Little Baby Sun Hudson was born with a genetic deformity that made his death a painful certainty. No medical treatment, not even a heart and lung transplant could have saved the life of this child, who was born with a chest cavity too tiny to hold organs capable of sustaining his life.

His mother, Wanda Hudson, was unwilling and unable to accept the clear fact that her little baby boy was going to die. She demanded that everything possible be done to keep him alive, claiming that "he just needs to grow out of it, that's all." She convinced herself that if her child was kept alive long enough, his chest would grow large enough to hold lungs that could breathe and a heart that could pump, and nothing doctors told her could persuade her otherwise.

Texas law is a bit unique in that it allows hospitals to make the choice to end life support in cases such as Baby Sun's, but requires that families be given 10 days to find another facility to care for the patient. No other hospital could be located to take the doomed baby. The Texas Children's Ethics Committee reviewed Sun's case before recommending that life support be discontinued. This is a landmark case in Texas, being the first in which doctors and hospital have had to overrule the wishes of a patient's family.

The concensus among Baby Sun's doctors, the hospital, and the ethics committee was that this baby was in the process of actively dying, and that the process of this death was cruelly painful to the baby, and that there was absolutely no hope for a treatment or a cure, the life-support equipment was doing nothing but prolonging the baby's painful death, rather than "supporting life". They used their option to withdraw life support for the sake of the child, whom they felt was being caused to suffer needlessly because of the vain hopes of his mother for a miracle.

Wanda Hudson is calling the lot of them "murderers", and taking her case to court. She is demanding an autopsy and genetic testing to attempt to disprove that her baby had any genetic disease at all. The main thrust of her case consists of her strong belief that if her baby had been kept on life support for another few months, or a year, he would have "grown out of it" and become a normal little boy.

Aside from this malpractice case, Wanda Hudson named her child "Sun" because she says he was conceived magically by the celestial body we call the Sun while she was all alone one day, looking up at the sky.

Do you agree with Wanda that her Baby Sun was murdered by heartless doctors and officials? Or do you feel that the sad decision to withdraw Sun's life support and end his futile suffering was the best and most merciful choice that could have been made for him?

Please take a second to click on our poll and record your opinion.

In NYS a judge can rule for a hospital too, to have life support removed. I've seen it happen several times with patients in our unit before I changed to the ER.

It has to be a heart wrenching decision for any parent to make and believe me, doctors and nurses in hospitals find these decisions heart wrenching too. We don't like doing it. We wish we could help every single patient.

If this mom had a sonogram during her pregnancy she would have known even before the baby was born, he wasn't going to make it.

It's amazing Sun lived as long as he did.

People accuse us of playing God. But, what we're doing is actually allowing God, if there is one, to intervene or welcome a baby to his bosom. We're letting nature take over as opposed to mechanical, artificial means of life.

When are we going to realize death is part of life?

I made the decision to take my mother off life support. She was dying. The equipment was only preventing the natural process of death. The decision was very easy, as she was older, her body riddled with cancer, she had not a prayer to live. The God I know wanted her to die..take her home so to speak.

My Mom's case was common and easy to understand, and in my opinion the same applies to the Houston baby. I have a close relative who was involved in a very hideous accident, and should have died. By some miracle he survived his massive injury. The surgery and great medical attention he received prevented him from dying. BUT, it didn't prevent him from continuing to suffer from his injuries the rest of his life. At times he wishes the doctors had not been so skilled. He seriously curses God for not allowing him to die that day.

I couldn't decide between the two choices as neither one is entirely accurate. Yes, they did kill the baby but it was ethical. If you cause the death of someone you killed them. (But then, is it really a life if everything is controlled by machines?) I don't care if you hide behind some ethical excuse it is still what it is. What is not ethical in this story is the image that the hospital wants to put out that they only pulled the plug on the child to save him from needless suffering. They did it because treatment was costing money. Calling it a mercy killing is a lie. They allowed for and conducted a search to find another medical facility to transfer the child to so care could continue. Falling short of finding one they killed the child. Would they be calling it an ethical case of mercy if the child was moved somewhere else? Of course not.

I am also torn on the possible judgement against the hospital. Momma lived in denial about her child's chances but parents are that way. The hospital took the treatment as far as they could and obeyed the law in killing the child. The mother shouldn't win a mal-practice award against the hospital simply because they couldn't save the child. I feel for the mom and hospital in one of these 'Life's a bitch' cases.

I was trying to be as inclusive as possible with the way I worded my poll choices, jokul. How could I have worded them better so that you found them more accurate?

It's OK, Helice. I'd guess the simplest way to word it would have been "Do you agree with the hospital's decision?" Yes or No?

However, that's not your fault, and here's the kicker; I voted with the hospital's decision. Whoa! Isn't THAT going to screw up your stereotyping, huh?

I think 100 years ago this wouldn't have been a question. The patient wouldn't have been kept alive long enough to determine whether to kill it or not. With the ability to assist body function to the point of postponing death comes the ethical decisions commensurate with that ability.

I disagree that discontinuing extraordinary care is equal to killing the baby. I don't think the medical field should be burdened with the label of killer when it has no cure and prolonged treatment is repectful only of wishes and hope. It doesn't seem fair to charge them with the task of providing continued knowledge and a best interest of the patient position and call them killers if all thier knowledge and best interest can't provide a miraculous outcome.

I do believe the decision was ultimately one of economics and the ethics of that is diturbing but without the issue of economics it would probably have been a less hopeful situation to begin with.

Ray, I didn't create this as a political discussion; rather to explore people's understanding of medical ethics and to see how everyone feels about such a sensitive subject as ending an infant's life. I don't wish to relate this discussion to partisan politics, rather to individual feelings and understandings of what the ethical problem consists of and the least reprehensible way of solving the problem, since in ethical dilemmas there is rarely a clearly "right" or "wrong" answer.

I also concurred with the hospital's decision to remove life support from the baby, seeing it as only a miserable prolongation of the inevitable death to come rather than actual support of life functions.

Just because medical technology has given us the ability to extend life a wee little bit longer in some cases, does that mean we must always employ that life-extending technology? When is it "wrong" to prolong life? When is it "right" to shorten it?

By denying life support to an infant with an inevitably fatal, painful condition with the intent of mercy, are we blurring the line between ethically sparing the patient unnecessary pain and euthanasia?

In the end, after fully exploring the ethics of offering and withholding life support, I hope to explore and contrast people's feelings about this affair with the concept and ethics of euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide.

Aw now. Don't worry, Helice. I'm not going to start a political discussion. I was just poking a little fun at some folks.

However, the short of it is that one ethics question can often be closely related to another. And I really do recognize there are shades of gray. For instance, in four short statements I can say:
1) I believe abortion should be, as a president said, "available but rare."
2) I believe capital punishment should, likewise, be available but used sparingly.
3) I believe terminally ill people should have the right to terminate an unbearable existance.
4) I am against "euthanasia."

This story brings up a problem that the United States has in that our "infant mortality rate" looks poor against some other countries. However, because of our advances in medical science our hospitals often try to save newborns that in other countries would be allowed to be stillborn. A still born infant can't "die" because technically it was never alive. Conversely, American hospitals will often go to heroic effort to save such an infant. When such efforts are unsuccessful, the resulting "death" is figured into the mortality rate.

Now, this takes us back to my 4 statements. Does this story of this particular infant properly fall under my personal "Euthanasia" rule? Or could it be considered an available but rare "Abortion" but merely after the fact?

Since I voted in favor of the hospital's action it's safe to conclude I'm looking at this as a case where this infant should never have been allowed to be "born" after the moment doctors understood it could never, ever survive despite the greatest of available heroic actions.

Your wording wasn't the problem with the questions Helice. You did fine. The problem I had is that the questions required an either/or response, outside of the one I chose. I happen to think the hospital was not totally ethical or unethical. The truth is there is a lot of gray area in this case so I couldn't choose between right or wrong. Both sides of the debate have solid points.