Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments on State Law Giving Patients the Right to Choose Their Own Medical Treatment

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday concerning a case that has brought into question the purview of a statute giving patients the right to choose their own medical treatment.

“No health care may be given to you over your objection, and necessary health care may not be stopped or withheld if you object,” the statute says under 155.30: Power of attorney for health care instrument; form.

The debate began after John Zingsheim, who had been admitted for COVID-19 to Aurora Medical Center in Wisconsin in September 2021, had requested to be treated with ivermectin. The hospital declined, saying that ivermectin fell below its standard of care.

Ivermectin is an antiparasitic that is used in both humans and animals.

When there were increasing reports that people were using it successfully to treat COVID-19 throughout 2021, legacy media outlets slammed people who advocated for its use.

In 2021, CNN chastised podcaster Joe Rogan after Rogan said he had treated the virus with ivermectin, among other treatments, under counsel from his doctor.

The media outlet accused him of taking the form of ivermectin used as a de-wormer for horses.

At the time, Rolling Stone sourced a local media outlet that cited Oklahoma physician Jason McElyea who claimed that people overdosing on farm-grade ivermectin were causing emergency rooms to fill up, leaving no room for gunshot victims.

Rolling Stone updated its article after a spokesperson at Northeastern Health System Sequoyah—where McElyea said the overcrowding was taking place—said McElyea hadn’t worked at that location in over two months, and that the hospital hadn’t treated any patients experiencing complications from ivermectin.

According to an Epoch Times records request, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials were enthusiastic about a public response to a Twitter post the government agency tweeted about ivermectin.

In an attempt at humor, the post stated, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

The August 2021 post is now the center of a court case.

Despite this, physicians and patients like Dr. Leland Stillman and Nancy Orr praised its results in previous stories.

“I still prescribe it to patients because I don’t see any downsides, and there are tremendous upsides,” Stillman said. “What kind of doctor doesn’t prescribe a therapy that he knows is effective, with documented efficacy in the literature, and is safer than Tylenol?”

Hospital Appeals Circuit Court Decision

Zingsheim’s power of attorney and nephew, Allen Gahl, filed for injunctive relief in circuit court, which was granted, allowing for a physician of Zingsheim and Gahl’s choosing to administer the ivermectin.

Aurora appealed the decision, leading to the appeals court’s conclusion that the circuit court “erroneously exercised its discretion in granting Gahl’s requested relief.”

“The court failed to identify any viable claim upon which the temporary injunctive relief was granted, and as such, Gahl did not show a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits,” the appeals court concluded (pdf). “While the lack of viable claim is dispositive in and of itself, the court also failed to explain how granting Gahl’s requested relief was necessary to avoid irreparable harm—given that there was no legal authority to compel Aurora to provide treatment below the standard of care.”

Standard of Care

Karen Mueller, an attorney with Amos Center for Justice & Liberty who represents Gahl and Zingsheim, told The Epoch Times that Zingsheim had appointed Gahl his power of attorney before he was intubated in the hospital.

“The hospital had already determined that they were out of options and that there was nothing else to do but keep him on a ventilator,” Mueller said. “They had wanted to keep him on remdesivir, which the family had stopped because of the toxic side effects of it.”

A study found in the New England Journal of Medicine in which a safety board found it to be the least effective and deadliest drug in the trial before it was suspended after 53 percent of the Ebola patients in the trial who took the drug died.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has said it’s the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19.

Throughout the United States, there are several lawsuits alleging that hospitals administered remdesivir without informed consent, leading to injury and death.

Just as the circuit court had agreed to permit an outside doctor to administer ivermectin, Aurora appealed the case, Mueller said.

“Not only did they take the case, but they also stayed the order, which prevented Mr. Zingsheim from getting the drug that he needed,” Muller said. “The appellate court said that the statute was only informative and instructive, but that it did not have the rights that we believed it did.”

Mueller appealed the appeals court decision made in May 2022, which brought them before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Mueller said the hospital’s stance had been from the beginning that the courts have no authority to intervene in a situation where they contend that medical treatment falls below its standard of care.

“The problem is, their standard of care is arbitrary and capricious,” she said. “It’s these federally reimbursed COVID-19 protocols in which the hospital gets a 20 percent bonus over whatever the overall patient bill is.”

A think tank in Tennessee charted the COVID-19 federal relief funds that it alleged drove the controversial treatment protocols, which usually begin with the use of remdesivir.

The TN Liberty Network (TLN), an independent organization started by AJ DePriest and comprised of 28 researchers who live in Tennessee, has released several papers examining how lucrative payoffs from the federal government may have influenced previously trusted medical institutions to exchange their Hippocratic oath for a darker agenda.

“Over a million people are reported to have died from COVID in hospitals,” DePriest told The Epoch Times. “But they didn’t die from COVID; they died from the hospital protocols.”

In its most recent report: “Follow the Money: Blood Money in U.S. Healthcare Financial Incentives: The Use of ‘Covered Countermeasures,’” TLN examines how financial incentives have fueled hospital treatment protocols for COVID-19 that TLN said have done more harm than good.

The full report can be found here.

“We started looking at money coming in from the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act because that’s where we had been involved in advocating for people whose loved ones or themselves were being kidnapped and isolated in hospitals,” DePriest said. “We wanted to know why this was happening because we were seeing too many commonalities in all of the stories we were hearing.”

By mid-2022, numerous people had reported to The Epoch Times the deaths of family members in federally funded hospitals.

Based on her interviews, Mueller said the typical protocol is the use of remdesivir, keeping the patient isolated, having food and water withheld, and putting the patient on the ventilator until they pass.

“The protocols are the same throughout the country,” Mueller said.

‘The Rights Are Very Clear’

For the people of Wisconsin, Mueller said, the protocols, according to the appeals court, have taken precedence over the health care power of attorney statute, which grants people the right to not only refuse treatment they don’t agree with, but also grants them the right to have treatment such as ivermectin that has been withheld.

“Regarding the necessity, that would have to do with the safety of it and the circumstances under which the patient is in,” Mueller said. “In this situation, Mr. Zingsheim was out of options, so it made perfect sense to try a drug with a better safety record than remedesivir that may have actually been able to help him.”

Today, Zingsheim is out of the hospital after his 10-month stay and is well, Mueller said.

For Mueller, the case is no longer about just him but an ongoing issue in Wisconsin, she said, and throughout the country.

“If there are other people that have these health care power of attorneys, then they need to look at what rights were given to them by the legislature,” Muller said.

Because the legislature enacted the statute into law, Mueller said, its rights given to the citizens shouldn’t be cast aside as “informative and instructive.”

“What I told the court yesterday is that you don’t have to decide which drug is appropriate for Mr. Zingsheim,” she said. “The issue is whether that statute carries the force of law. The legislature enacted it. The rights are very clear.”

The Epoch Times contacted Aurora Health Care’s attorney for comment.

In response, Aurora Health Care gave this statement:

“As always, the health and safety of our patients is our top priority. In keeping with legal and ethical obligations, our physicians rely on evidence-based treatments. We strongly believe that courts should not be allowed to compel providers to administer care that is medically substandard, and we are pleased that the American Medical Association and the Wisconsin Medical Board have weighed in to support our position.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.