APPLETON, Wisconsin (LifeSiteNews) — A Wisconsin couple filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a Catholic hospital which gave a dangerous combination of drugs to their daughter and then refused to resuscitate her shortly before her death.
Grace Schara, a 19-year old with Down syndrome, died at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (Ascension Health) in October 2021 after being administered a sedative, an anxiety medication, and morphine, which are known to hasten severe hypoxia when taken together, according to the lawsuit.
Grace was already sedated on maximum doses of Precedex the morning before her death when she was given Lorazepam, which “can increase the risk of serious or life-threatening breathing problems … if used along with other sedative medications.”
Grace was finally administered 2 mg of morphine about 25 minutes after her last dose of Lorazepam, according to the timeline documented by her family. The package insert for morphine warns that using it in conjunction with other drugs she had been given “may result in profound sedation, respiratory depression, coma, and death.”
The family shared that as she “slipped into acute respiratory failure and Grace’s sister begged for help, instead of starting CPR immediately, the nurses refused,” since Grace’s doctor had unilaterally labeled her as a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR), despite lack of written consent from her family.
State law requires that a patient’s health care agent sign written consent for DNR status and that such patients must wear a DNR bracelet. Neither was carried out in Grace’s case.
“The first time we knew Grace was labeled DNR was when we were screaming for the nurses to do something and reverse the morphine given to Grace. Their response, ‘She’s DNR,’ was their excuse for not helping her,” Schara recounted to LifeSiteNews. “They stood outside her door instead.”
The lawsuit alleges that Grace died because of a “lethal cocktail of drugs” and a “fraudulent DNR order,” due to “negligence” and “non consensual treatment” from health care professionals.
Scott and Cindy Schara have since been fighting to get Grace’s cause of death listed as gross negligence and are now suing in the hopes of helping other families of deceased who have died “needless” deaths after being denied the right to informed consent.
“We are hopeful this lawsuit will pave the way for thousands of other hospital victims’ families to file similar claims,” said Scott Schara in a statement. “This is not a case about financial repercussions. It is a case about shining light on a subject hidden from the American people. It is about stopping the behaviors of medical staff that result in needless, premature deaths.”
Scott and Cindy Schara say that from the start, hospital staffers criticized the family’s rejection of the COVID-19 vaccines and their acceptance of early treatment protocols recommended by the group America’s Frontline Doctors.
The staff also had Scott removed from the hospital after he turned off the alarms in her room to help her sleep when staff repeatedly disregarded his requests to have the alarms only sound off at the nurse’s station, and initially refused to give Grace’s sister Jessica access to Grace’s room as her patient advocate.
Before going public, the family submitted a detailed summary of Grace’s story and supporting research to the hospital as well as “a request to meet with the CEO and the doctor involved,” according to the family, recognizing “their ethical and Biblical responsibility to give both of them the opportunity to discuss their perspectives. The hospital response was a refusal to meet.”
On December 19, the Scharas released an update via their newsletter detailing state authorities’ disinterest in getting to the bottom of the case. They say they requested that the Wisconsin Department of Safety & Professional Services (DSPS), Department of Health Services (DHS), and Department of Justice (DOJ) all investigate different aspects under their respective purviews, but none found wrongdoing.
A January 20, 2022, letter from DSPS claims that a “screening panel made up of members of the regulatory authority for the profession and/or a department attorney” had “conducted a thorough review of the treatment records” but “did not find a violation of minimal competency standards in the care rendered.”
“They are not interested in the uncovering of facts but are concerned about protecting doctors and hospitals,” Schara said of state officials. “When the investigative body is protecting the institutions they’re supposed to be investigating, there can be no justice. This is a system rife with conflicts of interest propagated by the government itself through its COVID bonuses and monetization program where hospitals are rewarded for COVID deaths.”
Grace herself was admitted to St. Elizabeth Hospital five days after testing positive for COVID-19.
“The system is corrupt from top to bottom,” Scott contends. “Patient care isn’t the priority of these medical institutions — profit is their priority.