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Topic: Family fights to bring Baby Joseph home
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Ed Fisher
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Family fights to bring Baby Joseph home
By JENNIFER O'BRIEN, QMI Agency
The family of Baby Joseph Maraachli still hope to bring their sick baby home to die.Baby Joseph's fate in doubt
Baby Joseph's lawyer a bioethics heavyweight
Baby ordered off life-support Michigan-bound?
Doomed baby case rhetoric boils over
Judge orders baby off life-support
LONDON, Ont. - Despite the odds stacked against them, the family of Baby Joseph Maraachli still hopes to bring their sick baby home to die.
And it is still possible, says their lawyer, who has been negotiating with a representative for London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).
The 13-month-old boy at the centre of the controversy tearing through hearts across North America remained hooked up to life-support at London's Children's hospital Thursday afternoon, while dozens of journalists turned out to a press conference held by advocates for his family at a nearby hotel.
The baby's father, Moe Maraachli, had planned to be there, but at the last moment did not show up on the advice of his lawyer, Mark Handelman. Handelman is still hoping to arrange a compromise with LHSC, or a transfer to another hospital that will at least provide a new assessment.
"We are losing Joseph in the middle of media hype and posturing," said Handelman, reached by phone later.
"We still have a very, very sick child in the middle of this."
Joseph has a neurodegenerative disease that doctors at Children's Hospital in London, Ont., say has left him in a vegetative state.
Doctors at LHSC sought his parents' consent to remove a breathing tube and when the parents -- who don't agree their son is 'vegetative' -- refused, went to Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board, which agreed with the doctors and ordered the family to consent to removing the breathing tube.
The baby's parents want doctors to fit Joseph with a tracheotomy so they can bring him home -- as they did eight years ago with their baby daughter Zina, who had a similar condition and died six months after they brought her home. But despite their appeals, a London, Ont., judge ruled last week that doctors were reasonable in their end-of-life assessment.
While hospital officials took the matter to Ontario's Public Guardian and Trustee, the family got a new lawyer, Handelman, and frantically looked into other possibilities, such as having Joseph transferred to a Michigan hospital. The Children's Hospital of Michigan decided Wednesday not to take the baby on as a patient.
Handelman is still working toward achieving a "compromise" with LHSC, but has not ruled out appealing the London, Ont., court ruling. At the same time, he is trying to find another suitable hospital in Canada or the U.S. for Baby Joseph.
"While Baby Joseph is alive, hope is alive," said Handelman. "All things are possible."
He denied reports that he had a meeting scheduled for Friday with LHSC officials. He does have a meeting with Maraachli Friday, he said.
Still, in effort to avoid "inflaming anything," Handelman told Maraachli to skip the planned news conference.
"I said to Moe, if you go to a news conference, you are only upping the tension levels, you are not achieving anything," he said.
While family members were absent, their passionate supporters included Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terry Schiavo, 41, who died in Florida in 2005, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under court order.
Schiavo's parents' efforts to keep her alive made waves across the world.
Schindler said he contacted Moe Maraachli after reading about the case of Baby Joseph on Facebook.
"We are fully supporting (the family) in their efforts to bring Baby Joseph home, which is what our family was trying to do with Terry," he said. "Unfortunately we weren't able to do that. My father ... could never forgive himself for not being able to protect his daughter," added Schindler, who answered media questions along with Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defence Coalition, and Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Schadenberg said he is covering legal costs for the Maraachlis.
"Everybody accepts its very likely that Joseph is going to die," said Schadenberg. "We are talking about parental rights."
The case of Baby Joseph has generated fierce debates over the euthanasia, made news headlines and touched hearts across North America.
Thursday's media conference also drew Gail Shanfield, who said she is a patient getting treatment for cancer and kidney problems, but became so taken with Baby Joseph's plight that she took a taxi across the city to be there.
"I've been following it on the Internet," she said later. "I think the parents have a right to take their baby home with them."
While the baby's mother has mostly remained at hospital and her London, Ont., hotel room with their 7-year-old son Ali, his father has being raising awareness by doing interviews with newspapers and television networks across Canada and the U.S.
More than 10,000 people have joined a Save Baby Joseph Facebook page and protestors holding signs with his picture have been marching out front of the Children's Hospital.
As a result of the emotionally charged hype, the hospital has increased security in the pediatric critical care unit for the safety of other patients and staff, a hospital spokesperson said.
Maraachli and his family disagree and have been complaining about being treated like criminals, forced to wear red bracelets and unable to be alone with Joseph, even to bathe him.
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