-Contact your State Representative and State Senator and tell them to repeal the law (Section 166.046, Health and Safety Code) that allows a hospital to take Chris's life.

-Chris is one of hundreds of patients victimized by the Texas Advance Directives Act, a draconian law that puts Life and death decisions in the hands of hospital administrators.  Chris is the face of countless Texans who are victims of a law that benefits hospitals and physicians, who adopt anti-Life “quality-of-life” ethics that hurt patients and their families. 

-Political games have thwarted efforts to reform TADA in the past.  As Chris's story shows, the political games must end.  This draconian law puts vulnerable hospital patients at risk.  

–Contact your Representative and Senator to tell them that enough is enough.  In the next legislative session, we must repeal the law (Section 166.046, Health and Safety Code) that allows a hospital to take Chris's life. 

American hero fights for his life:

In November, Methodist Hospital delivered a letter to the mother of David Christopher Dunn, “Chris,” confirming plans to remove and withdraw medical treatment at the end of ten days.  Because Chris is intermittently conscious due to sedation, his mother is acting as his Medical Power of Attorney.  However, Methodist has invoked the statutory process found in the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA-Chapter 166.046 of the Health & Safety Code), which allows the hospital to override medical directives of a patient and provide only ten days’ notice before withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.   Dunn’s only recourse is to find another facility that will offer him an ICU bed – a daunting task on a rushed time frame for anyone, but even more so for patients without insurance such as Chris. 

Chris is an American hero, who has served his community and the nation as an EMT, a police dispatcher, a Harris County Sheriff, and a Homeland Security employee.  Chris even fought Somali pirates as part of a security team.  Rather than protecting Chris’s Right to Life, the state of Texas is rewarding his lifetime of selfless service by relinquishing him to a hospital panel who have judged his quality of life too low to merit continued treatment.

Tragically, this is the way countless Texans have lived out their final days since 1999, when TADA unconstitutionally bestowed on healthcare facilities authority over Life and death.  Doctors who decide their patients’ cases are “futile” – regardless of their motive or reasons for doing so – hold the power to remove patients from medical treatment or to issue a Do-Not-Resuscitate order on the patient, even if such action is against the expressed wishes of the patient or his surrogate.  If the patient or his surrogate cannot find a transfer facility willing to take the patient within that ten-day period, there is no appellate process for the decision of the hospital panel.  In other words, hospital panels have the right to decide which medically vulnerable Texans live and die. 

Texas Right to Life is assisting Chris’s family in navigating this legal labyrinth to ensure that he continues to receive care. 

Media outlets in Houston and around the country are reporting on Chris' fight to live.