Death Panel Hypocrites! Party of Life Kicked Tiny Texas Baby Out of Hospital to Die.

Back during the right-to-die diversion of Selection 2004, there was one African American family who couldn't afford healthcare for their infant son, born with a horrible condition that kept his lungs from growing. The family -- single mom -- was poor. The state of Texas wouldn’t help. So, after a while, the hospital kicked them out and the child died.



Baby Sun Hudson's problem? His lungs weren't big enough to sustain him throughout life. From what I've read: The baby's brain was OK. And anyway, why wasn't the kid allowed to live until a TRANSPLANT donor could be found? Answer: The parents aren't rich enough to buy what the kid needed to stay alive. And the state sided with the profit-makers.

As gobner of Texas, George W Bush signed a law that allows the state and the hospital -- not the parents -- to decide when it's too expensive, uh, unfeasible to take care of a human life. So, in Texas, at lease one child I know of was deemed unfit to live, meaning the parents couldn't afford the best health care.



It was a most sickening case. The family had limited or no medical insurance. They certainly had no real money. The state of Texas wouldn't even provide the baby with a temporary bed in a state hospital long enough for doctors to find an organ for transplant.

All this happened when the Bushes in Florida and Washington DC were working up the Mighty Wurlitzer to divert public attention on all things pro-life leading up to Selection 2004. I found it interesting to hear a sermon to vote for "the Party of Life," meaning the opponents of abortion.

As the neocons clamored not to pull the plug on a woman suffering in a vegetative state, they allowed the plug to be pulled on a little boy. It also was ironic that the same party was responsible, at the time, for two illegal and immoral wars.

That's why DU is so important.

Hypocrites! Why Was Tiny Texas Baby Kicked Out of Hospital to Die?

Much history is worth bringing up twice or many times, seeing how it impacts today.

the were wringing their hands about Terri Schiavo.

Armando from DailyKos reminds us of something from The New York Times of March 19, 2005:

And for Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader facing inquiries into fund-raising improprieties in Texas and potential violations of House travel rules in Washington, taking a prominent role in rallying conservatives to the Schiavo cause also provided a sudden distraction from his troubles (A-HA!!). "To friends, family and millions of people praying around the world this Palm Sunday weekend: do not be afraid," said Mr. DeLay, who interjected himself forcefully into the case, in a pointed religious reference during a Friday news conference. "Terri Schiavo will not be forsaken." . . . Mr. DeLay is clearly relishing the change in subject from House travel rules and lobbying ties to a conservative crusade, even appearing on television to make the case for Congressional involvement after ducking cameras most of the week. And his dedication is showing results. Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, leader of a wing of House conservatives, told reporters that he and his colleagues "are so grateful for the heart of our majority leader."

The Politics Behind the Schiavo Story

The dirty bug-killing rat.

It rarely fails to get wingers to change the subject.

Of course, most wingers really don't want to get into it over Terry Schaivo, either--they know that was when the Bush Administration's approval ratings started to head south of 50% and never came back.

Oh Texas, Texas... :cry:

Did you see this from DUer kpete?

"Death Panel" Smoking Gun Found

The country's not insane -- it's the pukes and cronies.

Quite self-righteous too.

K&R

DUer Judy Lynn brought this to our attention in the Editorials & Other Articles Forum:

US system denies healthcare to millions

not patients.

People suffer, too.

And how they ignite in a furor over a single six week old embryo being aborted?

But let a real child anywhere in this nation need something, and if the parents are not rich, forget it!

Repugs, Hypocrisy is thy name. Thy first, last and midle name!

Instead of the Downing Street Memo, Plame Outing, PDB of Aug. 6, 2001; it was whatever NEW they could get the press to focus-on for the 24-hour cycles leading up to Selection 2004. And Corporate McPravda really ran with the story of Ms. Schiavo, allowing the warmongering hypocrites to get away with mass murder and war profiteering. Smirko admitted as much:

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

A civilized, meaning educated, person cares about all other human beings.
If their culture does not value all human life, it is, in reality, a culture of death.

Healthcare is a right. The damn pukes think it's socialism.

Remember when the LA riots broke out after Rodney King?

Poppy Bush said they were "proof of the failed Great Society programs," apart from Social Security, the last vestige of the New Deal.

The same Poppy in his inaugural address said "We have more will than wallet." No wonder the cities are in the shape they're in and the country's gone to hell.

That's what is outrageous about this whole "death panel" nonsense. It's the HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY and its insurers who want to unplug grandma sooner. They are the ones who insist on having a way to turn off the machines for indigents who are in tragic condition.

In Texas, the hospital can literally go get a court order authorizing them to shut life support off for someone. They don't do that for people with unlimited resources or great insurance. They do it for the ones whose "wallet biopsy" comes back negative for cash.

The problem is, I just found out about it. I had no idea before.

Let's spread the word. We should OWN the death panel issue!

"The Texas Advance Directives Act (1999), also known as the Texas Futile Care Law, describes certain provisions that are now Chapter 166 of the Texas Health & Safety Code. Controversy over these provisions mainly centers on Section 166.046, Subsection (e),<1> which allows a health care facility to discontinue life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian ten days after giving written notice if the continuation of life-sustaining treatment is considered medically inappropriate by the treating medical team. For the hospital personnel to take advantage of legal immunity from prosecution for this the following process must be followed:..."


http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo...

It's the perfect answer to the GOP shills using the "death panel" meme.

"Why didn't you challenge George Bush on this when he adopted actual death panels in Texas?"

I prefer using the right's own tactics against them. This is the perfect opportunity to do so. Instead of thinking of this as an "answer" to the death panel meme, let's keep talking about death panels (since it's the new catch phrase and people are mad about it) but show where they really exist.

I'd like to see progressives CONSTANTLY using the term death panels when referring to the examples in the links.

Poppy, upon his inauguration, said our nation has "more will than wallet." It was his kinder, gentler way of saying We the People were SOL. Of course, later, he found a trillion dollars with which to bail out the S&Ls, including Silverado Savings, where his son Neil helped defraud taxpayers about one billion dollars. Today, we can find all sorts of trillions for Wall Street, but there's nothing for the average person.

* & posted as response on Palin's sites & said at her meetings. Include Arnie's actions too.

Thanks to Hugozoom at Blogspot:



The words alone should indict these lowlifes:



Bush Death Panel Let Texas Baby Die.

such a small child when you see, words are easier to ignore.

From the testimony of Dr. Linda Peeno:

"I wish to begin by making a public confession: In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I caused the death of a man.

Although this was known to many people, I have not been taken before any court of law or called to account for this in any professional or public forum. In fact, just the opposite occurred: I was "rewarded" for this. It bought me an improved reputation in my job, and contributed to my advancement afterwards. Not only did I demonstrate I could indeed do what was expected of me, I exemplified the "good" company doctor: I saved a half million dollars!"


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6295532

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Thank you, zeos3, for the heads up on Dr. Peeno's statement. She has integrity.

I enjoy your postings and I had missed a few of these the first time 'round.

Thank you for your kind words. And thank you for reminding me of a wonderful time in my life: As a kid, I used to watch Bozo the Clown on WGN-TV 9 Chicago. One of my favorite parts of the show was the Grand Prize Game where Mr. Ned would ask the two contestants, picked by the Lucky Arrow on the audience, to take their positions and drop the ping pong balls into the buckets. The younger, usually shorter kid, would have to be lucky to make the drop. The older, usually taller kids would lean over the buckets and drop straight down. Looking back now, I can see it was more rigged than a carnival midway. Which brings me to the point, in hopes you may not have seen some of these -- our democracy has been hijacked by a certain group of the "right" people:

Know your Bush Family Evil Empire

Know your BFEE: It wasn’t Obama who Looted the Treasury and Banks. It was Bush and his Cronies.

Know your BFEE: John McCain, Dim Knight Errant of the War Party

Know your BFEE: Goldmine Sacked or The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

Know your BFEE: The Corrupt Bastards Club… with Lipstick

Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who’s Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

Know your BFEE: 1984 Death of Outstanding Congressional Staffer Buried Poppy-Moon Relationship

Know your BFEE: Forget Rev. Wright! It’s Bush and His Cronies Who Owe an Apology for Rev. Moon!

Know your BFEE: GW Bush Covers Up His Lying America Into War

Know your BFEE: Bush and His Crooks with Badges Sent an Innocent Man to Jail

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit

Know your BFEE: War and Oil are just two longtime Main Lines of Business

Know your BFEE: Bush has Killed a Million Innocent People for Their Oil.

Know your BFEE: Scions of the Military Industrial Complex

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ford Covered Up CIA Murder of American Scientist

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit.

Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and "Conspiracy Theorists" at Ford Funeral

Know your BFEE: Robert Gates did more than keep the doors open at BCCI

Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

Sink the BFEE: Foley gives us Congress. Condi sends 'em to prison.

Beat the BFEE: Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they Backed Bushes.

Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

Know your BFEE: Alito is just another word for Mussolini

Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI

Know your BFEE: The China-Bush Axis

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: Libby Is the First Big BFEE Turd to Go Down

Know your BFEE: WHIG (White House Iraq Group) made phony case for Iraq War

Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

Know your BFEE: Killer Businessmen who put Power and Profit before Country

Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam

Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

Know your BFEE: Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad

Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War

Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook

Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.

Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist

Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist


These aren’t labeled “Know Your BFEE,” but they’re meant in the same spirit:

Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination -- BFEE's Spooked!

Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

BFEE Turd Daniel Pipes tied to DANISH CARTOONS

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS.

BFEE Is More than Capable of Bombing Their Own Countrymen


And for all our friends with those hard-to-reach areas between the ears:

A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission

A Short History of Conspiracy Theory


Note: Not all Bushes are evil or beholden to the BFEE, nor are all those who gain by its existence members of the immediate or extended Bush family. Nor are the Bushes at the pinnacle of global power -- it is quite likely they serve an even wealthier class. What they all have in common is the use of the powers of the government of the United States for accumulating wealth and power for themselves, their associates and the other affiliated beneficiaries among the world's financial elite and authoritarian regimes. Always, they gain at the expense of the people and nations of the world, including the citizens of the United States and its Constitution.


Thanks for giving a damn, juno jones.

PS: Were you watching The Bozo Show when that kid was asked to be part of the contest? He looked at Bozo and said, "Cram it clown!" That also resonates today.

No I never saw the kid who talked back...:) However, I remember watching Bozo's Circus (I grew up a bit west of Chicago in Freeport) with my sister when we were young. My current chef was a contestant in the "GPG" when he was a kid and he still has his 'Cookie' button he won on the show. He grew up near Gary, and funny to say, we bonded over shared memories of Chicago TV and field trips to the city.

My sig line comes from something my sister used to say. :)

Thanks for all the reading material, I guess I gotta make sure I bookmarked and see that I've read EVERYTHING!

And thank YOU for giving a damn! :hi:

PS: My sister and I also used to watch chan 44 and the 'Monster Rally Movie', made all the more creepy by the 'E's' in the title drawn with 4 prongs rather than three. Good times, good times.

Cornelius Rhoads really was an American NAZI all DUers should know:

In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads (sometimes spelled: "Rhode" and "Rhodes") began the Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations. Rhode infected Puerto Ricans -- human beings -- with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients ...

SOURCE: www.thetalkingdrum.com/experiments.html


THE PUERTO RICAN CANCER EXPERIMENT

In 1931, Cornelius Rhoads, a North American pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations in San Juan, carried out a murderous "experiment" in which 13 Puerto Ricans died after being purposely infected with cancer. In a letter to another doctor, leaked to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Rhoads wrote: "the Porto Ricans are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them.… What the island needs is not public health work, but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be liveable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter has not resulted in any fatalities so far.... The matter of consideration for the patients' welfare plays no role here - in fact, all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects".

When the case was brought to the press by Don Pedro Albizu Campos (the Nationalist Party President), the North American Governor of Puerto Rico had a prosecutor investigate the charge. Rhoads never denied writing the letter, but despite evidence proving that 13 patients had died, eight of whom were treated by Rhoads, the prosecutor exonerated Rhoads, calling him merely "a mentally ill person or a man with few scruples."

However, this "mentally ill person" went on to direct the establishment of US Army chemical warfare laboratories in Maryland, Utah, and the Panama Canal Zone, for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1945. That same year, Rhoads was appointed to the staff of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The Commission was at that time carrying out radiation experiments on unwitting prisoners, hospital patients and soldiers.

Meanwhile, a 1950 Puerto Rican Nationalist insurrection led to the arrest of hundreds of activists, including Don Pedro Albizu. The prisoners later charged they were experimented on with drugs. According to Nationalist Party leaders, Rhoads was finally getting his revenge for Albizu's earlier murder charge. Albizu was denounced by US and local colonial officials as a lunatic, but doctors eventually supported his charges. His health steadily deteriorated, and he died shortly after his release from prison in 1965. Subsequent documents have supported both his original murder charges and his allegations of radiation poisoning.

SOURCE:

http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/biochem.htm

Gee. Cancer cell injections. That's what Jack Ruby said did him in.

He wasn't touched by the hand of their oddly blonde haired and blue eyed Jesus.

The rich really are different.

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

They don't have to explain, for one thing.

Count of Subjects in Radiation Experiments Is Raised to 16,000

They picked up the habit from the Master Race™.

Now you know why.

Larry's talking to then president George HW Bush about drugs. They're off-air, but the satellite feed is picking up their conversation. From the documentary "Spin" beginning about the 48-min. mark:

http://100777.com/multimedia/spin

The problem is that the health care industry is run for profit, and it's completely unregulated, unlike other important industries. The charges for services are through the roof. We pay for much more health care than we get.

There's a reason we pay 50% more than Brits or Canadians and have an inferior system. Ours is run for profit, ours is sold to the highest bidder, ours is unregulated and designed to serve best the needs of the hospital owners, the doctors, and the insurance companies.

Bring in third world doctors, open free urgent care clinics all over the place, and handle the people who are now needlessly clogging hospital emergency rooms. Stop taking the sick and marginally injured to the ER and take them to the local clinic.

Force hospitals to take what the patient's insurer offers to settle up the bill, or don't get a dime from the insurer until the hospital gets a judgment in court or decides to settle at the number offered. Stop allowing hospitals and insurers to catch the patient in a squeeze play where coverage fails to pay part of the bill.

There are many actions that can be taken to cure the problem, but the biggest problem in health care is our paying far too much for it and getting far too little. Brits and Canadians get twice the care at 60% the costs.

Plus, health care for all -- including those cases deemed too expensive or doomed even with maximum level of care -- would create many millions of good-paying jobs, IMFO.

I seem to recall billions of TARP funds ending up paying off foreign obligations of banks, and GM has gotten billions while shipping jobs out of the country, and AIG is funneling money to foreign obligations.

Unlike those uses, this money will be spent here, and will create work and jobs here.

If we don't get more controls on costs and allowable profits, more control of hospitals and insurers, the consumers do not have a chance.

We're becoming indentured servants working for the profitability of the health care industry.

"Death" (Thanatos) is actually in the name of the condition. It's not just undeveloped lungs; it's severe brain damage and skeletal anomalies.

There might have been a more graceful way to handle this case, but it was medically correct.

Hard cases make bad law. This is an example.

And, perhaps, if Sun Hudson were given time, advancements in medicine might improve his quality of life. Once a person's deceased, it doesn't matter. The point is, the pukes in Texas didn't have to do too much for this child because the law was on the side of the insurance companies.

The medical records have been released; there was no hope.

Very few have survived, it is true; only to adolesence and with enormous medical intervention. This child was too sick to undergo any of those interventions.

i read that in another article.

There is physical damage to the brain from the skull malformaion of TD. The medical reports were made public; sadly, this child would have died no matter what. Too bad his mother didn't bother to see him until the end of his life.

the mother does seem a bit odd. poor baby.

I remember how they spoke of Terri Schiavo. There was such hypocrisy in their attitudes between the two.

:kick:

The hypocrisy of the teabagger anti-health reformers must be exposed.

I will spend some time with this thread later, more than I can do in one night.

They do have a way of throwing their shit on us & managing to get it to stick.

I notice the Beaumont Texas paper hastens to inform that Wanda Hudson rambles and tends to incoherency.

Uh huh.

Her baby (alive, POST fetal baby) is about to be ejected onto the Bush-For-Profit-Only trash heap by a Big Beaurocracy weeping crocodile tears of Phake Sympathy as they gear up the slingshot. (And apparently, The Hospital doesn't know the difference between "affect" and "effect" either).

But the journalist for AP just has to COLOR her description of Ms. Hudson's last moments with her son.

Nice going.

nt

"The baby died peacefully" Translation: How beautiful that the baby was allowed to die!

"The mother gave a long and sometimes rambling statement" Translation: The mother is crazy, so we know any arguments she offers in favor of giving her baby a chance to live are just the ramblings of a crazy woman.

Ack! It was painful to read that piece of BS "journalism."

That little boy and his mom were just the "wrong" race. If it had been a white son of a white mother, that "regulation" would have never been applied, that's what I think. The whole reason why it hasn't kept the public's attention since is racism.

During the Schiavo farce, (by contrast, whether a white person should live without a brain) I pointed to this very case when I was arguing with conservatives online. What did they answer? Nothing. It did quiet them down, though. Totally. One never came back to the board.

Fact is, this was really more of an issue than Terry Schiavo ever was and if we hadn't let it die once it came out, we probably wouldn't be having this ridiculous red herring thrown at us.

what became of him.

so sad.

so very sad.

breathe on his own. Once the ventilator was turned off he died. Took Schiavo more than a week to die, she could breathe on her own.

This kid's was perfectly normal in every other way. Now imagine you have a disabled (say, autistic) person with a life-threatening illness, wow much you you like to make a bet that the corporate fuckers wold let the disabled person die?

Now, since it wasn't my kid it's not my decision, and it was probably done for the wrong reasons ($$$) but at least that poor child could rest in peace rather then being poked and proded and kept alive on machines when there is no cure. Thanatophoric dysplasia is a 100% fatal genetic disease, the babies with it usually die from respiratory failure but the lungs are not the only part of the body affected, that poor baby's body would not have had room for a healthy set of lungs, because their skeletal structure is too small, that's why the lungs couldn't develop.

Seeing that poor baby hooked up to all those tubes makes me so sad honestly. I hope he didn't suffer much.

He suffered from thanatophoric dysplasia, a genetic condition which isn't just a matter of underdeveloped lungs. These infants also have restricted thoracic capacity so there isn't room for normal-sized lungs in the first place. They generally have other skeletal malformations, as well, and if they don't die from inadequate oxygen intake, their brain stems become compressed and they die that way. In addition to all that, just look at the picture. The baby was obviously encephalitic in addition to everything else, which is often another syndrome that afflicts these children. Most of these infants never make it through their first day.

It wasn't a matter of waiting "long enough for doctors to find an organ for transplant". Transplant was never an option for this child regardless of whether there was money or insurance coverage to pay for it because UNOS would never have authorized a spot on the transplant list for an infant with virtually no chance of survival even if he did get new lungs, which is at least partly the reason why they couldn't find any hospital that would take him for such a procedure (they tried over 40 without success).

Add to all this the fact that the mother apparently doesn't have all her chairs up to the table, either, claiming that her baby was fathered by the sun, which she also claims provided all the prenatal care that she had had. She also didn't go to her baby's funeral be cause she "doesn't believe in death". I doubt seriously, and I suspect that the doctors did, too, that she could have been relied upon to provide the kind of intensive post-tranaplant care regimen that such a child would have required even if he had been a candidate for transplant, which he wasn't.

While it's an incredibly sad situation, this appears to have been a proper medical and legal decision despite the way that the facts of the case have been distorted by some.