French hospital condemned after reviving 'stillborn' baby
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Newborn baby. Photo: Sunctti Sundaram (CC)
In a case full of ethical questions, a hospital that revived a baby that had been deemed stillborn was found guilty of exaggerated use of therapy in a lawsuit brought by the baby's parents. The baby developed severe mental and physical handicaps resulting from the effects of the protracted reanimation efforts used.
The apparently stillborn baby was born in December 2002 in the maternity wing of the central hospital in Orange, southern France, and was reanimated after 25 minutes of intense efforts. Those efforts were judged to constitute an abuse of intensive treatment and medication, according to French press reports.
French law specifically condemns what it calls “Acharnement thérapeutique,” which is defined as using an exaggerated use of therapy which is disproportionate to any meaningful improvement in the patient’s condition.
The parents’ lawyer announced that the decision to condemn the hospital, the first decision of this sort in France, constituted a new legal precedent.
The law forbidding exaggerated use of therapy was not introduced until 2005 so the judges used an unusually strict interpretation of previous laws on deontological issues to help obtain a conviction for the 2002 case.
Maternity staff preparing the delivery of the baby encountered a sudden and rapidly diminishing cardiac rhythm, and the baby was born, apparently dead. The senior gynecologist tried to reanimate the baby for 25 minutes, after which he informed the parents that it had died.
His colleagues, however, continued their reanimation efforts and finally succeeded in re-establishing cardiac activity and thus saved the baby. But the baby’s brain had not been irrigated for well over half an hour and no oxygenation techniques were used.
Experts said the baby showed severe physical and mental handicaps in the months following the birth including symptoms related to cerebral tetraplegic motor infirmity, a severe swallowing disability, epilepsy, and symptoms similar to Dubowitz’s syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.
The judgment stated: “By acting in this manner, and without taking into account the highly probable harmful consequences of their actions, the doctors demonstrated an unreasonable level of obstination...which constituted a medical error of a nature which engages the responsibility of the hospital of Orange.”
The precise extent of the hospital’s implication in the baby’s handicaps remains to be established, according to the judgment. Once established, that level of implication will be a determining factor in how much compensation to pay the parents, who are suing for €500,000 ($742,944). The hospital has not filed an appeal.
The medical enquiry into the incident did not fault the hospital’s operational practices or find any evidence of medical error during the birth itself.
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It's also highly unusual and dangerous for the courts to use a law that came into being three years after the incident to decide the case. What are the chances the decision will be overturned in a higher court?
That which is normal.
As in America, laws can be more or less strictly interpreted here. The thing in this case though is that public opinion would support the decision because of too much past abuse of "acharnement thérapeutique' which kept many people alive artificially, despite the wishes of families.
Public opinion no longer tolerates that, and the judgement reflects that in my view.
" But the baby’s brain had not been irrigated for well over half an hour and no oxygenation techniques were used."
This alone sounds like medical malpractice, and the parents are only suing for $742,944?
That said, it is an inevitable fact of life that errors like this are made. Some, moreover, (but not me I hasten to add) would even say they were right to do what they did...
This subject is fraught with complex moral issues.
Some people would defend what they did. Weird in my view, but there you go....
I've had to face relentless teasing and torments in my life, particularly in my early years. It's never easy being different. Many times I wanted to die. But after all I have seen and all I have experienced, and because of the wonderful friends I have found and kept over the years... it was worth it. It was all worth it.
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