FOR DEAR LIFE
While reading about Dr. Eva Carrizales’ plight (“By a Doctor’s Hand,” by Barry Siegel, June 12), I felt like cradling her in my arms, much as she did that doomed child. This tragedy is a sterling example of why criminal law and medicine should rarely intersect. When we bestow on a person the license to make daily life and death decisions, which has to be the most difficult job conceived, then that person must also be given greater latitude in making those decisions.
A key mistake was that despite a peer review finding that the baby’s care was not “below standards,” the district attorney went ahead with a grand jury proceeding. Allowing laymen to define criminal conduct begs for a poor result. I wish this story were required reading for every district attorney. Maybe then, people such as Dr. Carrizales would feel less threatened for trying to save lives and actualize compassion.
STEVEN M. GOODMAN
Encino
As an oncology and home-health RN, I’ve taken care of many terminally ill patients. As doctors and nurses, it is our job to make these patients as comfortable as possible, not speed them on their way. Although I believe in euthanasia, it is not legal in this country. No matter how compassionate Dr. Carrizales may be, she crossed the line.
SHERRY OWENS
Running Springs
Every medical examiner, coroner and district attorney should be ordered to read “By a Doctor’s Hand.” All that was needed at any one stage of that tragedy was for a single bureaucrat to say, “The buck stops here.” But at every stage, the bureaucrats instead bowed to the fear of criticism.
The work of Dr. Carrizales is important in a society that must come to grips with the rationing of health care. We are all very reasonable in our discussion of such matters, until we have to make a decision. I grieve for Dr. Carrizales, who is a victim of cowardice.
JAY HERBERT
Encinitas
No one likes to see people suffer, be they babies or adults. Doctors should allow people to end their lives and die with dignity. This decision should not be viewed as giving those in the health-care profession the right to end any life. Rather, it supports the view that doctors should respect the dignity of patients and not use life-support systems to keep people alive.
The courage that Dr. Carrizales has shown to let the baby die with dignity should be supported. Perhaps there will come a time in the near future when doctors will be able to make these decisions based on compassion rather than the law.
DELLA WIDJAJA
Los Angeles
We treat a dying animal in the road with more respect and dignity than most terminal patients. Doctors are terrified of making the decisions that Eva Carrizales did, and when they do make them it is probably from the safety of their car phones. They do everything they can to remove themselves from the emotional reality of death. When was the last time a doctor held a dying infant in his or her arms in an attempt to help ease the pain and suffering of their final hours?
Perhaps the baby could have lived for another few days. But it’s not about quantity of life, it’s about quality. A good deal of our medical crisis is precipitated by the “life at any cost” attitude of medical training. Until we have more doctors like Carrizales who are willing to make the really tough decisions, we will never be a “civilized” society.
JOHN STOCKWELL
Los Angeles
Here was a human being with no quality of life and with death imminent. So why the persecution of the kind and compassionate Dr. Carrizales? Because she committed the sin of taking a defenseless human being out of the medical system, where the hospital and all its ancillary services could have had a financial bonanza.
The right to die is one each human being should have. The only people fighting this issue are, in the main, those who stand to gain financially by “attending” to those who have no chance of recovery.
These people want to dictate to you and your loved ones just how you can die, even though it may mean more pain and suffering for you.
ROBERT ARONOFF
South Pasadena
Siegel asks us whether a “dignified, peaceful death” is better than “prolonged, gasping agony.” Dignified for whom? The baby? The doctor? How dare the author project his opinions on the baby’s struggle for life. I could easily claim that the baby strived for life with vigor, perseverance and dignity, but his tiny chance was stripped away by the doctor.
As a Christian nation, it is our duty to uphold the idea that all life is sacred, and that we are to preserve life to the very last second. The courts did just that. While the doctors waffled, the grand jury--the average citizenry--upheld the law.
RAUL E. ACOSTA
Beverly Hills
As a registered nurse, I feel compelled to respond to “By a Doctor’s Hand.” The implication running through the saga is that Carrizales was brought down by nurses who were overly emotional, ignorant of the physiological stages of death and unable to maintain a professional relationship with Dr. Carrizales because of personality conflicts. That is ludicrous.
Nurses’ own licenses are at risk. They cannot follow doctors’ orders blindly or observe doctors’ actions uncritically. The ethical, moral and legal obligation to protect the patient runs to medicine and nursing.
And to imply that neonatal intensive-care nurses, who witness tragedy daily, do not understand the physiological stages of death is nonsense.
Finally, to indicate that the incident would have gone unreported if Dr. Carrizales had been more of a buddy to the nurses is insulting. It is not necessary to like a doctor to respect his or her work. The nurses were simply complying with hospital policy and the law when they reported Dr. Carrizales. Anything less and they could have been defending their licenses.
KATHLEEN WALSH
La Canada
