Doctors vs. Parents: Who Decides Right to Life?

As a practicing physician I can assure you that convening an ethics board (containing physicians, nurses and laypeople)to review every aspect of a case in great detail is the last thing a physician who had made a mistake would want to do.
The laws in Texas are a blessing and exist so that physicians and nurses have the right to NOT continue painful and unnessesary treatments even if the family wants to continue. This is to protect the patient from unrealistic family members and the staff from doing things they find morally and profesionally wrong. They must continue full treatment until an independent group makes a decision.
A DNR order is usually approved by the family, but is a decision made by a physician that advanced recusitation on a patient would not be benificial and would cause suffering for no reason.

A physician is making my decisions or the decisions of my family? No way!

Any person who calls themselves a physician and is in the business of killing should have their license revoked forever.

This poor girl would have been dead if the doctors who promise to do no harm had their way. Now, she's in a loving home and has a loving friend and laughs at her jokes. The decision to kill her is not anyone's decision.

These "independent" boards that help doctors cover up their mistakes is a joke.

I hate sue happy people, but in this case....SUE, SUE, SUE.

Blessings to the family, I'm so sorry this happened to your little girl.

I know there are two sides of this story and only one side was presented, but from what is being reported this never should have happened.

hey, im one of sabrina's ex boyfriends....i have been close to this family for a long time, even before all this started....to get straight to the point...those doctors DID NOT treat sabrina with care...what so ever..they can deny it all they want, but if they would have just did their job, we would not be in the situation right now. Those doctors CRUSHED Sabrina's dreams and future...i would be at the hospital EVERY DAY to check on sabrina...and everytime i would go, it seems like she got worse and worse...sitting in her room, and her monitors would start beeping, and doctors would not come in and check on here...they seriously NEGLECTED her.she's had seisures, strokes, HER HEART STOPPED!! 2 years later and she's making a little progress, slowly but surely...don't take your child to memorial herman children's hospital!!!!!!

hey, im one of sabrina's ex boyfriends....i have been close to this family for a long time, even before all this started....to get straight to the point...those doctors DID NOT treat sabrina with care...what so ever..they can deny it all they want, but if they would have just did their job, we would not be in the situation right now. Those doctors CRUSHED Sabrina's dreams and future...i would be at the hospital EVERY DAY to check on sabrina...and everytime i would go, it seems like she got worse and worse...sitting in her room, and her monitors would start beeping, and doctors would not come in and check on here...they seriously NEGLECTED her.she's had seisures, strokes, HER HEART STOPPED!! 2 years later and she's making a little progress, slowly but surely...don't take your child to memorial herman children's hospital!!!!!!

Many people are patients at Hermann hospital and never pay their bills. It is a huge place that handles most of the local trauma . Many lives are saved at Hermann. For the ones that will not make it, the DNR is a kind way to let nature take its place. The story of that child is a sad one but things happen that are out of the control of all parties concerned. A reality check is needed here. The child appears to be in a vegetative state and no doubt, if she were able to communicate she would prefer to be set free. Often times parents suffer from guilt, selfishness in terms of wanting to hold on to their children even though they should let go. In this case, these people are determined to get money to satisfy their point of view and greed. They are wrong for doing so. They will not win. Hospitals try their best and not all will end up satisfied. We have to face reality that all things do not end up the way we expect.

Frankly, no one gives a shit if they need to save their own asses. Since when do doctors really care if you're in pain or if treatment is unnecessary. BULLSHIT. She has a right to life. THere are many stories of people who defy the odds, so whose to say that one day she will be at least 50% better. As you can see towards the end of the article, she isn't a 'vegetable'...the way i see it, the parents can afford the supposed "unnecessary treatment" then is it really HURTING the doctors to treat the patient?? Last I checked, the doctors didn't give birth to her, they're not her parents, they don't know the emotional devastation of what losing a kid does to you; so they should get off their biggity high horse and treat the patients..that's what they get paid for. I'm currently in med-school and I would NEVER see myself playing God with someone's life. I hope they get sued up the ass.

The first time I found this article I was mortified. I read it out loud to my wife and a friend of ours. At the time I was only able to read the first half of the article. I just finished it and though I'm very saddened by it, I am also very happy that Sabrina recovered even if not fully. I don't know what I would do if a member of my family was suddenly in this condition. I do know though that there would be some medical staff that would be suffering as much if not more than my family for that negligence. Good wishes and prayers to Sabrina and her Family and Friends.

Though I'm sure that this unfortunate girl's money hungry family and obviously highly educated ex-boyfriend are providing a completely unbiased veiw of the situation, I wish that the Press would have included some of the physician's side or at least 'A' physicians side of the story. The reporting is a little sensationalistic and one sided.

Yeah, what's up with doctors on their "biggity high horse". Becky, who is obviously in medical school ;), seems to of stated a very non-emotional, well thought out point. (you can tell from all the exclamation points and profanity) It needs to be stated that doctors are the caretakers of the PATIENT, not the family. Many times, especially in pediatric cases, the family/random boyfriends etc fail or refuse to understand and exept the situation. In that case many helpless people are subjected to painful and unneccesary procedures (intubation, feeding tubes placed through the abdominal wall, etc) that only prolong the inevitable. My sister and I wanted everything done for my father, even though, in retrospect, he had no chance of survival. A very patient and caring physician at Hermann helped us understand the process and my father died naturally in peace with us at his side. The doctors at Hermann did us a great service and saved my father a lot of needless pain.

Oh. This was an "article" in a "news" publication. I thought it was a pamphlet from the Right to Life folks. Were any medical ethicists consulted? Did the "reporter" review the medical records himself or just talk to the family and their attorney? Did the "reporter" research locked-in syndrome enough to understand that this poor child doesn't have that? Did the "reporter" talk about the cases in which families insist that their all-but-dead relatives keep received life-sustaining treatment even when it is excruciating to the patient?

Right. It was a pamphlet.

Elizabeth: YOU ask the reporter. From the way it sounds, this is NOT a Terri Schiavo. I think we can distinguish between this and Schiavo.

From what it appears, Memorial Hermann messed up somehow. If this was a Schiavo I would support pulling the plug, but the girl here clearly has brain capacity. Someone messed up.

I don't know why people keep asking why the doctors or people on the ethics committee weren't interviewed. I read the [whole] article and read some doctor's comments, including one on the ethics committee (supposedly absent in the article), and understood that most declined to report because they are under investigation at the moment and were probably instructed not to say anything.

In any case, this reminds me of the case in Canada where a family was fighting to keep their concious grandfather alive. He didn't want to die, the family didn't want him to die, but the doctor's decided they (grandfather included) didn't know what was best for him. Okay??

In any case, I think the quote straight from the little girl says it all, "I don't want do die!" Every human being deserves the right to say for THEMSELVES if they want to die or not and clearly this little girl did NOT want to die.