(The Epoch Times) – Imagine you are the parent of a little baby. She is desperately ill with severe breathing difficulties, a heart valve defect, and diagnosed as suffering from severe chronic pulmonary hypertension.
She is placed in a pediatric intensive care unit where, many months later, she continues to live—but also periodically experiences what her doctors call “dying events,” from which she is saved, but which, doctors say, causes unacceptable suffering.
The doctors tell you your daughter’s case is hopeless and try to convince you to remove your baby from life support because such care is “futile” and it is in her best interests to die.
You refuse. But the doctors won’t to take “no” for an answer. They call in the hospital bioethics committee, which after a closed-door hearing, issues a decree authorizing doctors to stop all life-saving treatments over your objections. You are given a mere ten days to find another hospital willing to provide care.
Then, hope! A foremost expert in head and neck surgery (otolaryngology) from out of state reviews your daughter’s records and disagrees that her case is “hopeless.” To the contrary, the expert believes that your daughter has an illness not diagnosed by her current physicians.
Indeed, he believes he may be able to treat her successfully—as he has other children with similar conditions. He even agrees to perform a tracheostomy, necessary to permit the new care approach. CONTINUE