Susan Torres Family

The Washington Post gives a more in-depth article regarding Susan Torres, the woman who collapsed from a brain tumor and is brain dead.The woman who is being kept alive in order to try to deliver her unborn child who needs to be at least 25 weeks old before Doctor's feel the baby would have any chances of survival. They are racing against time and the melanoma quickly spreading throughout Susan's body. The article explores some of the ethical implications of keep Susan alive even though by all accounts, she is legally dead.

From an ethical point of view, some of the big questions were answered three days after a cancerous tumor at the top of her spinal column, a melanoma, began bleeding and felled Susan Torres on May 7. She was about four months pregnant with their second child. Her doctors have declined to comment, but Jason Torres said they determined his wife to be brain dead, which, according to widely accepted laws in Virginia and other states, means that she is dead.

The question became whether to try to keep her body functioning with machines so the fetus could grow, an ethical scenario akin to organ donation, said Robert M. Veatch, a professor of medical ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

In this decision, he and others said, it is Susan Torres's desires and values, as expressed by her or as divined by her husband, that are given the most weight, in light of the fetus's chances of survival.

Posted by Jody at June 27, 2005 08:24 AM | TrackBack