Posted on 05/05/2005 12:01:28 PM PDT by kjvail
y mother’s doctor is refusing to give her antibiotics,” the caller told me in an urgent voice.
I asked why.
“He says that she’s ninety-two and an infection will kill her sooner or later, so it might as well be this infection.”
As disturbing as this call was, as outrageous the doctor’s behavior, I wasn’t particularly surprised. I have been receiving such desperate calls with increasing frequency for the last several years. Not every day. Not every week. But with sufficient regularity to know that something very frightening is happening to American medical ethics.
(Excerpt) Read more at newpantagruel.com ...
My mother is 91 and woe to anybody medical professional refusing her treatment.
Isn't this discrimination based on age?
Since when are doctors anotinting themselves w/the divine right of kings to decide when and how you die?
I'm upset.
I understand your bravado but rationally speaking what will you do about it? What can any of us do?
Stick guns in doctors faces?
That will get you arrested and then how can you help Mom from a jail cell?
Call the police?
What if they don't care, what if the law is on the doctor's side? We are already there.
What could the father of Terry Schivo do when you have 2 or 3 police in the room with you all the time for the sole purpose to preventing you from feeding your loved one?
You go in there guns blazing ?
When the police leave you bullet ridden corpse in the street what next? Now who takes care of Mom?
From the article:
"I believe that stories such as Christopher’s are symptoms of a disintegrating value system in health care, which defines the sickest and most disabled among us as having lives not worth living, which views expensive medical treatments for such people as a waste of valuable resources, and which accepts their demise as a legitimate solution to the difficulties caused by their serious illnesses and disabilities. "
I respectfully disagree - I think most doctors are so deathly afraid (no pun intended) of malpractice lawsuits they'll try to avoid a situation like this where they might end up getting sued.
IMO, it always comes down to lawyers.
Did the same thing to my great grandmother in the UK, she was 105+ (108 IIRC)years old
> Since when are doctors anotinting themselves w/the divine right of kings to decide when and how you die?
It's called "triage."
What's going on here is unfortunate but probably inevitable. Med tech has gotten to where *anybody* can be kept alive indefinitely... with enough money. This effectively devalues human life. I'm unsurprised that some doctors have ceased to care.
No.
"Triage is a system used by medical or emergency personnel to ration limited medical resources when the number of injured needing care exceeds the resources available to perform care so as to treat the greatest number of patients possible."
What these doctors are doing is deliberately withholding medicine to hasten death.
Now I know why I feel like I live in a different country from the one I was born in and grew up in. I do.
I don't know that I blame this totally on "bioethics" as much as the people who are driving out the "good" medical people with low reimbursement rates, too many regulations/paperwork, and the threat of lawsuits. No wonder the decent people are leaving medicine in droves! You get what you pay for!
As a nurse I cannot believe nurses would act like the article describes. The nurse is to be the advocate of the patient, no matter their condition, and letting a patient lie around with a fever that high, saying they can do nothing about it is reprehensible no matter the "doctors orders".
I agree. And I find it suspicious that the writer doesn't give any other information about the 92 year old. Had she been able to enjoy life up until the infection set in, so that one might reasonably expect she would continue to enjoy more life if the infection was fended off? Or was she in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, recognizing no one, and lying in a bed 24/7, incontinent and unable to feed herself? Big difference IMO.
Is it? So you support the utilitarian calculus of "quality of life"?
For your sake, I pray there won't be someone deciding whether or not your life is really worth living in the near future.
Medical facilities and personnel do not have unlimited resources, with which to pursue every possible treatment for every patient who has a small chance of benefitting. The stories in this article are cherry-picked. Reality is that nearly all patients who have a chance of benefitting from relatively inexpensive care (e.g. antibiotics, cooling a fever, etc.) get it. But when people need very expensive treatment, especially with a low chance of success, it simply has to be rationed. Unless, of course, they can pay for it out of pocket, in which case, I doubt they'd have any trouble getting it.
> I pray there won't be someone deciding whether or not your life is really worth living in the near future.
With limited resources and yet unlimitted capability, such decisions will *have* to become commonplace. At some point, everyone who doesn't die due to violence or illness will face old age... and as technology proceeds, the ravages of old age will become more and more a long-term thing that people are expected to live with. And unless there is a sudden Socialist shift, there simply will nto eb the resources to keep *all* the uber-elderly alive. Decisions will have to be made. There will come a time when the choice is between a dignified death, or half a century or more of living in a bed with Alzheimers or similar.
In my case, I fervently hope that someone DOES have the balls to make such decisions when I get to the drooling moron stage.
So who decides?
So you already admit that if your poor you're SOL? Just go die somewhere?
The question isn't whether or not they would "benefit" to go down that road is to concede the whole point - some lives are more valuable that others.
That's not a slippery slope, that's a bottomless pit.
> What these doctors are doing is deliberately withholding medicine to hasten death.
Which is something that is common on battlefields (where these things are taken to their extremes). Someones guts are blown out, all you can do is shoot 'em up with morphine. You *could* wrap them with bandages and lavish 'em with antibiotics, but they'd be wasted, and not available to the fella who *can* survive. So, you deliberate withhold medicine. It can hardly be said to hasten death... withholding meds is not the same as administering poison.
That said, the stories in the article seem to be suspiciously far afield. But the *general* concept is entirely understandable.
Do we have to be in 'soilent green mode' before you figure it out?
It is clear that there is an attitude in the medical community that certain people should not be allowed to live in their 'conditions'. And they are WITHHOLDING treatment and care, like....food. Which part of the WITHHOLDING TREATMENT don't you get?
First off I find that suspect to start with..
But secondly... why should a doctor prescribe a drug... maybe it is against his morals like them pharmies that wont give out certain drugs...
One can always find another doctor who isnt morally constrained so to speak...
just some thoughts.
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