New Twists in Golubchuk Canadian Futile Care Case

I have written previously of the futile care imposition being attempted by a Winnipeg hospital against Sam Golubchuk, an elderly Orthodox Jewish man whose family wants his life support maintained for ethical and religious reasons. Apparently, he continues to improve and the doctors still want the right to determine whether he lives or dies from having his treatment removed. This column, “Fighting to Save Father’s Life,” by Rhonda Spivak, provides some important details:

The condition of an 84-year-old Orthodox Jew who is on life support in a Winnipeg hospital is improving after doctors unsuccessfully tried to pull the plug on him over a month ago, against his family’s will and religious beliefs.

Miriam Geller said her father, Sam Golubchuk, is alert, his eyes are open and his health has improved over the last two weeks. He has been on life support since Nov. 7 2007. According to Neil Kravetsky, the family’s lawyer, it is only because the family went to court in November and obtained an ex parte injunction (without notice to the hospital) that doctors were prevented from removing Golubchuk’s life support. Kravetsky said that, at a Dec. 11 hearing in the case, Golubchuk’s “entire chart was not presented by the hospital, only some parts of it.” He asked for and received the chart from the Grace Hospital after the hearing.

And get this:

Following the Dec. 11 hearing, Kravetsky sent the patient’s medical records to Dr. Daniel Rosenblatt, a critical care physician in New Jersey, and Dr. Leon Zacharowicz, a pediatric neurologist from New York with an interest in Jewish medical ethics. Both doctors affirmed affidavits filed in court, which gave medical evidence in support of continuing Golubchuk’s life support, including the use of a ventilator and feeding tube.

Hospital lawyers objected to the admissibility of the affidavits, taking the position that it is not for the court to decide whether to prefer the opinion of one doctor over another.

I guess the hospital leadership thinks that only they get to pick and choose the doctors it wishes to heed and the patient’s medical records it thinks are relevant. Wait, there’s more:

The hospital maintains that it is the right of the team of treating physicians to decide when to terminate life support, as opposed to the family or the courts. Otherwise, Olson said, the medical system could be bogged down and not function effectively if hospitals’ decisions had to be scrutinized by the legal system.

So, when families want to end high tech life support and feeding tubes, the bioethicists told us that it was wrong for others to interfere with the intimate family decision making. But if the families’ intimate decisions are deemed wrong by the powers that be, well then, “choice” has its limits. And even though the issue is literally about life and death, the courts should stay out of it because it could interfere with medical efficiency!

This is literally the beginning of the creation of a duty to die that has been discussed in bioethics journals for about ten years. If they wanted to destroy what remains of the people’s trust in health care, then bioethicists and the medical intelligentsia could not do better than foisting futile care theory onto the backs of helpless patients and desperate families. The futile care agenda must be stopped.