This agony could be anyone’s

One of the daily news lists I receive is on bioethics, and its filled with alarming stories from across the world about all the ways we, as a civilization, are struggling with how to handle matters of death and life prolonging technologies. Especially mired as we are in a web of laws that seem to be changing all the time, and ethics that can drive hospitals in a different direction than family morals.

We should be better prepared for this. Imagine your family in this situation.

A 54-year-old La Crosse woman is being kept alive at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center only by continuous sedation and a feeding tube.

She has had seven strokes since 1995, the most recent of which on April 23 caused a violent dementia with severe agitation, fear, anguish and delirium. She also has diabetes, anemia, pneumonia, respiratory failure and other medical conditions.

She refuses to eat or drink, and tore out feeding tubes in the past. The only way to keep feeding her, her doctors say, is to keep her sedated.

Her family has filed documents in La Crosse County Circuit Court to authorize Gundersen Lutheran to cease life-sustaining treatment.

A judge already has declared the woman incompetent and appointed her daughter as guardian.

But a guardian has no authority in Wisconsin to make that kind of treatment — or lack of treatment — decision unless the patient is in a persistent vegetative state or has expressed wishes through a conversation or advance directive.

The woman at Gundersen Lutheran meets neither requirement.

Here’s where it zeroes in on a key problem in cases like this:

Robyn Shapiro, a Milwaukee attorney representing the woman’s family, said she knows the case will challenge Wisconsin Supreme Court rulings but believes the guardian should have more authority to make decisions, as provided by many other states.

“Will this case go all the way to the state Supreme Court? It could, but we all agree it is a terribly important case,” said Shapiro, who also is director of the Center for the Studies of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “We need to modify the restriction imposed by the court, and create more sophisticated and intelligent law.”

Critical point: What constitutes sophisticated and intelligent law for some people runs completely counter to what optimal law would mean to others. That’s why the people of each state need to be informed and engaged in the debate over their laws.

We should have learned this better when Terri Schiavo was still alive, but the Schindler family is still working on that.