Tne End of a Fight that Shouldn't Have Happened

In New York, a battle over patients rights was about to go to court:

NEW YORK (AP) — A 12-year-old New York City boy whose family battled a Washington hospital over his care has died in the hospital, the family's lawyer said Sunday.
Motl Brody was pronounced dead Nov. 4 by Children's National Medical Center in Washington, but a machine continued to inflate and deflate his lungs.
His remaining bodily functions ceased Saturday, the lawyer, Jeffrey Zuckerman, said.
...
Motl had been diagnosed with severe brain cancer and was at the hospital for six months.
His parents, who are Orthodox Jews, had clashed with the hospital over the hospital's desire to disconnect the ventilator. Although Motl had been pronounced dead, his heart was still beating with the help of a cocktail of intravenous drugs and adrenaline.
That heartbeat prompted Motl's parents to refuse the hospital's request to remove all artificial life support.
...
The family had asked the hospital to leave the breathing machine on and keep administering drugs until the boy's heart and lungs no longer respond.
Disagreements between families and medical providers over when to end care for terminally ill patients are common, experts say, but this case wound up in court with unusual speed.
On Nov. 2, the family asked a federal judge to block the hospital from doing any further tests for brain activity.
The hospital responded by asking a District of Columbia Superior Court judge for permission to discontinue treatment.

Let us make this clear. There should have been no disagreement. And that a hospital took legal action to discontinue treatment of a patient is absolutely outrageous.

The role of the doctor is to provide expert medical advice. One that has been given, it is the right of the patient or caregivers of the patient to refuse or accept that advice. Even if it is hopeless, it is the right of either the patient or the family to continue to continue to fight, and receive care up until the moment of death.

The medical profession, having long ago given up, do no harm, has gone further and further away from the goal of treating patients without the tradition, and clearly understood doctor patient relationships...in favor of abritrarily deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.

It is not the job of doctors to discard people who are too costly, too old, too sick, or have too little of a chance of survival, but rather to treat patients and follow the wishes of the sick and injured without bias. That fights between doctors and terminal patients (or their families) about how much care they deserve is a frightening development in medicine. One we should all be leary of. That the courts can be used by doctors to get rid of inconvenient patients is terrifying.