LIFE NEWS/ Wesley Smith-
I appear today to urge this committee to support SB 2089 and SB2189. It is my understanding that the primary purposes of the bills are to improve Texas’s (terrible, from my perspective) medical futility provisions in the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA) to make end-of-life healthcare disputes between providers, patients and their families conciliatory and cooperative, rather than coercive as is the current case.
“MEDICAL FUTILITY” DETERMINATIONS INVOLVE SUBJECTIVE VALUES RATHER THAN OBJECTIVE MEDICAL DETERMINATIONS
To understand why it is important to the liberty interests of Texas patients to repeal TADA’s “futile care” provisions we must explore the bioethics principle of “medical futility” or “inappropriate care.” As a matter of respecting patient autonomy, patients or their surrogates have a right to refuse any medical treatment—even treatment in an ICU during a terminal illness if it means they are likely to die. Thus, no one should be “hooked up to tubes” against their will, as the saying goes. Continue reading…
