In Bioethics and "The Culture of Death", I recently posted on the Andrea Clark issue. She's the woman who did not want to have her treatment ended, was insured, but was going to have treatment stopped anyway with fatal results, based on a "futile treatment" ruling that her family and at least one doctor strongly disputed. Folks who have read Wesley J. Smith's very well-documented book "Culture of Death" know that she isn't the only example by any means.

Anyway, the good news is that Ms. Clark's condition is improving in a number of areas (pain meds halved, blood pressure meds withdrawn, white cell count normal, can talk), and St. Luke's has decided to continue treatment. John Hawkins of Right Wing News deserves an awful lot of credit for this one because without him, odds are that she'd be dead now. Take a bow, John.

Postscript: the one issue I have with all of this is that Ms. Clark's family did not undertake the procedures to release her medical records so they could be discussed. Time was rather short for that, these are family members who are not familiar with all the ins and outs, and there were other priorities. A family member made those points in our comments, and I agree. Now, if Andrea does get better in the end, the records become a non-issue - though releasing them would still be a greeat service to help prevent this from happening again. If we find ourselves back in this same place with Ms. Clark in future with no released records, however, greater skepticism will then be warranted and proper.