State Physicians Group Condemns Involvement by Congress

The California Medical Assn. moved nearly unanimously Monday to condemn federal legislation signed by President Bush allowing Terri Schiavo’s parents to ask a federal judge to order her feeding tube reconnected.

Only a single “no” rose in voice vote of about 450 doctors attending the group’s annual medical convention in Anaheim responding to an emergency resolution calling on the CMA to “express its outrage at Congress’ interference with medical decisions.”

Members of the group said they would ask the American Medical Assn. to approve the same resolution at its national convention in June in Chicago.

“Many of us are appalled at what’s going on in Washington, D.C.,” said George P. Susens, an internist who wrote the resolution on behalf of the San Francisco Medical Society. Legislators, he said, are neither doctors nor experts.

“They’re doing this for political gain.... We hope physicians all over the country will rise up in opposition to what Congress has done,” Susens said.

Several doctors urged the group to reject what they called improper political influence on medical decisions best left to patients and their families. To intervene in the Schiavo case is tantamount to torture, said William Andereck, an internist and the director of a program in medicine and human values at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He said Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state from which she could not recover and has responded only reflexively to the infliction of pain.

Melvyn L. Sterling, an internist in Orange, said he would urge the AMA to condemn the congressional action when he attends the convention as a delegate.

“To say a husband has no right to save his wife from a horrible existence is intolerable,” said Sterling, who also practices hospice care. “This is a golden-rule issue, and we feel it is an important national issue.”

The issue galvanized physicians because of the political implications, not necessarily the medical facts of Schiavo’s case, said Robert E. Hertzka, a former president of the CMA. If the delegates were polled, he predicted they would split over whether to reconnect Schiavo’s feeding tube. “Congress is inserting themselves into a situation best left to a healthcare team,” Hertzka said.

Other doctors said Congress had no right to intervene in a state issue already decided by the Florida Supreme Court.

Denise Greene, a Fresno resident physician whose specialty is pain management, said the resolution was fitting given the CMA’s long opposition to political interference in medical issues.

Four other resolutions dealing with so-called right-to-die issues were raised by doctors Monday, but only one passed. It called for guidelines for the appropriate use of hospice care. The failed measures called for support of a pending “California Death With Dignity Act” before the state Legislature, encouraged legislative approval of physician-assisted suicides for the terminally ill and supported creating laws for “making end-of-life decisions.”