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BOSTON, MASS---Earlier this month the state Department of Social Services won a court order to remove 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre's ventilator and feeding tube.
But she began breathing on her own and showing signs of responsiveness.
Now they're saying there's "great reason for hope" and have moved the abused and brain-damaged girl to a Boston rehabilitation hospital.
It appears that Haleigh Poutre may still be alive today and getting a chance to live because of Terri Schindler-Schiavo and the public awareness of right to life issues evolving from the Schiavo case.
Terri Schindler-Schiavo died last March 31 at age 41, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed by court order after her estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, fought her parents in the courts for nearly eight years to legally murder his wife.
He and Pinellas County probate court judge George Greer claimed Terri was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope for recovery. Three of the five doctors who testified in 2000 said she was PVS. But at least one of the Schiavo doctors admitted Terri had been somewhat responsive to his examination and in 2005, over 40 neurologists and physicians submitted affidavits that she was in a minimally conscious state. She wasn't terminal as the autopsy proved, the Pinellas County medical examiner saying she could have lived at least 20 more years. She was responsive to her parents, appeared to be able to track a balloon with her eyes and followed her mother with her eyes as her mother moved about her room.
Although the decision whether a healthy but brain damaged woman lived or died rested solely with Judge Greer, he never personally visited the woman for whom he acted as the guardian ad litem, a prohibited role for him, and he wasn't present at any time for the 13 agonizing days of her public execution.
Prior to her sudden and as yet inexplicable collapse in February, 1990, 15 years prior, Terri had said that "where there's life, there's hope", just like the Masschusetts DDS is saying there's "great reason for hope" for Haleigh.
The case arose when Haleigh Poutre's adoptive mother, Holli Strickland and stepfather. Jason Strickland were charged with assault and battery after she was hospitalized with serious brain injuries and placed on life support in September. The couple took Haleigh to the hospital with bruises, broken teeth, swollen knees and a sheared brain stem.
Two weeks later, the adoptive mother was found dead and the Department of Social Services as the girl's guardian requested the court's permission to disconnect the girl's ventilator and feeding tube. The stepfather, Jason Strickland, asked to be considered the girl's adoptive parent so he could seek to keep her on life support. He also asked the court to open to the public the proceedings and records in Haleigh's life support case. The court denied his requests, and Strickland appealed and lost.
He could be charged with murder if she dies.
The social services agency took steps to remove her from life support, saying that she was in a persistent vegetative state. Despite her stepfather's opposition, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered that her feeding tube be removed and that she be removed from a ventilator.
However, the day following the ruling, DSS, the girl's guardian, said her condition had improved and that she was breathing on her own.
Governor Mitt Romney has ordered an investigation into the entire Department of Social Services file involving Haleigh to determine if the agency properly handled the case and if they overlooked signs of abuse. Although the agency had received previous reports of abuse of the girl, DSS claimed that the girl was abusing herself and did nothing prior to her alleged beating in September.
It is hoped that the inquiry will result in the DSS being more responsive to reports of child abuse.
Romney has now appointed Christine Ferguson, president of the First Focus child advocacy organization, and Mary Anne Baddarocco, supervisor of the psychiatry department at Beth Israel to head the independent panel that will investigate the case. A third panel member is Jeffrey Burns, chief of the critical care and co-chair of the ethics committee at Children's Hospital in Boston.
DSS commissioner Harry Spence maintains that his agency has properly handled the case despite there being signs of abuse before the girl was hospitalized in September as a result of a beating. He says health professionals had believed that she was harming herself.
Haleigh has been transferred from Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, the pediatric intensive-care unit where she had been since September, to the Franciscan Hospital for Children in Boston. The move came two days after Spence visited her and saw her pick up a Curious George stuffed toy and a yellow duck on command and was based on a second opinion from a pediatric neurologist now part of team of doctors that DSS has gathered for Haleigh's case.
Spence said he had visited Haleigh "out of some sense of responsibility".
Apparently George Greer never felt any responsibility for causing the death of a disabled woman who struggled to say she wanted to live after her feeding tube was removed from her for the third time on Greer's death order. He never personally saw the woman he judicially killed.
In making the determination to move Haleigh to a rehab center, Spence said it was due to "her incredible will to live".
Although a jury had awarded some $750,000 to be used for Terri's rehabilitation as the result of a medical malpractice case, as soon as he had the money in hand in 1993, Michael ordered that all rehabilitation be ceased for Terri.
Spence had visited Haleigh for about 30-minutes Tuesday evening and said that he noticed her eyes tracking his movements part of the time. He said that except for her arms, her body didn't move but based on what he saw, he decided that the girl had to be moved to where she would receive rehabilitation and therapy.
As in the Schiavo case, doctors are already arguing whether Haleigh's eye movement is random or the reflexive tracking of an object without actually seeing it. Dr. Linda Emanuel, director of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University has been quoted as saying that it's possible to get eye movement that does not signify higher brain function.
Is Haleigh in a persistent vegetative state or a minimally conscious state?
DSS is maintaining that doctors had told them that Haleigh was PVS with no hope for recovery.
Under Florida Statutes, PVS means a permanent and irreversible condition of unconsciousness in which there is the absence of voluntary action or cognitive behavior of ANY kind and an ability to communicate or interact purposefully with the environment.
Due to Spence's statements regarding Haleigh's response to commands regarding the stuffed toys, it appears that she is cognitive and not PVS. Although Michael Schiavo had forbidden photographs and videos of Terri to be taken and refused to allow her visitors, based on the videos that are in existence and statements from her lawyers and family, Terri was not PVS but rather responsive to stimuli, cognitive and alert, able to interact with her family.
A minimally conscious state as over 40 medical professionals attested that Terri was in, is a condition of severely altered consciousness in which the person demonstrates minimal but definite behavioral evidence of self or environmental awareness.
Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and a professor of medicine at Weill Medical college of Cornell University in New York, says that people in a minimally conscious state can "emerge to more reliable forms of communications" For example, Fin said that in 2003 Arkansas mechanic Terry Wallis emerged from a minimally conscious state after 19 years.
Although Fins stated his opinions regarding the Schiavo case, he never examined the disabled woman. He had stated she was "sufficiently evaluated by neurologists for the Florida Supreme Court (3 doctors to 2) to rule that there was clear and convincing evidence that she was in a persistent or permanent vegetative state," a judgment "substantiated by the assessment of the independent guardian ad litem, Jay Wolfson, appointed by Governor Jeb Bush."
However, Wolfson was not in the position to make such a medical diagnosis and in essence was practicing medicine without a license without sanction from Greer. Wolfson is not a neurologist or licensed medical professional, but a professor of law and public health at the University of South Florida.
According to published reports, New York bioethics expert Dr. Colleen Clements says that Haleigh is "clearly not brain dead" because she's breathing on her own and moving her eyes, just like Terri Schiavo was doing. Clements said that "eye tracking is a pretty good indicator that there's brain activity going on. When you've got a young child, there should not be any rush to terminate existence".
DSS had ordered a new set of testing for Haleigh in mid-January after her biological mother had visited her said she found her responsive. In Terri's case, Greer refused to order any new testing and in fact, took it a step further in violation of Florida statutes in ordering that no attempts be made to feed her orally after the removal of the feeding tube.
In Haleigh's case although doctors said after the new testing that there was "not a chance" of recovery, a day later they said they noticed significant improvements in her. She had been removed from the ventilator, was breathing on her own and showing improvement and responsiveness.
After Spence visited her and she responded to his commands with the toys, she was relocated. 1-28-06
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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