Woman Dies After Judge OKd Respirator Removal

A paralyzed 50-year-old woman died today just minutes after doctors unhooked her life support system--a move a judge ruled did not need court approval as long as it was requested by the patient.

After a bedside meeting with her sister and her favorite nurse, Dr. James Sullivan unhooked the respirator that had kept Nancy Gamble alive for 14 months at Baptist Hospital, her attorney said.

Gamble, 50, who was paralyzed by the incurable Lou Gehrig’s disease, died “peacefully” 15 minutes later this morning, attorney Mary Martin Schaffner said.

Davidson County Chancellor Robert Brandt ruled Tuesday in the right-to-die suit Gamble filed after Baptist Hospital refused to let her physician remove her respirator.

The judge ruled that Gamble’s physician could remove her respirator and for the first time in Tennessee, he also decided that physicians may act without any court’s permission to honor a disabled patient’s wish to die.

Disabled rights activists protested Brandt’s decision, calling it “further movement down the slippery slope of euthanasia of individuals whom society may perceive as unwanted burdens.”

But Brandt said: “This case does not involve suicide and it does not involve euthanasia. This case does not belong in court.”

The judge ruled that physicians may unhook the respirators of disabled patients as long as the patients are mentally competent, fully informed of their condition and voluntarily deciding to die.

Brandt called it discriminatory to “impose the cumbersome legal process” on the disabled trying to decide their own medical treatment.

“This court finds they should have the same right to decide their future as those who are not totally disabled,” the judge said.

A lawyer for ADAPT, or American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, urged the court to assure that Gamble is offered suicide prevention counseling.

ADAPT argued in court papers that Gamble could have lived independently with attendants to care for her at home and that she could have operated a computer with her mouth to communicate better.

“Terminal illness should not be used to justify a wholesale abandonment of society’s policies designed to protect human life,” the group said.

Schaffner said Brandt’s ruling is the first in Tennessee to say disabled patients no longer must seek court permission to have respirators removed.