Emilio Gonzale's Ethical Dilemma

The case of 17-month old Emilio Gonzales was seen and heard nation wide. A conflict between the mother and the physician emerged after the physician no longer expected there be an improvement in his health. This led to the decision of discontinuing providing care for the child and requesting the parents find another facility willing to provide such medical care. The main issue of this case revolved around whether the physician’s decision was morally permissible or legally just. Under Kantian Ethics, Children’s Hospital has moral reasoning to terminate treatment for Emilio and thus is morally justified in withdrawing treatment. Emilio is terminally ill and is under the care of the Children’s Hospital in Texas. He is placed on life support by a respirator and is given pills causing the child to spend majority of his time in the pediatric intensive care unit unconscious. Showing no signs of improvement, the physician has requested the parents look for another hospital willing to continue aiding Emilio within a period of 10 days. Under the Texas “futile-care” law, the hospital’s ethics committee can, “declare the care of a terminally ill patient to be of no benefit,” allowing them to terminate care after a given time period. (Moreno, Sylvia. Case Puts Futile-Treatment Law Under a Microscope.

For this reason, they have asked the parents to find another facility that will continue to provide treatment. They went as far to even extend their deadline of finding another hospital once and have aided in contacting other facilities asking to take Emilio in, but have not been successful. Under Kantian Ethics, the hospital has the right to remove Emilio from life support for his own good being that the hospital has done everything in their power to try to improve his health, but unfortunately has shown no signs of