Texas Futile Care Law is flawed

[Catherine Vincent]

Aug. 7, 2006, 1:02AM
'FUTILE CARE'
Perry foes agree: Law is flawed
Five end-of-life fights in Houston drew attention to the 1999 statute

By TODD ACKERMAN
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The three main candidates challenging Gov. Rick Perry favor either abolition or reform of the law that allows hospitals to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of a patient's family.

Perry said he supports a legislative review to determine whether there are flaws in the law that need correcting.

The 1999 statute, known as "the futile care law," has proved highly controversial recently, with families around the state contesting hospitals' decisions to invoke it. In Houston in the past 18 months, there have been five very public fights.

"It might not be the law that is at fault so much as an institutional failure to negotiate end-of-life cases without invoking the law," said Dr. William Winslade, a bioethicist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "But those positions show that at least in the short run, there's a lot of discontent with the law."

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