Baby born to brain-dead woman dies
An infant born in the US last month to a severely brain-damaged mother whose plight touched hearts around the world has died, the family said today.
Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on August 2 after her mother was on life support for three months, died of heart failure yesterday after emergency surgery to repair a perforated intestine, a family statement said.
The infant’s condition had deteriorated rapidly over the weekend, according to the family. She died at Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington DC.
Cancer patient Susan Rollin Torres, a 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, suffered a stroke in May after the melanoma spread to her brain. She was kept alive on life support so she could deliver the child.
A spokeswoman at St Rita’s Church in Alexandria said parishioners were told of the child’s death during the morning Mass.
“After the efforts of this summer to bring her into the world, this is obviously a devastating loss for the Torres and Rollin families,” Justin Torres, the woman’s brother-in-law, said in the e-mailed statement. “We wish to thank all the people who sustained us in prayer over the past 17 weeks. It was our fondest wish that we could have been able to share Susan’s homecoming with the world.”
The pregnancy became a race between the foetus’ development and the cancer that was ravaging the woman’s body. Doctors at Virginia Hospital Centre in Arlington, where the baby was born, said that Torres’ health was deteriorating and that the risk of harm to the foetus finally outweighed the benefits of extending the pregnancy.
The mother died shortly after her daughter’s birth when she was taken off life support. The baby was about two months premature and weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces.
English-language medical literature contains at least 11 cases since 1979 of irreversibly brain-damaged women whose lives were prolonged for the benefit of the developing foetus, according to the University of Connecticut Health Centre.
Jason Torres had quit his job to be by his wife’s side, spending each night sleeping in a reclining chair next to her bed. The couple had one other child - 2-year-old Peter.
A website was set up to help raise money for the family’s mounting medical bills and people from around the world had sent in more than £300,000 (€445,000) as of early last month. Any excess money was to be donated to cancer research and to establish a college savings plan for the two children.
