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"Futile Care" and Its Friends

They want to decide when your life is worthless

Jul 23, 2001, Vol. 6, No. 42 • By WESLEY J. SMITH
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WHEN JOHN CAMPBELL’S TEENAGE SON CHRISTOPHER became comatose after a car accident in 1994, the last problem Campbell expected was obtaining proper medical treatment for his son. Campbell, a corporate executive, had excellent health insurance and was convinced Christopher would receive the best of care. But then something awful happened. One month after the accident, Christopher developed a burning fever. When his temperature reached 105—and rising—Campbell asked the attending nurses why his son was not being treated for the condition that now threatened his life. He soon found out: Christopher’s doctor was out of town and the on-call physician had refused to order care. The nurses told Campbell they were helpless to act on their own.

Campbell demanded to speak with the doctor. It took hours before the nurses were able to reach him on the phone. By then Christopher’s fever had worsened to 107 degrees. "He was literally burning up," Campbell recalls. "I knew that if something was not done, he would die."

Campbell demanded treatment to reduce his son’s fever. At first, the doctor refused. "He actually laughed," Campbell recalls. But the distraught father wouldn’t give up: "I raised holy hell. I used every ounce of persuasion I had in me." Finally, reluctantly, the doctor ordered the nurses to provide fever-reducing medicine, and the fever subsided.

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