Brain-Damaged Woman Must Be Given 'Wake-Up' Pill - Zolpidem

UK Doctors Face Jail if They Refuse to Euthanize Patients  

BRAIN-DAMAGED WOMAN MUST BE GIVEN 'WAKE-UP' PILL, orders judge, rejecting a family's plea that a 53-year-old woman in a supposed vegetative state should be allowed to die -- at least until she is given a drug that could wake her up.

Sir Mark Potter, president of the High Court Family Division, says the woman should be given zolpidem, a common sleeping pill. It has been used before on victims of severe brain damage who have then
regained consciousness.

The woman, who cannot be named, suffered a massive brain haemorrhage
on holiday in August 2003 and has been diagnosed as in a persistent
vegetative state.

Sir Mark ruled that doctors should try giving her the drug before a final
decision has to be made on whether to stop giving her food and water
artificially, and let her die.

His decision was supported by the Official Solicitor Laurence Oates who
represents PVS patients when their families seek permission to allow
them to die.

A spokesman said Mr Oates, who has now retired, thought the woman
should be given zolpidem to test if she could 'wake up.'

He said: "It was a very difficult case, but Mr Oates believed that before
anyone is allowed to die every test possible should be carried out."

Sir Mark is believed to have also heard evidence from experts who look
after severely brain-damaged patients.

It is the first time a ruling has been made to keep a PVS patient alive in
order to use the drug. The case follows new Government guidelines,
revealed by the Daily Mail on Saturday, which tell doctors they risk being
put on trial for assault if they refuse to allow patients who have made
'living wills' to die.

The Lord Chancellor told the medical profession that those who do not follow
the wills could face jail or big compensation claims in the court.

In a guide to Labour's Mental Capacity Act, which comes into operation
next spring, Lord Falconer said living wills must be enforced. PVS patients
are described as 'awake but not aware'. Unlike patients in a coma their
eyes are open but they see nothing and are not conscious of their
surroundings.

They breathe normally but have no swallowing reflex and have to be kept
alive by artificial feeding and hydration.

In 1993 the courts sanctioned the withdrawal of feeding from Tony Bland,
a 21-year-old brain-damaged survivor of the Hillsborough football
ground disaster. The case went to the House of Lords where law lords ruled it was in his best interests to be allowed to die and said doctors could lawfully stop artificial
feeding because they would not be killing him, but withdrawing treatment. Since then the High Court has sanctioned the withdrawal of food and drink from dozens of PVS patients when doctors, families and the Official Solicitor have agreed that death was in the patient's best interests.

THE NEW LEASE ON LIFE DRUG
Zolpidem has been used in South Africa with amazing results. One recipient
is 32-year-old Miss X, who cannot be named for legal reasons. She suffered
four cardiac arrests and hypoxia - a lack of oxygen to the brain - after
contracting septicaemia four years ago.

Without the pill, she can barely stand, her arms are in spasm and she
cannot speak, although her intelligence has not been affected. But after
being given a dose of the drug she can stand up, stretch to her full height
and clap her hands.

The left side of her face is no longer drooping and her eyes sparkle. She
smiles broadly and can even use a keyboard to communicate with people,
telling them how she now hopes to speak again.
[20Nov06, The Daily Mail, Lucy Ballinger http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=417503&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5]

UK DOCTORS FACE JAIL IF THEY REFUSE TO EUTHANIZE PATIENTS. In a statement yesterday Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor of England has warned doctors that they may face prison sentences if they refuse to starve and dehydrate patients to death. Criminal charges of assault could be laid against doctors or nurses who refuse to allow patients to die, even by removal of food and hydration tube.

The Labour government unveiled its new guidelines for doctors to follow the Mental Capacity Act that is to come into effect next spring.

The guidelines instruct doctors that a patient’s “advanced decision,” what is often called a “living will,” that includes a request for cessation of medical treatment must be followed even if it means the patient will die. To fail to do so, in other words, to take action to keep a patient alive, could result in criminal charges or heavy fines.

The government’s guidelines instruct doctors, “If you are satisfied that an advance decision exists which is valid and applicable, then not to abide by it could lead to a legal claim for damages or a criminal prosecution for assault.”

British courts, in conjunction with jurisdictions around the world, have determined that it is sometimes in the patient’s best interest to be dehydrated to death by removal of feeding and hydration tubes. In many parts of the world, including Canada, food and hydration is considered “medical treatment” and as such can be, and frequently is, withheld on the grounds that it constitutes “extraordinary treatment”.

This was the thinking that allowed the court-ordered killing of Terri Schindler Schiavo in 2005.

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, warned that the Act is a means of installing “euthanasia by omission.” Schadenberg says the Act allows for the intentional killing of patients who would not otherwise be dying by withholding food and fluids or other ordinary medical treatments.

Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews.com that the distinction is often misunderstood but is simple to grasp. “We’re talking about basic medical care for patients who are not in imminent danger of dying and need regular medical care. Withholding this care means death is caused by that omission, and not by a disease.”

Dr. Peter Saunders, head of the Christian Medical Fellowship, concurs saying that the worry is not for those dying patients who are already so close to death that they could not benefit from food and hydration.

“But we are concerned that patients will make unwise and hasty advance refusals of food and fluids without being properly informed about the diagnosis. It is too easy for patients to be driven by fears of meddlesome treatment and ‘being kept alive’, into making advance refusals that later might be used against them.”

Dr Jacqueline Laing of London Metropolitan University, who called the measures an obvious “cost-saving” effort on behalf of the National Health, said the Act “inverts good medical practice by criminalizing medical staff who intervene to save the lives of their patients with simple cures and, in certain cases, even food and fluids.”

Schadenberg concurred with objections in the UK that this is a means of installing legal euthanasia by the ‘back door.’He told LifeSiteNews.com that he attended an international right-to-die conference in Toronto this year where the discussions included methods of bringing forward legal euthanasia by omission.

Schadenberg said “If we are now going to legally force passive euthanasia to happen, the practice of active euthanasia will quickly follow. It won’t be long before people watching the death of their loved ones by dehydration will demand it.”

“Death by dehydration is horrible. It won’t take very long before someone is saying, ‘why don’t we just give an injection, it’s more humane.’”

While the new Act insists doctors kill patients who might otherwise live, the reverse determination was not upheld either by British or European courts. Leslie Burke, a British man who suffers from a degenerative disease that will one day render him unable to communicate, went to court to obtain a guarantee that he would not be dehydrated to death on the orders of doctors.

Mr. Burke argued that British guidelines left too much latitude to individual doctors to decide when a patient’s life was no longer worth living. He lost his case in Britain and the European Court of Human Rights who said that adequate protections for patients already exist in British law.

Read coverage from the Evening Standard: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23374924-details/Doctors+face+prison+for+denying+right+to+die/article.do

Confusion now surrounds the Hippocratic Oath http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/mailFrameset.do?url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=417096&in_page_id=1770

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage: Euro Court Refuses To Guarantee Ill British Man Won't Be Dehydrated to Death http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06080903.html

UK Court Rules Doctors May Withdraw Life-Sustaining Food and Water http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jul/05072807.html

[20Nov06, LifeSiteNews.com, London, Hilary White]