Posted on 08/12/2008 8:05:23 AM PDT by Daniel T. Zanoza
Precautions and Alternatives
From the Editor: This is the second in a series of columns first posted on the Illinois Right to Life Committee's (IRLC) website [http://www.illinoisrighttolife.org/] written by Bill Beckman, IRLC's executive director. The RFFM.org re-posting of the column discusses how living wills can cancel out the wishes of patients and loved ones regarding end of life issues. Also, readers can learn how to seek out alternatives to living wills and find ways to ensure their end of life issues are respected and adhered to. Included are examples of how living wills have been used to disregard patients rights.
The following was written by Bill Beckman:
We knew the push for living wills based on the Terri Schiavo case would be dangerous to people who took the bait. Recently, some cases are coming to light that confirm our fears about the dangers of such documents. A living will has nothing to do with living, but everything to do with dying...
(Excerpt) Read more at rffm.typepad.com ...
Think I’ll take my chances with the living will. After all I know what my wishes are.
It comes as no surprise that they “legally” killed an alert man over the objections of his wife. Living Wills are a death sentence.
Did you read the whole article?
Don't do one. Your chances of being brought back go down to zero, and things they do to you in the hospital that hasten your bad circumstance hasten your death. And untrustworthy, greedy relatives are the ones who most want to enforce the will’s terms when circumstances really blur how, or even, if, it should be enforced.
They wind up not working as they are otherwise thought to work.
Pro-Life ping
The author makes a good point about “Living Will” as a document where Medical Power of Attorney is probably the better way to go. However:
>Is the artificial extension of life through modern technology really the issue? Then why is it that the issue is almost always feeding tubes and ventilators?
Why? Because if the quality of my life is basically that of a piece of meat lying on a bed getting pumped with nutrients and someone wiping me down every day, month after month, there is no way I want that. I also don’t want that for my family to endure. And guess what, many MANY people don’t want that either. Yes, I am Catholic. Sorry, but my husband knows this and God help the person that stands in the way of our wishes to have that situation ended.
That’s your choice but what about Hanford Pinette?
A “living will” is SUPPOSED to be an advanced directive.
As in the person says what is going to happen. Unfortunatly there are so many illiterates in the medical approval community (see insurance co.) that the mere existance of a living will is automatically assumed to be “just let the patient die.” (aka save on cost order)
Make a advanced directive that says you reject all “do not resusitate” assumptions.
> That’s your choice but what about Hanford Pinette?
I did say that the article made a good point re: Medical Power of Attorney being superior to Living Wills w/r/t the wishes of the patient and their families.
I was answering the rhetorical question the author posed about “why not organ transplants? why is it about feeding tubes and ventilators?” Because people don’t want to merely exist as a hunk of inert protoplasm sucking in nutrients and excreting as the only characteristics of being alive. That’s why. And until the RTL recognize this deep-down wish to not be a hunk of meat with no prospects other than ingesting and excreting, they will never win battles here. Okay?
I'll be appearing briefly this afternoon during the "Vocal Point" radio show on WAFG 90.3 FM in Florida, during a segment on end of life issues with fellow Christian lawyer Randy Singer. The show starts at 12:30 EDT, and I'm joining in at 1:50. The station streams live for anyone interested in listening on the web.
The fact is that Living Wills are a death sentence to anyone that signs one. It has little to do with “a hunk of inert protoplasm sucking in nutrients and excreting as the only characteristics of being alive” as you so indelicately put it.
You know, I read the article, and could not find anyplace in which Hanford Pinette himself suggested that the terms of the living will should not be carried out. And the article did mention that he could speak, was alert and cognizant of his surroundings. Odd that he never said to the docs that he did not want his living will carried out, doncha think? Why do you think that was?
also appoint a “healthcare surrogate” in the event of your incapcity. This will shut out those realatives who would benefit from your absence.
>The fact is that Living Wills are a death sentence to anyone that signs one. It has little to do with “a hunk of inert protoplasm sucking in nutrients and excreting as the only characteristics of being alive” as you so indelicately put it.
It has everything to do with the motivation about why someone would draw up such a document and sign it. People know it is possible to end up as a hunk of meat that has no way of communicating or being part of the world other than ingesting and getting wiped down, and there are MANY of us that view this prospect with the utmost horror and do NOT want that for themselves or their families to endure. Do you acknowledge that at least?
Fortunately my family don’t behave that way and never have. Frankly it’s sad that some families do.
Oh and by the way...
> as you so indelicately put it
Yes, I did put it indelicately. Because the prospect of becoming a zombie-thing with no way to interact with the world is like something out of a horror movie. Some dire medical issues are “icky” and if you get faced with them it isn’t like the hospital TV shows with the music and the pretty doctors and nurses. It’s blood and and pain and excrement and is realer than real. “Indelicate”? Oh brother.
It doesn’t address it either way. I imagine that speaking with a ventilator is next to impossible. It also states that he made his wife his named surrogate. The COURT removed that power and killed a man that had only suffered congestive heart failure. He wasn’t “a hunk of inert protoplasm sucking in nutrients and excreting as the only characteristics of being alive” as VictoryGal described. And THAT description is what is sending droves of people to sign Living Wills, NOT heart attacks.
The guy was awake and communicative. The Living Will was (or legally should have been) totally irrelevant. It should have been the patient's call. Instead the Living Will was "enforced" to end his life. Crazy and tragic stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.