SAVING EMILIO

[Th1onein]

I got the email below from the attorney representing Emilio Gonzales.

Melanie, would you please send this announcement out to your e-mail
list that you sent the intial announcment to?

I am the attorney for Catarina and Emilio Gonzales, and I have a
request. I am requesting of all our supporters that they refrain from calling
Emilio's treating physicians at the hospital, their offices or their
homes.

I am making this request, because unknown supporters have been making
such calls. We have reason to believe that physicians who may be
willing to help are being frightened off because of the phone calls made to
the doctors.

It is imperative that we find a hospital and doctor willing to help, so
I am asking that all of you pass this along and ask your supporters to
refrain from calling the doctors, if they are doing that. As I said,
we are not sure if the callers are with a particular group or just
unafilliated We just ask that you confine your calls to the switchboard
and express disapproval. Please just don't ask for the doctors.

Jerri Lynn Ward, J.D.
Garlo Ward, P.C.

[acmavm]

1. What's this all about?

[deadmessengers]

2. Who is Emilio Gonzales?

I'm curious as to why people would be calling his doctors. Some background would help here.

[Th1onein]

3. Emilio Gonzales is the latest victim of the Texas Futile Care Law

He supposedly has Leigh's disease, although all the test results are not in yet and there is no definitive test for the disease. He is in an Austin hospital, run by the Catholic church and this hospital has decided that this little 16-month-old child has no right to further treatment. They've tried to withdraw his feeding, his medications and they've also tried to take him off of the respirator against his mother's wishes. Even if this child does have Leigh's disease, these children can live to be about seven or eight years old.

In Texas, when doctors decide that further treatment of a patient is "futile" then they can unilaterally decide to withdraw all treatment and let the patient die. Even if he or she doesn't want to die and even if the patient's family doesn't want treatment withdrawn. Some of these patients fight, some don't. If they fight, some of them actually manage to get well and go home to their families. Some of them don't, but they are able to die naturally, in their own time.

When a patient is this sick, it should be up to the family or the patient, themselves, to make these kinds of decisions, not a medical professional. When my sister, Andrea, was in this same position, our family went through hell, trying to keep the healthcare people from pulling her plug. This is a time when we should have been able to be with our sister, but we had to, instead, meet with attorneys and picket the hospital.