Dr. Oertle joins Brenda Aikin on The Morning Blend to discuss why protecting the preterm viability of our most vulnerable humans is incredibly important but often taken for granted.

Brenda Aikin (00:00:

In many hospitals and medical facilities today, a non-scientific assessment of fetal viability is being used to withhold critical care. And there are hospitals and practitioners across the country who lack apparently the basic willingness to intervene with life-saving medical technology to help extremely preterm newborns and those diagnosed with disabilities. Well, one person who is shedding light on this is Dr. John Oertle. He is the Chief of Medical Officer at Solidarity HealthShare. Dr. Oertle is joining me today to shed light on what is happening. Good morning, Dr. Oertle. Thank you so much for joining us on The Morning Blend.

Dr. John Oertle (00:45):

Good morning, Brenda. Happy to be here.

Brenda Aikin (00:47):

I’m very excited to have an opportunity to talk with you, you course, as part of the team there at Solidarity HealthShare. Tell our listeners a little bit about your role there.

Dr. John Oertle (00:59):

Great. Yeah, so I’ve been with Solidarity ever since we began. I’m one of the co-founders along with Chris Faddis and Brad Hahn. That was the Holy Spirit actually bore Solidarity into existence and a number of years ago, and we’ve been going ever since. But I’m the Chief Medical Officer of Solidarity and where we are able to share into one another’s medical healthcare bills. And so many of the things that we do at Solidarity are sharing into really restoring the doctor patient relationship and really being able to support life supportive medical treatments and decision making for physicians, which unfortunately we do see is all more lacking is this day and age in our medical healthcare system. And so insurance has a lot to do with this, but also just the cultural views and this culture of death, I believe also has just infiltrated its way into a lot of our actual healthcare institutions and what the difficulty of patients who are very vulnerable, especially the vulnerable who are being discriminated against to be able to actually receive good healthcare, good, authentic lifesaving healthcare.

Brenda Aikin (02:16:

We know that through Solidarity, it is a Catholic base and so they never go against the morals of the Catholic teaching. Dr. Oertle, Chris Faddis and I often have this discussion about how treatments are being offered to patients that go against our Catholic teachings, and sometimes patients don’t even know or understand. Have you found that in your role as Chief Medical Officer? I think that especially here in the scientific and hospital medical communities that we like to be proud of the technology advancements. So quickly moving forward these days, are you finding that more and more treatments are being offered or suggested to your members that do go against our Catholic faith?

Dr. John Oertle (03:01):

Yeah, so one of the things that I like to bring about, I mean I love technology when technology is able to serve the human person well. And one of the things that we’ve seen, and I practice medicine as well, and I use advanced technologies to help really again, save lives. And it can be really beautiful as far as this goes when you use technology as a service of the human person. But one of the things that you oftentimes see when you have this cultural purview of culture, of death, purview, I mean even something as simple as I think many times people have understood if you’re pregnant with a baby and you have technology now that you can run blood work from the mom and know exactly the genetic makeup of the child that’s growing inside of you at the very earliest when you know that you’re pregnant, you can run this test and know the full genetic makeup of the child.

(03:54):

And this is something, again, it’s beautiful technology. It’s amazing technology to be able to actually have better information. But one of the concerns that I have is that this is being right now used as a weapon against the unborn because when moms, and many times they don’t know, but when they’re getting genetic workup of their child, then they’re being forced. If there’s a genetic abnormality, oftentimes they’re being then recommended or pursuit to be able to actually get an abortion or they’re being limited the kind of medical care that would be something that would be something easy to do or something that’s within the guidelines for somebody that doesn’t have a genetic abnormality. And so we want to be very cautious about this. This is something that, again, I love technology, but when it becomes weaponized to be able to really injure and discriminate about those that are again, most vulnerable, it becomes very problematic. And so being able to raise education on this, being able to understand we do genetic testing even within the actual- when a mom is still pregnant, but we also want to make sure our members are aware of these issues that they may face if anything is found as a result of that actual genetic testing.

Brenda Aikin (05:16):

Dr. John Oertle is joining me today. He is the Chief Medical Officer at Solidarity HealthShare joining me today to talk about the use of technology, but also the ways to use that to uphold the inherent human dignity that all of us hold. Well, Dr. Oertle, I spoke about in the beginning of our interview this non-scientific assessment. This information came right from an article that you recently had published. So I’d love to talk more about this, about this non-scientific assessment of fetal viability. What are those assessments that they’re using now that is not based in science?

Dr. John Oertle (05:58):

Yes. Let me go a little deeper into that subject because this is where, so my story, actually, my wife a couple of years ago had a preterm water break. Her water broke at 26 weeks pregnant. And so I lived this with my own son and it was difficult, it was challenging, and by the grace of God, we were able to actually have our son be born. We spent a lot of time in the hospital, but he ended up surviving and is now he’s two and a half and he’s thriving. And we had the prayers and supports and the hospital bills shared by Solidarity HealthShare members. It was a beautiful thing, difficult, but what it did is it started to cause me, so I’m a researcher by nature. I love research. I love being able to dive into the actual research of staying abreast of what is the latest in technology and that the latest in the data scientifically.

(06:50):

And what I started going into was that when you actually see, so when children are being threatened to be born at around 24 weeks gestation, this is what I call the edge of viability, is where you have these policies where if you’re born before 24 weeks, many times hospitals are unwilling to even give you lifesaving parameters. And there’s been a lot of advancement in lifesaving parameters for children that are born in this early time of gestation of pregnancy. And so when you are in this edge of viability, as I call it, again, if you make it to that 24 weeks, it’s challenging, but you very well be made again, given these lifesaving options. One of those are steroids to the mom before the baby’s born, so you can actually increase the development and survivability of these babies. But if you are before that 24 weeks, then many hospitals don’t actually provide these lifesaving options.

(07:55):

They don’t even let mom and dads know that those options even exist. And so it really goes against our informed consent. But what the data shows, there was an amazing article published in pediatrics in 2019 that actually showed that if you treated those kiddos that were born at 23 weeks gestation, so just 23 weeks into pregnancy with these lifesaving efforts, steroids, and just given them basic lifesaving support that even children born at 25 weeks would be receiving, that 70% of them actually survived. 70%. And so I love this statistic because if you don’t treat those kids, then they’ll all die.

Brenda Aikin (08:40):

Dr. Oertle, I have loved our conversation so much that there is a lot of information here, things that I want to ask you about, but I am already coming up against my break. Can you stay with me through the break so we can continue in our next half hour?

Dr. John Oertle (08:53):

I sure can. Absolutely.

Brenda Aikin (08:58):

And I am back with Dr. John Oertle He is the Chief Medical Officer at Solidarity HealthShare. He is joining us today because we’re talking about the viability of the most vulnerable and in the ways in which he advocates for their members at solidarity and how through his own life experiences, recognized ways to uphold the inherent dignity of every human, especially the most vulnerable in the wombs of their mothers. Dr. Oertle thank you so much for staying with me today.

Dr. John Oertle (09:30):

Oh, it’s my pleasure.

Brenda Aikin (09:32):

Dr. Oertle. In our first half hour, you spoke so incredibly beautifully and how bravely you and your wife fought for care for your preterm birth of your son, and you gave some statistics about that. So how do those statistics relate to the care that adults receive when they are in a critical situation?

Dr. John Oertle (09:52):

It’s similar to if you’re an adult and you are needing a coronary artery bypass, meaning that the vessels of the heart are blocked enough that if you don’t get a surgery to be able to actually create different avenues of those blood vessels to be able to get around, to be able to perfuse the heart with oxygen, then if you don’t treat, then you will 100% die from a heart attack or 99.9% outside of a miraculous miracle. And this is where the same is happening. But even if your hospital doesn’t provide that treatment, many times adults will be traveling or go to a hospital or a cardiothoracic surgeon that will perform that What’s happening in these children at the 4 24 weeks is saying there’s no option and we won’t treat. And so as a result of that, we hundred percent or at least 99.9% of ’em are passing away, whereas if you do treat, 70% of ’em are shown, or at least in this study that was performed in 2019, 70% will survive.

(11:52):

Now, you also have people in the medical field that say, well, it’s very expensive, it’s very costly, and the 70% that survive will have long-term complications. Right. They talk about how, again, one, this is a misnomer that somehow having disabilities or complications somehow negates your ability to be able to receive lifesaving treatment, which I think that’s a faulty argument. But this is where too, when you actually look at the data, 64% of those children that survive, so the 70% that survive, 64% of ’em actually had minimal to no neurological symptoms when they reached two years old. And so this for me too, is it’s not about not living life without complications. It’s about the fight and the dignity of the human life that’s valuable even if they have disabilities or complications. But it just goes to show you that in the actual ability to be able to even fight for these kiddos, and it’s challenging, it’s difficult.

(12:04):

I’ve had firsthand experience with that, but it’s worth it to be able to actually have those options being presented by your medical institution. It’s really fascinating too because I’ve talked to many Catholics after my son was born, I’ve become a bit of an expert in this field of neonatology and have Catholic neonatologists, which I am able to bounce these ideas from. But I’ve had a lot of Catholic doctors, even Catholic OBGYNs, who are a part of, say for instance, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists or acog, and many times they just don’t even know this research exists. They don’t understand it, and they’re hoping, they assume that acog, that the obstetricians at these hospitals are doing the right thing by their patients. And until then, I start to get involved and start to educate. The parents start to educate the doctors again. Many times they feel a fit, they feel very vulnerable.

(13:09):

They’re feeling like they want to fight for their children, but they’re not being provided that opportunity or they feel like they’re somehow being viewed as far as being a monster for even recommending or wanting to try. And so this is where I just, I want to raise education and raise awareness, and I think it’s just one of these areas where I want people to know that options exist and that if you want to fight and go through that, and you’re absolutely not crazy if you do that again, that you have that ability to be able to find your resources and find the doctors and that go through the data to make sure you’re making the decisions for your children, especially when there’s a life of the child is in threatened, is being threatened by not having those options or by maybe physicians that just don’t know and that you’re in a difficult place and you’re getting bad counsel. I hope that makes sense.

Brenda Aikin (14:02):

Oh, that was so much information, and for our listeners, you can definitely go back and listen to this again because I realize that is a lot of very, very important information and it might take you a listener or two to try to discern. Dr. John Oertle is joining us today from Solidarity HealthShare. He is the Chief Medical Officer. Well, in your view, Dr. Oertle, it sounds like especially when we’re talking about pregnant mothers and especially the children that they are carrying in utero that their healthcare, meaning that what doctors are willing to do in a crisis situation, that we’re going to take on this cultural view that it’s going to be difficult for them. It’ll be a burden on the parents rather than this child has inherent dignity as a human being. It almost sounds like the way that you talk about a person who is suffering from a heart attack, every measure is going to be taken to save their lives, but somehow because they’re so much smaller that they aren’t warranted the same kind of drastic care in order to save their life.

Dr. John Oertle (15:14):

Yeah, it’s a double standard. It’s a double standard that’s going on with human persons just because they’re unborn or because they’re vulnerable populations they’re being discriminated against. And so yeah, certainly this is the case. And what’s so interesting too is that just because mom and dad want to fight for the life of that child, they sometimes become almost villainized in the hospital or feeling like they’re somehow making bad decisions. And I actually want to be able to affirm the parents who’ve been in a situation or a caregiver who’s fighting for the life of somebody who’s sick or debilitated or has some type of challenging medical diagnosis. I actually really affirm being able to fight for the dignity of this life, being able to actually not feel like you’re just taking the status quo, which is oftentimes that this view that is infiltrated by the culture of death, but really being able to seek the Lord, seek the Holy Spirit and be able to really fight for the life and the dignity of the actual person in which you’re fighting for. You just don’t hear this very often. So I definitely want to just affirm anybody that’s in that situation as a caregiver or anybody that’s caring for somebody that’s in a vulnerable population, you are not crazy for wanting the best treatment available for your child or for your again loved one in which you’re caring for

Brenda Aikin (16:47):

Dr. Oertle, this seems like such a big issue, especially for the medical community, for those of us who sit in the pews on Sunday and pray and support pro-life activities and programs within our communities, what is our role? Because some of us might go, look, this is bigger than me. It is beyond my understanding, so I’m going to let somebody else take care of it. But that’s probably not the best route. We all have responsibilities in this. From your viewpoint, what can all of us do to help support parents in these situations and help to make change in the system that doesn’t want to hear our Catholic viewpoint?

Dr. John Oertle (17:33):

Yeah, I think it is a challenge and because this, I like to coin the term the Insurance medical complex, is that we’ve got this big grip on this cultural pervasive view of this culture of death view and just treat the body as a pure mechanistic view. So find doctors that are able to be aligned with pro-life causes, being able to actually be aligned, find organizations like Solidarity HealthShare. There’s a couple other organizations. APLOG, the American Association of Pro-Life, obstetricians and Gynecologists, which I’m a part of that helps to be able to educate individuals and educate doctors, and specifically OB-GYNs on Pro-Life Medicine, being able to support organizations like the American College of Pediatrics. This is acps. They are very pro-life in a very pro-life group of pediatricians, which again, the neonatologists or the specialists that belong to that group that are neonatologists are the kind of specialty of doctor that treats the very premature infants in the hospital.

(18:50):

And so these are organizations that you want to be able to make yourself aware of. And then if you hear of anything going on, being able to get the right people involved, because this is where it’s so interesting, is that if you know that the Holy Spirit is moving and wanting to be able to actually fight for life, just don’t lay down. That’s the thing is that stay firm about our pro-life stance options exist. There’s good people out there. There are good things happening all across the country to be able to make sure that people are, that we will not back down and we will continue to fight for what is right and just for these children and the vulnerable in our populations. And so there’s good people out there doing some amazing work and great things. So I just want to be able to encourage your listeners to be able to not be discouraged, keep your eyes and ears open, and if you come across these injustices, find people that are educated in the work to be able to support you and support the people that you’re going through so that options exist, and the Lord will make a way when there’s no way there will be a way, and it’s your listeners, the hands and feet and the eyes and the ears and the mouth of Christ.

(20:06):

And so this is where we have to do this together. I’m here to be able to support our members at Solidarity Healthcare and support, again, people who are in these situations, but we all need to become aware and make sure that we respond when we’re called to respond. That’s just a part of being a mature Christian, a mature human being. Again, when the Holy Spirit is calling, please get involved. Don’t back down. You’re not wrong. To be able to fight for the dignity in life of each human person,

Brenda Aikin (20:35):

I love that we are not wrong, and with God on our side, we shall be successful and we will overcome this culture of death. Dr. Oertle, thank you so much for your time today. It has just been such a powerful conversation. We appreciate your time today and all that you do there at Solidarity HealthShare.

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Solidarity HealthShare is a non-profit healthcare sharing ministry rooted in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Established in 2016, we operate on the Catholic principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, in accordance with the Church’s commitment to promoting life-affirming, faith-based healthcare.

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