money
3. They lost one child from the same thing. #2 is acceptable, but if they choose to have #3 knowing what happened to #1 and #2 they should be refused service.


All true. But let's add some further facts:
1. The child's fate was decided by a court of law. Not by the parents, and not by the medical professionals. A court.
2. The parents have no real option for health care besides the "free" system, which is forced on them at gunpoint.
3. The hospital was going to forcibly suffocate the child.
4. The parents had to flee the country to keep their child from being forcibly suffocated.


I have NO issues if people choose to keep a piece of meat breathing via machinery... If they are paying with their money. If you are sucking off the public tit... then the public tit is going to decide when to shut you off.

I agree, even if you could have employed verbiage that made you sound less like a robot.


Canada was entirely justified...
Way off base here.
If Canada was justified, there is no moral problem with socialized medicine.
If Canada was justified, you just rubber-stamped the forced suffocation of children without even parental consent.
Nobody on the other side of this equation was at all justified in any fashion whatsoever. This is, as stated, a real-life case of a death panel. If it was justified, then you're saying you'll be totally ok with it when it comes here, too.
You can either apologize for these ghouls, or you can get on board with resisting this horseshit before it comes here.


As would an Insurance company who was footing the bill. You want to dump millions of dollars on health care for a dead kid? You pay for it.
The insurance company is a different case. Withdrawing funding is not even in the same galaxy as forced suffocation against the wishes of the parents.
Do you truly fail to see this?
Again, you can either get on board with resisting it, or you can defend it.

[newbitech]

I guess this is news because the parents went to social media to ask for help. In my mind, decisions like this should be left to the parents, doctors, and spiritual advisors. It sounds like this is the case. I am not sure why the parents took this to court? I think since they had already experienced the same problem before with different results, they probably expected the same outcome. When this was not the case, they must have thought they were being treated wrongly.

It reminds me of calling up a cell phone provider and asking to have some fees waived. 3 months ago, the cell company waived some roaming charges for me, but this time around, the rep I got decided to stick to company policy. I don't blame the parents for trying to keep the child alive as long as possible, despite whatever suffering the kid might be experiencing. I also don't blame them for expecting the same outcome. I think they are doing the right thing by seeking compassion from the spiritual community and the outcome they are getting is the outcome I would expect.

I don't think anyone should be pissed at the decision by the court, as it is the logical decision, and besides, do we really expect the government to protect life any more?
What upsets me is that something like this becomes "news" for everyone to add their opinions to. It really shouldn't be news, and I feel like none of our opinions matter anyways. These opinions won't change anything, and for these decisions to become politicized and argued over with some expectation of a different outcome or to create some kind of influence or move people to think differently is the real tragedy.

Yes, sometimes human suffering and emotion drives us to action and to draw that line in the sand. I am reminded of the Terry Shaivo case down here in FL some years ago. It became a media circus. The media reprints and retells these stories hoping to get hits, or sell a few papers for their advertisers. In the end, no one really cares about these people or the path that brought them to our attention. They become tools of society. Compassion is what is needed, not empty words.

Someone up there ^ said they would take these parents a casserole because they are so close. That is compassion. We need more of this in our societies if we expect to live in the absence of a central power that can pool resources to help the truly needy. Otherwise, our depravity is on full display despite our principles in lieu of something better to gossip and complain about.

[Krugerrand]

All true. But let's add some further facts:
1. The child's fate was decided by a court of law. Not by the parents, and not by the medical professionals. A court.
2. The parents have no real option for health care besides the "free" system, which is forced on them at gunpoint.
3. The hospital was going to forcibly suffocate the child.
4. The parents had to flee the country to keep their child from being forcibly suffocated.



I agree, even if you could have employed verbiage that made you sound less like a robot.


Way off base here.
If Canada was justified, there is no moral problem with socialized medicine.
If Canada was justified, you just rubber-stamped the forced suffocation of children without even parental consent.
Nobody on the other side of this equation was at all justified in any fashion whatsoever. This is, as stated, a real-life case of a death panel. If it was justified, then you're saying you'll be totally ok with it when it comes here, too.
You can either apologize for these ghouls, or you can get on board with resisting this horseshit before it comes here.


The insurance company is a different case. Withdrawing funding is not even in the same galaxy as forced suffocation against the wishes of the parents.
Do you truly fail to see this?
Again, you can either get on board with resisting it, or you can defend it.

All excellent points.

[Captain Shays]

I did read the article and you may be right. What I know is that the kid must be fed through a tube, and breathes through a machine. They, with the Catholic hospital against euthanasia, are forming a "treatment" plan and stated they can prolong the kid's existence for up to six months. This doesn't sound like compassion to me - it sounds like parents unable to let go and willing to harm their child due to it. I'll give you an updated opinion in 10 years, but this sounds pretty sick to me as is.

But aren't we all about individual choices? Remember the part of the story where a judge made this decision against the parent's wishes for their son. It should be up to them to decide not some judge in a socialist system. We also need to consider all the other people who agree with the parents whose money is being forced out of their pockets to support a practice that they find reprehensible and revolting which is and of itself is immoral.
That all said we all have different ideas of what is humane or what constitutes too much suffering for ourselves or our loved ones and it should be an individual choice not a collective choice. I for one would want my loved one to die with dignity in the least amount of suffering as possible giving God as much opportunity to produce a miracle as possible all the while making my loved one as comfortable in their suffering as I can even if it's the morphine in the end that does them in. But that's me. Your ideas might be different when it comes to yourself or those you love and at the end of the day, I'm sure we here at the forums can agree that it should be our individual choice and not that of some court in a collectivist system.

[Working Poor]

government health care.....

[Kludge]

But aren't we all about individual choices? Remember the part of the story where a judge made this decision against the parent's wishes for their son. It should be up to them to decide not some judge in a socialist system. We also need to consider all the other people who agree with the parents whose money is being forced out of their pockets to support a practice that they find reprehensible and revolting which is and of itself is immoral.
That all said we all have different ideas of what is humane or what constitutes too much suffering for ourselves or our loved ones and it should be an individual choice not a collective choice. I for one would want my loved one to die with dignity in the least amount of suffering as possible giving God as much opportunity to produce a miracle as possible all the while making my loved one as comfortable in their suffering as I can even if it's the morphine in the end that does them in. But that's me. Your ideas might be different when it comes to yourself or those you love and at the end of the day, I'm sure we here at the forums can agree that it should be our individual choice and not that of some court in a collectivist system.
Yes, I've gone way off point, but my initial reason for posting was to point out this may not be the ideal story to use against socialized medicine for reasons davidee & I went into. Always, the choice should be for the parents to make (or perhaps a willing charity such as the Catholic hospital they went to if no alternatives exist beyond that), not the government.

[Sola_Fide]

Great thread.

[amy31416]

At risk to my own person - let me mention Amy's story. Her mom was actually a trach nurse. The procedure is extremely painful, and Amy actually was faced with the decision mentioned in the OP with her own mom. Let her live and suffer through the extreme pain if her brain indeed registered it, or pull the plug. She had doubts about whether or not to extend her mom's life the extra couple hours for her aunt to arrive, and still does, but I think she absolutely made the right choice in deciding to prevent her mom from continuing to experience the pain she was in after her mom's sister arrived, and her nurse friends agreed.

Well said. She was a specialist in both trach and ventilators--and both are very painful, as she'd mentioned to me. She always felt awful putting people who were lost causes on them herself, and there I was doing it to her so my aunt could see her "alive" one last time, and a priest could come in and read her last rites. She was a rehab nurse, and the majority of her friends that were there were also rehab nurses, and so were familiar with everything going on.

My decision to extend her "life" for even that few hours may have meant that I extended her existence with excruciating pain, or it may have just been to comfort her sister. I have no way of knowing, but even if a judge forced that on me because of a socialist medical system, I couldn't argue with that from a logical point of view when there's no chance of recovery, and a decent possibility that I was artificially extending a very, very painful existence.

I can't imagine having had to watch her degrade for weeks or months while being kept "alive." Everything that could have been done, was done--and it sounds like that's the case for this child. Health care is not a right, and using the medical system--whether it's a socialist system or not--to force people to keep someone in a vegetative state alive is not a right. I do understand the potential for abuse, but I just don't see it in this case. A medical system that operates that way is not sustainable. And believe it or not, it pains the doctors and nurses (the good ones) to be forced into doing so. It happened to my mom many times.

[fisharmor]

Yes, I've gone way off point, but my initial reason for posting was to point out this may not be the ideal story to use against socialized medicine for reasons davidee & I went into.

I'm not getting it.
The reasons you both went into are the logical conclusion of socialized medicine.
When Obamacare was being debated, people were talking about death panels. The Obamabots accused the detractors of lying. That's not an equivocation - that actually happened. They were accused of lying. Not misrepresentation. Lying.

Here we have an actual case of a death panel as a result of socialized medicine.
How is this not just an ideal argument, but the ideal argument?

The reason you both were reacted to so violently is because you essentially argued that the state was correct in its decision.
Well, nobody who believes the state will make the correct decision is ever going to be against socialized medicine, so what's the point calling this a bad argument?

I got in an argument with my father-in-law recently about my daughter who is late talking.
He and his second wife (mostly his second wife, emphasis on second) were trying to convince us to get her into a state program for early intervention.
The program is directly tied to CPS.
I tried to explain to them gently why they were insane for even suggesting such a thing, but I was only getting the speech about how it's a program to help people and they didn't see what I was so worried about.

Well, I eventually shut them right the fuck up with this:
"I only need to find ONE example of kids that got taken away for this to be a bad idea. ONE."

How do you respond to that? You don't, is how.
Yes, this kid may be on his way out. You may have a point that people might see that this was the correct decision.
Nobody can make the point in good faith that the state is always going to decide correctly.
These are the same people who have made it difficult to remove our own excrement from our houses.
These are the same people who passed a law that contractors have to literally vacuum your lawn after they work on a house with lead based paint, yet don't even have a lab where you can get soil tested for lead that you intend to grow food in.

They only need to fuck it up once for this to be a bad idea.

[Kludge]

I'm not getting it.
The reasons you both went into are the logical conclusion of socialized medicine.
When Obamacare was being debated, people were talking about death panels. The Obamabots accused the detractors of lying. That's not an equivocation - that actually happened. They were accused of lying. Not misrepresentation. Lying.

Here we have an actual case of a death panel as a result of socialized medicine.
How is this not just an ideal argument, but the ideal argument?

The reason you both were reacted to so violently is because you essentially argued that the state was correct in its decision.
Well, nobody who believes the state will make the correct decision is ever going to be against socialized medicine, so what's the point calling this a bad argument?

I got in an argument with my father-in-law recently about my daughter who is late talking.
He and his second wife (mostly his second wife, emphasis on second) were trying to convince us to get her into a state program for early intervention.
The program is directly tied to CPS.
I tried to explain to them gently why they were insane for even suggesting such a thing, but I was only getting the speech about how it's a program to help people and they didn't see what I was so worried about.

Well, I eventually shut them right the fuck up with this:
"I only need to find ONE example of kids that got taken away for this to be a bad idea. ONE."

How do you respond to that? You don't, is how.
Yes, this kid may be on his way out. You may have a point that people might see that this was the correct decision.
Nobody can make the point in good faith that the state is always going to decide correctly.
These are the same people who have made it difficult to remove our own excrement from our houses.
These are the same people who passed a law that contractors have to literally vacuum your lawn after they work on a house with lead based paint, yet don't even have a lab where you can get soil tested for lead that you intend to grow food in.

They only need to fuck it up once for this to be a bad idea.

I'm confused because you seem to have made my case for me.

"Here we have an actual case of a death panel as a result of socialized medicine.
How is this not just an ideal argument, but the ideal argument?"

"Yes, this kid may be on his way out. You may have a point that people might see that this was the correct decision."

We're looking for the one example of a death panel, and I don't think this is it. This was not condemnation to death. His death is imminent and is currently in a state of suffering (or nothingness). Palin's death panel argument was that people who are deemed unproductive will be killed, but I'm not convinced this was because the toddler is unproductive, but because he's near-certainly not benefiting from life.

[newbitech]

Sounds to me like the care providers that the couple choose made a medical and ethical decision. The family sought for and found a second opinion. It seems like the court sided with the doctors which is what I would expect a court to do. Do we really want courts that will go against medical advisement? What kind of precedent does that set?

I don't see this as state intervention at all. Rather, I see a distraught family recognizing that it is not the state who will support you but rather the charity of compassionate human beings, which is how it ought to be.

The court did not intervene in this case. The state had as little exposure and involvement as it should be. The family wanted the state to act on their behalf. The state rightly sided with the medical community.

I would also argue that the charity who took this child in, did so for the comfort of the parents at the expense of the child. When we are born, we are all born in to a world of pain and suffering. That this child was given life without having to experience 60-80 years of the suffering that goes along with it is a blessing. The suffering will be only temporary, and if you believe in the after life, the child will most certainly be in paradise for an eternity at the relatively small cost of having to endure the pain of the world for such a short time.

I don't see this as a death panel at all. The decision for the child to die was in the hands of no man or women, but rather the creator. If blame should be cast, blame god for not allowing the child to suffer for 80 years and still be in heaven for eternity.

[osan]

What is more sadistic, quick death by suffocation, or slow death by life-extension?

Maybe the only humane thing to do would be to give him a fatal over-dose of morphine right away.

Not your call, nor mine or anyone else's but that of the parents. I may even agree with you on this. That does not make me right for others. People who are free will often make choices with which we disagree - sometimes in horror. That is the price of freedom: being adult about things you do not care for and showing the proper respect to others that you demand for yourself.

Nobody in their right mind would ever say that freedom is always easy, pretty, or pleasant. It is what it is and either we accept it on its own terms or we revert to some form of slavery. There is NOTHING in between, pretty slavery notwithstanding.

[Stary Hickory]

This is why nationalized health care is evil....strips the resources away from people to care for themselves and then uses those resources poorly...and on top of that dictates when and how people may be treated. Pure fail.