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From: covici@ccs.portal.com (John Covici)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Missouri Court of Appeals Hears Euthanasia Case
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Date: 21 Feb 91 02:07:54 GMT
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Index Number: 13682

Feb. 6 (EIRNS)--MISSOURI COURT HEARS STATE'S CASE AGAINST
PARENT'S DEMAND TO STARVE DISABLED DAUGHTER. The Missouri Court
of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments today from that state's
Department of Health asking the court to overturn a lower court
ruling that would permit the father of a 20 year old handicapped
patient to move his daughter from a Missouri hospital to one in
Minneapolis where state laws permit, and even, facilitate
families' wishes to starve to death disabled relatives. 
      The Department of Health represents the Missouri
Rehabilitation Center, the same hospital where the disabled Nancy
Cruzan was starved to death in December. They argued that the
best interests of their patient, Christine Busalacchi, were not
represented when a St. Louis Probate Court ruled in favor of
Christine's father, Pete Busalacchi on January 17. Probate Judge
Louis Kohn refused to hear any evidence of the level of
Christine's awareness or view a video of Christine's responses to
doctors' or nurses' demands. Christine, who sustained brain
damage in a May 1987 car accident, continues to improve weekly,
especially with increased attention. Kohn decided Christine's
fate on the basis of who decides if patients who are unable to
speak for themselves live. Kohn said, "Somebody has to make a
decision, maybe the right decision, maybe the wrong decision. I
think it has to be made by the family."  With that, the
Rehabilitation Center argued, disabled patients lost all their
rights. 
      Pete Busalacchi, 44, who had his first wife killed by
having her removed her from a respirator, contends his daughter
is nothing but "a machine" and wants to end the only thing
keeping her alive, her tube feeding. Dr. Ronald Cranford, a
Minneapolis neurologist best known for transforming American
medical care using Nazi medical ethics, says Christine is in a
"persistent vegetative state" and is assisting in having her
removed to his facility. 
      The Court of Appeals is expected to hand down its ruling
within three weeks. 

Feb. 6 (EIRNS)--MICHIGAN JUDGE PERMANENTLY BARS DR. DEATH FROM
USING `MURDER MACHINE.' Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Alice
Gilbert has permanently barred Jack Kevorkian from using his
homemade murder machine, which he used last June to kill a
retired Oregon woman with Alzheimer's disease. Kevorkian was
originally charged with murder, but the charges were later
dropped when an Oakland County District Court Judge ruled in
December that the victim, Janet Adkins, died by her own hand
after throwing the switch on Kevorkian's machine, which released
lethal drugs into her system. Suicide is not a crime in Michigan.
Therefore, Kevorkian rationalized, neither is "assisted suicide."
      Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's attorney, said they would
appeal Gilbert's ruling on the grounds that the Judge has no
authority to prohibit "a legal activity" by Kevorkian simply
because "she thinks it is immoral or unethical." The unemployed
pathologist claims he is being persecuted for advocating an
enlightened approach toward the terminally ill. Kevorkian,
however, was ready to use his machine on "anyone who's in
distress or who thinks he is." He modeled his experiments of
direct transfusions of blood from corpses to live patients on the
WWII methods the Soviets used. 
      Judge Gilbert said Kevorkian was not qualified to evaluate
Mrs. Adkins, and evidence of the victim's suicide wishes were
"too sparse." Rather, she said, the video of Kevorkian's
interview with Adkins shows Kevorkian "rather anxious to try his
invention that he has advertised, and Janet Adkins appeared as a
likely candidate." 
       While Gilbert's 35 page ruling has not yet been reviewed,
she appears to have made one of the few, if not only, statement
against assisted suicide heard in today's courts. She dismissed
Kevorkian's claim that he sought to expand the basic right of a
third person to include a right to assisted suicide, saying: "The
rights of privacy and self-determination do not encompass the
right to direct another person to kill or the right of a third
person to participate in the killing.... Patients cannot confer a
right upon a doctor to assist a suicide. Patients cannot dictate
to a physician how to practice medicine."