Improved technology collides with religious beliefs at the ICU

WHEN TINSLEE LEWIS was ten months old, doctors said that the treatment keeping her alive was causing her pain and should cease. Born with grave heart and lung conditions that surgery could not ease, she had no prospect of getting better, they said. Her family disagreed. Nearly two years and several court judgments later, Tinslee remains on life support in a hospital in Texas. In April the hospital, requesting that a court’s final ruling, expected in January, should be brought forward, described how the child’s body had been “ravaged” by invasive treatments. Her mother countered that the two-year-old, who is heavily sedated but conscious, had shown some signs of improvement.