British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

World Net Daily reported on 25th April 2006:

“Andrea Clark is scheduled to be on the receiving end of a Texas Law [on “Futile Care”] that allows a hospital ethics committee to terminate care with 10 days notice, giving the patient’s family that length of time to find a different facility”. Andrea Clark, aged 54 was on a ventilator following bleeding in the brain. Although she could not speak, she could communicate with her family. Wesley Smith is quoted:

“Note that the treatment is apparently being removed because it works, not because it doesn’t – which means in effect, that the hospital ethics committee has declared the patient’s life to be futile.” The family wanted Clark to live. “Smith noted ‘It is as if Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers wanted Terri’s care continued but the hospital said no.”

“Smith described the Texas law as allowing ‘private decision making that will result in death without even the right for a public hearing, to cross examine witnesses or a formal appeal.’ Some have charged the law is meant to benefit insurance companies who want hospitals to get critical patients off the books’ Andrea Clark’s family could not in 10 days find another hospital willing to take her, so she died.

“Many people are not aware that the death with dignity movement came out of the managed health care movement perpetrated by the corporate insurance companies in the early 1990’s” (Lana Jacobs writing in Consistent Life News, USA, Fall 2005).