CoV-2 Causes Denmark To Cull All Mink
Great News On The CoV-2 Vaccine Front

Refusing To Treat COVID Patients Based On “Quality Of Life” Determinations

FYI: While your humble blogger earned a PhD in viral immunology from the University of Texas, and spent most of his career investigating the causes and cures of leukemia at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin, he also was trained in ethics at Indiana University, the University of Montana, and Calvin College. He taught bioethics and research ethics at the U of W. His closet hooks are full of different hats.

Biomedicine is rife with ethical conundrums, a few of which already have been mentioned in these pages about the coronavirus pandemic, to wit: Should we wave inspection of vaccine manufacturing facilities and risk production mistakes in order to speed release of a CoV-2 vaccine, which will save lives? Or, whose rights do we ignore during a pandemic—the freedom to live as we choose vs the freedom to remain free of infection? Or, do we abandon all social restrictions in attempt to achieve herd immunity via natural infection, realizing that we would be sacrificing many to the disease? All, conundrums, indeed.

Ethical dilemmas entail at least two conflicting choices, neither of which is perfectly good nor perfectly bad. That is why these problems are often referred to as “horns of a dilemma.” Which horn should we embrace, and which should we avoid, knowing that both can stick us?

An ethical dilemma has arisen in healthcare circles, but for which the popular press has largely been silent. This issue is about how “quality of life” factors into health care decisions for COVID-19 patients. The following example of how this ethical conundrum can play out is excerpted and modified from the journal, First Things.

A man, Michael, was refused treatment for COVID-19 because the hospital he was admitted to and State bureaucrats believed that he did not enjoy sufficient quality of life to warrant curative treatment for the disease. In 2017, Michael had a heart attack that caused brain damage leaving him a quadriplegic and suffering frequent seizures. But he was conscious, able to do simple math calculations, answer trivia questions, and interact with his family. Then, in late Spring of 2020, he caught COVID-19 and was hospitalized. The hospital decided to withhold his tube feeding despite the objections of his wife, and the fact that he had a fair chance of surviving if provided with appropriate COVID treatment and sustenance care. He died on June 11.

He was denied care because his doctors determined that he did not have a sufficient “quality of life” to justify treatment. Because of his disabilities, saving his life was deemed “futile.” The medical team and the “State,” through a court appointed guardian, reasoned that treatment for COVID-19 would not improve the quality of his life (meaning, he would remain quadriplegic and cognitively disabled if he survived the disease); therefore, they decided to end all treatment care except hospice comfort care.

His wife, Melissa, had been appointed Michael’s temporary guardian, but she was in a legal struggle with Michael’s sister over his custody, a dispute that predated Michael’s hospitalization. Family Eldercare, a nonprofit agency, was then appointed interim guardian until a final decision could be made about permanent guardianship. Hospital doctors convinced Family Eldercare to approve Michael’s transfer to hospice care where he would only receive palliative care and not curative or sustenance care. Michael died of pneumonia after six days on hospice; the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration having no doubt weakened his body’s ability to fight disease. Even without pneumonia, Michael would have soon died of dehydration.

Melissa recorded her conversation with an unnamed physician and posted it on YouTube so we can all hear for ourselves.  Here’s the substance of the conversation from the YouTube transcript, with my commentary.

Doctor: At this point, the decision is, do we want to be extremely aggressive with his care or do we feel like this will be futile? And the big question of futility is one that we always question. The issue is: Will this help him improve the quality of life, will this help him improve anything, will it ultimately change the outcome? And the thought is the answer is no to all of those.

Melissa: What would make you say no to all of those?

Doctor: As of right now the quality of life, he doesn’t have much of one.


Melissa: What do you mean? Because he was paralyzed with a brain injury, he doesn’t have a quality of life?

Doctor: Correct

My Comment: The doctor did not base his decision about Michal’s medical care on the illness for which he was hospitalized, but on his unrelated disability. This is a classic example of applying the invidious “quality of life” ethic, which deems people with disabilities, the elderly, the chronically ill, and the dying to have a lower worth than the healthy, able-bodied, and young. Back to the conversation…

Melissa: Who gets to make that decision whether somebody’s quality of life, if they have a disability that their quality of life is not good?

Doctor: Well, it’s definitely not me. I don’t make that decision. However, will it affect his quality, will it improve his quality of life, and the answer is no.

My Comment: After denying that he had any part in determining Michael’s quality of life, the Doctor then admits that he believes that Michael’s quality of life is negligible. By doing so, he is being duplicitous regarding his role in the decision, and he is not acting as Michael’s doctor, beholden to the Hippocratic Oath he took. Rather, he is acting as an agent for the hospital and State bureaucracies rather than acting in Michael’s interest, a dramatic violation of the Oath he took. Back to the conversation…

Melissa: Why wouldn’t it? Being able to live isn’t improving the quality of life?

Doctor: There’s no improvement with being intubated, with a bunch of lines and tubes in your body and being on a ventilator for more than two weeks. Each of our people here have COVID and they are in respiratory failure. They’ve been here for more than two weeks.

Comment: The Doctor again makes a statement of his opinion of Michael’s quality of life. He admits that many of their OOVID patients are in respiratory failure and on ventilators, but implies that they are more valuable than Michael and deserve such therapy, while Michael does not.

 Melissa: So the fact that you are killing someone doesn’t make sense in your mind?

Doctor: We don’t think it’s killing. Because I don’t know when or not if he will die. But at this point I don’t think it would be humane or compassionate to put a breathing tube in this man and do the lines and the tubes and all that stuff because I don’t think it will benefit him.


Melissa: And I totally agree with you on the intubation part of it. I don’t want him intubated. But I also don’t think you should just sit him somewhere to be comfortable until he finally just drifts away. That to me is futile too. That’s saying you’re not trying to save someone’s life. You’re just watching them go. The ship is sailing. I mean that just doesn’t make any sense to me to not try. I don’t get that part. I don’t like that part.

Doctor: But what I’m going to tell you is that this is the decision between the medical community and the State.

Melissa: And the State. Forget about his wife and his family and his five kids.

Doctor: I have nothing to do with that.

The recording ends there. 

At first blush, it might seem like a reasonable decision to withhold essential care from someone as damaged as Michael was, but what if we change the selection criteria from “quality of life” to “preciousness of life?” Wasn’t his life as precious as everybody else’s, especially to his family? It was not, according to Michael's doctors and faceless bureaucrats in his State who had never met him, all of whom believed that they could better judge Michael’s worth better than his family could. And, what about Michael’s wishes? The article did not indicate whether, after his hospitalization, he was able to express his desires in the matter, but I will assume he was incapable of doing so. In which case, the medical ethicist must look at Michael’s family as well as his life near the time he was hospitalized. Before catching COVID-19, were his actions consistent with someone who wanted to live, even with his disabilities? Even if a hospitalized patient cannot communicate, it is still possible to divine his wishes from the period before he became, possibly temporarily, non-communicative due to the disease. That divination is more relevant than faceless bureaucrats when making life and death decisions for him.

This is the great ethical problem of quality of life decisions being made by impersonal, anonymous administrators who can overrule the wishes of a patient’s immediate family and even the demonstrated wishes of the patient. The bottom line is to make sure you have your final wishes legally documented and use power of attorney to put your fate in the hands of highly trusted family or friends.

Even then, you still might encounter faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions for you based on how they judge the quality of your life.

Reminder: In order to have blog updates delivered to your email, see the simple Subscription Instructions here. You can always easily unsubscribe when you want.

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)