06/07/2026
Independent Doctors Demand Texas Children's Hospital Give Annelise Camp Every Opportunity to Live
Two-year-old near-drowning patient puts Texas's Right to Try law directly to the test; IMA calls on hospital to stop pressuring parents toward life-ending decision
FULL STATEMENT: WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition representing more than 12,000 independent physicians, researchers, and clinicians, today issued an urgent statement demanding Texas Children's Hospital cease its pressure campaign against the parents of Annelise Camp, a two-year-old near-drowning patient currently fighting for her life, and honor the family's right to pursue every available avenue for their daughter's recovery.
Texas Children's Hospital has indicated it intends to pursue a brain death determination for Annelise, over the explicit objections of her parents, who are seeking access to alternative treatments and supportive care in accordance with the state's Right to Try law. The IMA is calling that effort premature, medically unsound given the patient's age and circumstance, and a direct violation of the principles that Texas's Right to Try legislation was designed to protect.
"Annelise must be given every opportunity to recover," said IMA Senior Fellow Dr. Kat Lindley, Director of the IMA Fellowship Program. "Texas Children's Hospital needs to remember its mission: to treat and care for every patient. The medical literature is clear that young children who have experienced near-drowning events can and do make remarkable, even extraordinary recoveries, recoveries that would have been impossible if families had been forced into premature end-of-life decisions. These parents are not in denial. They are doing what every parent would do: fighting for their child's life. Texas Children's Hospital must stand down from this pressure campaign and work with this family, not against them."
The Science Is on the Family's Side
The medical case for giving Annelise time is grounded in well-documented neurological science. Young brains possess extraordinary neuroplasticity: the capacity to rewire, compensate, and restore functions once thought permanently lost, even following prolonged oxygen deprivation. There are many documented cases of toddlers and young children who have regained consciousness, relearned to walk and speak, and gone on to live full lives after near-drowning events and extended coma.
Any decision to foreclose the possibility of recovery, over a family's explicit objection, and in a patient population where the science supports waiting, is not a medical determination, but rather a policy determination, and exactly the kind of action that Texas's Right to Try law was designed to prevent.
"Families must have the right to give their child every chance to fight back and recover," continued Dr. Lindley. "That is precisely why Texas passed its Right to Try law, so that parents facing the most devastating moments of their lives are not also being pushed toward irreversible decisions by institutional timelines that may have nothing to do with their child's prognosis. Texas Children's Hospital has an opportunity right now to lead with compassion, to work alongside this family, and to demonstrate that patient-centered care is more than a mission statement. We are urging them, in the strongest possible terms, to take it."
