Phoenix Childrens Hospital: We the undersigned are outraged by the egregious mistreatment of the Diegel family, and have grave concerns regarding your facilitys medical practices, in particular, your treatment, and lack thereof, for the young Diegel sisters, Kayla and Hannah Diegel, ages 10 and 12 respectively. Your actions have resulted in these young children being removed and denied access from their parents, and put under the states care where their medical and emotional needs are being seriously compromised and threatened. Your actions of accusing the mother of “medical abuse”, and reporting her to CPS for the same, put every potential patient of Phoenix Children’s Hospital at risk of becoming a ward of the state for the inalienable right of requesting a second opinion that differs from yours. You are, in effect, denying parents their most basic rights, i.e., to care for, love, and nurture their sick child, (EVEN VISIT THEM!), and you are violating Civil Rights irrefutably protected under the Constitution, from Parental rights to the denial of medical choice, access and advocacy. While the Diegels continue to be denied a second opinion, youve taken these young girls, at a critical time in their physical and emotional development, off of their feeding nutrition, denying the use of the very tubes your own specialists prescribed and ordered to be surgically implanted in them. This was done to enable each of them to absorb nutrition because their stomachs, again, determined by your own physicians, no longer function properly so that they receive adequate nutrition. The nuclear scans in the parents’ possession, ordered by the same physician, offer proof of this, and show that Kayla and Hannah each developed GI issues that required these feeding tubes. The girls are both losing weight. Kayla is at a dangerous, nearly 0 % body fat and has lost appropriately 25% of her body weight. Her sister has lost 17%. They both exhibit bruises on their bodies which could be the result of physical abuse while they are in foster care, or an extreme vitamin deficiency. Whichever the reason, neither is acceptable. These children are suffering physically, and emotionally with every passing day. That you could allow this to continue another moment is reprehensible. Your hospital took Hanah and Kayla two months after Justina Pelletier was kidnapped under similar circumstances in the state of Massachusetts. The world watched as one media outlet after another picked up on this outrageous case, and public outrage boiled to the point of massive rallies to FREE JUSTINA. Congressmen and women alike took notice of this atrocity and proposed a bill named after her, JUSTINAs LAW, to stop just this sort of abuse and malpractice. A hospital of your ilk should have been quick to take heed of what has happened in Justina’s case, the physical and emotional damage done to JUSTINA, and her family, and the public outrage, and stopped this abominable practice immediately. It should not take a law, or public outrage for hospitals to do what’s right, most especially since you are sworn to “Do No Harm”. What you are doing to the Diegel sisters goes to the heart of what hospitals have been doing and getting away with, and what Justinas case has shown to the world, MUST STOP. We demand the release of the Diegel sisters, and any other patients you have treated similarly, and that you retract your allegations of medical abuse from the state so that the children can go home to their loving family forthwith. No parent should not be allowed to seek a second, even third medical opinion, and care without the threat of losing parental rights as is now happening to the Diegels. We will petition Congress for their intervention in this matter since the proposed Justina’s Law might not be passed before you literally starve these young children, and deny them of any comfort of their loving family along the way. FREE THE DIEGEL SISTERS TODAY! Please show your support by typing your name, city, state and country in the comment windows below.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 20:04:18 +0000