8mm
Posted on 08/08/2007 4:09:44 PM PDT by wagglebee
However, the efforts of hundreds of activists, including families whose ailing loved ones were victims of the law and the attorneys and doctors who offered benevolent services to the patients, were not in vain. The statewide and national awareness provoked by this battle will not be forgotten by Texas legislators and the citizens they represent. The end of life euthanasia war has only just begun.
Currently, Texas law allows for a physician to withdraw life-sustaining treatment (including food and water) from a patient despite the patient's advance directive or expressed wishes.
Once the physician's decision is approved by the ethics committee at the hospital, the patient and/or family have only ten days to transfer to another facility or another physician. The physician or facility is not obligated to treat the patient beyond the tenth day, which can and has led to the death of the patient. Rarely are transfers effectuated either by the family or the facility within the ten-day allotment.
Senate Bill 439 and House Bill 1094 would have changed the law so that a patient and the family are given sufficient time to locate a transfer during which time the patient would continue receiving life-sustaining medical treatment until a transfer is completed, thereby safeguarding against involuntary euthanasia. Eleven other states require that a patient be treated until he is transferred elsewhere, and Texas should have been the twelfth state to enact such patient protections.
On April 12, the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services heard testimony on Senate Bill 439—Texas Right to Life’s proposed changes to the current Texas Futile Care law. Senator Robert Deuell, M.D., (R-Greenville), the bill's sponsor, explained that most physicians practice good medicine and communicate effectively with patients and their families.
He emphasized that this law only comes into play when there is a disagreement, and in those situations, the current law does not serve families well. The Senate committee then heard from concerned citizens and organizations, including nurses, doctors, disability rights groups, and Right to Life groups.
Many of the families affected by this ten-day law courageously recounted their experiences in battling against the ten-day clock. They discussed how they were shocked and dismayed that the people entrusted to care for their ailing loved ones would soon be the ones to pull the plug against the will of patients and families if a transfer was not found.
Catarina Gonzalez, mother of 18-month old Emilio who at the time was languishing in an Austin hospital, took time away from Emilio’s bedside to address the committee. She dramatically and tearfully shared that she knew her precious son was dying, but she thought he should die when God called him home, not when an ethics committee rendered Emilio’s life as value-less. (Emilio died on May 20.)
More families echoed her sentiments. Lanore Dixon, sister of Andrea Clark, told how her family should have been spending more time with Andrea during the last days of her life instead of fighting lawyers and ethics committees.
Due to the unjust balance of power conferred upon hospital ethics committees to make these life and death treatment decisions, even the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union spoke in favor of SB 439. Will Harrell, Esq., director of ACLU Texas, stressed that patients are stripped of their due process rights and civil liberties when ethics committees make quality of life judgments and decide the fate of patients in the board rooms of hospitals.
Houston attorney, Robert Painter, played a shocking voicemail message left by a hospital administrator for the family of a patient. While Mr. Painter courteously omitted the name of the administrator and the name of the facility, the recording illustrated the quality of life mindset that has infiltrated some of these facilities.
The administrator pressured the family to agree with the hospital and let “your Daddy pass.” More shocking was this: “If we don’t hear from you by Monday, we're gonna make him hospice so he can go ‘head onto Glory,” threatening the family about the facility proceeding without their consent.
Needless to say, Mr. Painter’s testimony as an attorney who has helped several families through this process was quite compelling. (The patient who was the subject of the voicemail message was slated to be withdrawn from treatment and “made hospice” in January of this year, but was transferred to a skilled nursing facility where he is stable and receiving dialysis.)
On the House side, the Public Health Committee heard all the bills on advance directives on April 25th. The antagonistic tone of this hearing was dramatically different than the cordial tone set by Senator Deuell in the Senate committee.
The chair of House Public Health, Dianne Delisi (R-Temple) presented her own bill on advance directives and end of life care. While her bill, House Bill 3474, would have lengthened the ten days to twenty-one days, other provisions in her bill actually undermined what little protections for patients currently exist in the law.
The testimony on HB 3474 and the other bills on advance directives lasted until 5:11am. Attorney Jerri Ward, Texas Right to Life’s 2006 Pro-Life Attorney of the Year Award recipient, and other attorneys who have helped many families navigate the ten-day transfer process buttressed the ACLU’s concerns about patients being robbed of their due process, not to mention the errors in medical judgment that can occur.
Chairman Delisi would not allow the attorney to play the “Send him onto Glory” voicemail message in her committee. (The recorded voicemail message is posted at http://www.texasrighttolife.com).
Some opponents to the Hughes bill argued by describing treatments that can be painful to patients and told of families insisting that doctors continue painful treatments that will not benefit their loved ones.
However, Burke Balch, JD, Director of the Robert Powell Center for Ethics (and our colleague from National Right to Life), reminded the committee that appropriate palliative care could resolve nearly all pain and suffering issues and also clarified that this bill does not include a requirement for futile treatment—treatment that is providing no medical benefit to the patient, but rather, HB 1094 would require treatment that is sustaining the life of the patient. He further explained medical groups in the states in which “treatment pending transfer” laws are in place have not complained that they cannot work within the law.
Kristina Harrison, mother of six-year old Klemente, told how doctors tried to pressure her three years ago into withdrawing treatment from Klemente, now disabled and in a wheelchair. Klemente was the star of the hearing and would not have stolen the show if his mother yielded to the pressure of the hospital.
LaCretia Webster stated that the only reason she still flies her Texas flag, despite Texas letting her down with our futile care law, is because her father and brother are military servicemen. Her mother, Ruthie, was transferred to a facility in Chicago after a Dallas area doctor personally intervened to thwart two confirmed transfers within the state. She now must travel from Texarkana to Chicago twice a month to visit her best friend, her mother.
Even though Senate Bill 439 had the support of the majority of the Senate committee members as it was written, the committee decided to vote out a substitute for SB 439—a substitute identical to the unacceptable Delisi bill in the House. Unfortunately, this substitute included six elements that rendered the bill even worse than current law while giving the family only an additional 11 days to find a transfer.
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst intervened and oversaw negotiations. He offered his own office for negotiations with the stakeholders, including Texas Right to Life, disability rights advocates, and the medical and hospital associations.
To his credit, Dewhurst would not allow the bill to come to the Senate Floor until the problems were remedied. Because of his assistance, SB 439 emerged from his office and then from the Senate Floor in a clean, acceptable form, albeit not close to the original strength of SB 439. Regrettably, when the bill reached the Public Health Committee in the House, the negotiated agreement masterfully orchestrated by Dewhurst was disregarded, and harmful amendments were added. Nonetheless, SB 439 emerged and was placed on the House Calendar, where it died on the last day of eligibility due to its low placement on the schedule.
HB 1094/SB 439 did not die due to a lack of support. In the House 77 out of 150 members co-authored the bill signifying their commitment to vote for the issue, and about a dozen more members firmly committed to support the measure while choosing not to co-author. Twenty of these House co-authors were Democrats who took active leadership, demonstrating the most bi-partisan effort in the history of Pro-Life bills in Texas. Likewise, 11 of 30 Senators co-authored SB 439 (2 Democrats and 9 Republicans).
Texas Right to Life hopes that such established support coupled with a new awareness of the issue will lay the foundation for a victory in the near future. As we continue to help families in the interim who are victims of this law, we will be reminded of the importance of our perseverance in this battle. And we pray that no one else will be the victim of this state-sanctioned, draconian involuntary euthanasia process.
Amen.
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“this state-sanctioned, draconian involuntary euthanasia process.”
Not quite. The family members have the option of moving their loved one home, and taking care of them as they see fit with whatever resources they can bring to bear from their own means, or voluntary assistance from their churches and extended community. What they are apparently demanding, however, is a right to have others take care of their loved ones indefinitely at state (or someone else’s) expense. There is no such right.
This law has NOTHING to do with a patient's ability to pay for medical care, you don't know what you're talking about. This is about whether or not a hospital to decide that further treatment is "futile" and to refuse to treat the patient, regardless of the wishes of the patient, their family or their ability to pay for treatment.
‘This is about whether or not a hospital to decide that further treatment is “futile” and to refuse to treat the patient, regardless of the wishes of the patient, their family or their ability to pay for treatment.’
Physicians should not be required to perform abortions, nor any other procedure. Similarly for hospitals or other care providers.
If the patient and their family disagree with their current providers prognosis, the appropriate remedy is to find new providers who agree with their views or, absent that, provide the treatment themselves.
So now you are equating life-saving procedures with abortion? Most states allow doctors to refuse to perform abortion, sterilization and a few other procedures on moral or religious grounds. However, the hallmark of medicine, going back to Hippocrates, is that doctors do not refuse to give life-saving care.
“So now you are equating life-saving procedures with abortion? “
Whether a procedure is life-saving or not is frequently a matter of opinion. What I am saying is that neither your opinion nor mine should legally trump a particular care provider’s opinion. They may be wrong. You may be wrong. If you think they are wrong, you can either provide treatment yourself (or with help of extended family, volunteers in your community) or engage the assistance of other care providers who are in accord with your views.
You replied:
Whether a procedure is life-saving or not is frequently a matter of opinion.
LMAO!
You think that whether or not an abortion is a life-saving procedure is open to "opinion"?
.
What an absolute nightmare of a statute. I am at a complete loss how any prospective patient, regardless of their personal wishes, could support this HMO chief financial officer's fantasy. Time to steer clear of Texas!
Prayers said.
I was there, in the Lieutenant Governor’s office and in other meetings of interested parties for the last 2 years.
Odd, this article doesn’t say anything about the bills that included expanded time between the initiation of the process and after the ethics committee decision - about a month all told. Where’s the mention of the wording that would have prevented food and water from being a medical treatment - offered as an unexpected compromise by people who had opposed the same in the past. There’s no mention the only time any one has ever pulled the “plug” in the 10 days’ time was when there was no next of kin or no objection from the kin.
TRTL is demanding that the law be changed to “treatment until transfer.” The lawyers involved seem most bothered by the legal protections in the Texas Advance Directive Act and pushed a Bill that deliberately removed legal protection that is in the current law - which also protects me if I refuse to “pull the plug.”
While the lawyers would like to be able to sue the doctors, the real goal is to make sure that *I* and doctors like me are forced to indefinitely violate our consciences.
They would change the law to force me to write orders causing numbers of other people to do what I know is wrong - have me learn to follow orders and go against my conscience and medical judgment - first, here and in abortions, etc. - then when the State needs to cut money or when there’s not enough ventilators or vaccines.
And *that* is why the ACLU joined them.
The next “big” bioethics and public health ethics theme is rationing of care and determining who gets care in times of epidemics and other shortages. The goal is to remove the physician’s medical judgment and conscience in order to give the powers that be (PTB) the right to pick and choose. Next, we’ll hear about necessary regulations or statute to enable bean counters or lawmakers to force docs to act by the “consensus.”
There comes a time when what I have to offer can’t heal, and is known to cause cells and tissues to be injured in a person who is dying and who would already be dead if I hadn’t been interfering. The most obvious example is when a family insists on CPR for a person with ribs brittle from age.
In the case of the little boy mentioned in this article, the ventilator pressures were injuring the lungs. The baby’s lungs had “leaks” or collapsed several times.
They say that I am not to be trusted to determine when the technology and medications that I have to offer are causing harm without hope for healing - that I can’t say when more cells are dying due to my treatments than are helped to continue to live and divide and function.
And yet, they want to force me to determine how much potassium to put in the IV and how high to set the pressures on the ventilator, to put in new IV’s when the old one fail or become infected - or surgically implant more permanent tubes and devices. And to do it indefinitely - except when the PTB say I shouldn’t, of course.
Does this make sense?
See my post 14. We had this fixed in the Delissi/Duell bill.
What about the family insisting on ventilator support, over and over, for a patient whose lungs are eaten up with cancer, causing the need for multiple chest tubes?
How about a mother who believes the Sun is her child’s father,and insists on ICU ventilator support even though the child’s genetic disease prevents his bones from growing?
How about the family that insists on keeping the patient on a ventilator, dialysis, medicines to keep the blood pressure up as it also closes off blood vessels in the fingertips, toes, and is part of the reason that dialysis is needed?
How about the family that insists on ventilator and dialysis in the ICU rather than Medicare-funded home care (with ventilator and dialysis) for a comatose patient when the daughter is an ER doc in the same town?
Or the family who refuses to transfer their mom to the state that the daughters live in - because they want mom in the hospital, rather than a nursing home?
Or the patient with multiple complications due to HIV who demands blood transfusion after blood transfusion more and more often, when his bone marrow fails?
You have a point, but those surely are bizarre and extremely unusual situations. Even if they are not, they cannot be equated with depriving an otherwise viable patient of food and water, which really is nothing other than murder.
I wonder if we really have different issues trying to be addressed - one is a question of euthansia, which is always wrong, being murder; and the other is to what extent are ultra-exceptional methods justified for someone who would otherwise naturally die?
Deprive someone of water? Like the Terry Schiavo case, clearly murder.
Removing a dialysis machine? That’s harder to say, I don’t presume to know the answer, just making the distinction.
Texas info.
Who is OPPOSING this change?
Hospital administrators? Or the democratic we-demand-all-babies-die party? (Since it is promoted by the Right to Life groups)
I am standing in for T’wit, R.I.P on this issue. I won’t be arguing details as T’wit would have and will not answer anecdotal details by those of more precise vocabulary, but will regard such topics as truly ancillary, diversionary.
From the day Wampus SC brought the Texas Futile Care Law into the daylight with his first defense of Andrea Clark, we have seen a truth shine through, not yet to be refuted.
The Texas Futile Care Law was designed, we suppose, to serve the practical purpose of withdrawing useless, needless, or futile care from a patient when it no longer served any purpose. This ideal sounds so decent, it is hard to refute.
But.... the interpretation shifted. What we see is that authorities have shifted definitions. It is now interpreted not the care that is futile, but is the LIFE of the patient which is futile.
That is the core of my concern, that beneath all other brilliant explanations geared to distort the true aim of Pro-Lifers, the result is of this life cheapened in furtherance of the goals of the euthanasiasts. Hence, the resistance we see in Texas to reasoned change.
8mm
The Act has never been used to withhold or withdraw food and water - and food and water by mouth, as in Terri’s case, doesn’t come under the law.
It’s only been invoked on those cases that I laid out in my last post. The purpose of the ethics committee is to review the decision of the doctor to go against the family’s wishes.
Unfortunately, the problem is that some of the people mentioned in the original article believe that life should be sustained as long as possible, whatever it takes, and at all costs. I even heard arguments that the patient’s suffering has religious value and that I should inflict suffering on unconscious patients if the family demands it.
Those of us who had been working on the tweaks that the Bill needed had had an agreement from everyone to make sure that food and water could not be called a medical treatment,even before the session began - on paper by the time the Bill came up in Committee. The problem was some people kept demanding a bill forcing doctors to continue the treatment that the families demand until transfer, with all of the legal protection that we had had before stripped from the Act.
Finally we had a substitute bill that gave families 14 days instead of 2 to get together before the ethics committee met, and another 2 weeks to arrange transfer to another doctor. (Although, in reality, the transfer efforts have always been underway even before the doc asks the ethics committee to meet. The process has always been for cases like those I described, where families demand that the doctor do what they want, against his best judgment. The blood transfusion case is the only one that I know of where the patient was making his own decisions. The docs suggested continuing the transfusions for a specific period of time to get ready, then transfer to hospice care. He demanded non-stop transfusions, even as his liver failed and his kidneys were damaged by the waste products from the break down of the transfused red blood cells - in other words, even as the transfusions damaged his kidneys, risking a need for dialysis.)
The agreed-upon substitute Bill died because it made it to the House on the last day bills could be introduced. The Dems in the House were playing games - long conversations at the microphone about “dog parks,” etc., and made sure that a lot of legislation was stalled on the last days - legal deadlines passed and bills will have to wait ‘till ‘09.
Terri's murder was state sponsored. She should not have been eligible for Medicaid but they broke gobs of rules so they could take her away from rehab into a deathhaus. She was terminal for FIVE YEARS. What a farce. Poppycock. Medicaid works with health care providers and it is HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
Ask yourself this. Why is regular insurance ten times the cost per month than Medicaid? Is it perhaps because once the person is state sponsored, their time will be much shorter? Of course it will.
My last post shows one method they use in Florida. It is patient trafficking to make sure they end up in Medicaid. The insurance plans win. Medicaid wins and the patients get drugged, underfed and less water until they die. They do clean the patient - sometimes... Shampoo? not so much.
Some patients do not want dialysis. They cannot adapt to it. In that case, it’s the patient’s call imo. Some can tolerate it and some just cannot.
Is Gov. Perry (R) opposing it? Remember the prez signed the Futile Care bill into law in the first place. I don’t understand how our president flip flops on pro-life but he’s solid as a frozen embryo re: not funding them for stem cell research.
I would think twice before living in a futile care state. It sounds like once they've got you, you are the property of the state of Texas.
Another reality check: Once private plans (traffic) shift the patient to Medicaid, Medicaid takes the patients’ entire social security retirement check. So, the care is NOT FREE and neither is the patient. They become hostage to Medicaid until they die.
You know what I’m talkin’ about ping.
See my 14, 15, and 20.
In fact, the fuss divided the Right to Life groups. In fact, Texas Right to Life found themselves opposite 23 Catholic bishops in Texas.
There’s a Coalition that’s been meeting since before 1999, at least several times a year, to draft the original Act and to tweak it when flaws appeared.
TRTL and some trial lawyers were demanding a law that would have forced “treatment until transfer,” and purposefully removed all legal protection from doctors who would not follow the demands of patients and/or their surrogates - even when they demand that we with hold or with draw care.
For a pretty good review of how this played out, here’s some real time blogging (I don’t know who “wounded pig” is, but the information that he or she has leads me to believe that they’re from the hospital. JaquefromTexas is an RN who was brought in by the Lawyer, Jerri Ward. “Lifeethics” is me. Read the comments for the story.):
http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/2007/03/my-last-blog-posting-was-about-small.html
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2007/05/texas-catholic-bishops-support-futile.html
This is how the story began in February:
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2007/02/why-texas-futile-care-law-must-fall_17.html
Do these stories sound like the nurses and doctors that you know? I know that Medicare and Medicaid will provide quite a bit of home care for these patients.
I'm just talking about falling down can kill people. I wonder if anybody in geriatric medicine is researching same because unfortunately, many falls occur in medical facilities.
After someone falls, they may not ever get back home.
Doctors diagnose and more often than not, overprescribe. Nurses follow doctors' orders. Family member input ain't what it used to be. We can thank the lawyers for that.
Medicine is an industry who doesn't want to get sued so the letter of the law (even bad laws) is strictly adhered to and further, too many meds kill people every day. Silent euthanasia...dispense and dispose so to speak.
Lurkers, media and freepers. This could happen to you and yours. Pls pay attention to any and all medical treatment or even palliative care and if in doubt, get a second opinion.
People have always had an increased risk of death soon after a hip fracture - one of the common results - and very common causes - of falls. 25% of people who break their hips die from the complications afterwards - usually it’s pneumonia.
The reason they fall is because of brain changes, that lead to muscle changes that include failure of swallowing and breathing, etc. In other words, a fall that causes serious injury is an indication of deterioration that has already happened, more than a *cause* of deterioration.
There’s lots of research in repair of brain deterioration due to blood vessel disease, hypertension, Alzheimer’s, etc., as well as in preventing loss of bone that results in hip fractures and vertebral fractures (that’s what causes the “widow’s hump” or bowed back in old people, not poor posture). And we’re making slow progress.
Over prescription is a problem - that’s one of the benefits of having a Family Doctor instead of a dozen or so sub-specialists.
One of our problems is that our meds have side effects and too many patients get new meds to treat the side effects. But that’s not “euthanasia.” It shows how much we don’t know, yet.
Remember, the patient who has 5 or 6 diagnoses and 12 meds to treat them is sick in the first place!
If the patient is overmedicated, causing loss of appetite and bodily functions, causing inattention, losing the ability to communicate, that is not a disease process but a poisoning event. It is imo, SILENT EUTHANASIA.
I agree. It is slow progress. Too slow.
As I recall and you must know, over medication via morphine is part of the Exit Protocol I read, that was used on Terri and others, to get the system to shut down sooner, to hasten the death process.
I witnessed morphine overdose up close with a friend/patient in France, right before my eyes. It did the trick.
I may not have known what I was seeing, but my friend with us, an MD, explained it.
I call it euthanasia. It seems to fit the definitions I can find.
There’s at least 2 issues here: doctors giving medicines for disease that causes symptoms, so more meds (high blood pressure, weak bladder, swollen ankles - a common progression that sometimes can’t be avoided) and meds intended to sedate or kill. (Not all morphine, by the way is intended to speed death. We use it to relieve symptoms like spasms in the lungs, pain, etc. Those patients should *wake up, not become sedated.)
On the other hand, maybe there’s 3 - Terri got the morphine to make everyone else feel good about refusing her food and water. In her case, the judge called oral feedings “medical experimentation.”
This hypothetical patient would already be dead. The decision to deliberately withhold treatment against the patient's or the patient's family's wishes would be morally wrong regardless of the opinion of any hack doctor who would describe a medical condition this way.
How about a mother who believes the Sun is her child’s father,and insists on ICU ventilator support even though the child’s genetic disease prevents his bones from growing?
I'm sure that there are many incompetent and corrupt medical professionals who think that anyone with stunted growth is worthy of death, but that doesn't make their withdrawal of life support any less murderous.
How about the family that insists on keeping the patient on a ventilator, dialysis, medicines to keep the blood pressure up as it also closes off blood vessels in the fingertips, toes, and is part of the reason that dialysis is needed?
Some people live fruitful lives for years in this condition, that is when lazy doctors don't conspire to bring about their early demise.
How about the family that insists on ventilator and dialysis in the ICU rather than Medicare-funded home care (with ventilator and dialysis) for a comatose patient when the daughter is an ER doc in the same town?
It's a shame her daughter is a physician or you could just off her too.
Or the family who refuses to transfer their mom to the state that the daughters live in - because they want mom in the hospital, rather than a nursing home?
Yeah, good thing this legislation allows cowardly doctors to cut off her food and water.
Or the patient with multiple complications due to HIV who demands blood transfusion after blood transfusion more and more often, when his bone marrow fails?
It's shameful what some people ask for just to stay alive. What could they possibly be thinking?
Putting your pathetic hyperbole in these extreme examples aside, none of your fallacious straw man arguments does anything to defend this vile statute that allows people to be denied food and water against their expressed wishes. Furthermore, your deliberately connotative language illustrates exactly why medical personnel should be the last ones to decide who dies. Despite their overt desire to play God in contradiction to their oath, some doctors are just too lazy and incompetent to be trusted with any human life. They simply prefer harming to healing.
Putting your pathetic hyperbole in these extreme examples aside, none of your fallacious straw man arguments does anything to defend this vile statute that allows people to be denied food and water against their expressed wishes. Furthermore, your deliberately connotative language illustrates exactly why medical personnel should be the last ones to decide who dies. Despite their overt desire to play God in contradiction to their oath, some doctors are just too lazy and incompetent to be trusted with any human life. They simply prefer harming to healing.
Actually, as I said, everyone agreed on the food and water. No one defended including it in a definition of "medical treatment" that can be withheld. We all agreed on a bill that would have made sure that this law was never used in the future to withhold or withdraw food and water. In fact, the current law has never been used to withhold or withdraw food and water in Texas.
Each of the cases I mentioned are actual cases, they are not fictitious.
While you may be willing to give up your bed in the ICU for a patient whose family refuses to care for their loved one at home or at the nursing home, sacrifice should be preceded by "self." The State cannot demand that doctors sacrifice themselves or other patients. Are you willing to sacrifice other patients? Are you willing to make every doctor a slave to the State?
The infant whose ribs and skull wouldn't grow was having lung damage due to the ventilator pressure needed to push the oxygen in his lungs that were compressed by those ribs.
People do not live on blood pressure increasing medicines - "pressors," such as dopamine and dobutamine - for years. For one thing, they are always and only used in the ICU setting. For another, the side effects kill the tissue in the fingers, toes, it puts every area that normally develops bed sores even more at risk and greatly, greatly increases risk of strokes, kidney damage and heart attacks.
In the case of the man who demanded frequent blood transfusions, the breakdown of the blood cells transfused were damaging his liver and kidneys and he required more frequent application of the harmful substance. How often will you force me to cause suffering, to make doctors slaves or automatons who follow orders to the radical autonomy of another?
Finally, there is no "oath." The Hippocratic Oath is sworn to Apollo and would prohibit surgery to remove a stone. Few medical schools have any sort of oath these days.
You are cross posting. My comments were limited to the description of the statute and the posts that have been directed toward me. I don't know or particularly care who everyone was or what they agreed on.
No one defended including it in a definition of "medical treatment" that can be withheld.
My criticism was of the statute as it is described in the article.
We all agreed on a bill that would have made sure that this law was never used in the future to withhold or withdraw food and water.
Good, but your droning hyperbole in your previous post to me made no such qualification.
In fact, the current law has never been used to withhold or withdraw food and water in Texas.
Irrelevant to my criticism of the statute or your weak defense of it.
Each of the cases I mentioned are actual cases, they are not fictitious.
They were extreme examples dripping with your pro-death hyperbole. It doesn't matter whether they were fictitious or not.
While you may be willing to give up your bed in the ICU for a patient whose family refuses to care for their loved one at home or at the nursing home, sacrifice should be preceded by "self."
Your logic is lacking. The real or make believe problem of an imaginary intensive care bed shortage and whether we need more beds is totally independent or your pro-death blather. Furthermore, personal qualifications are meaningless on an anonymous discussion forum like this one so your fallacious appeal to hypocrisy is completely fraudulent.
The State cannot demand that doctors sacrifice themselves or other patients.
This is nothing but a Red Herring. No state has ever done so. Keeping these people who want to live alive sacrifices neither the doctor or the patient. Anyone so perverse to even think this way is worthy of pity.
Are you willing to sacrifice other patients?
No, but based on what you have written here, you and other hack doctors like you certainly are willing to sacrifice patients.
Are you willing to make every doctor a slave to the State?
Your hysterics are comical. Prohibiting them from killing people who want to live is not enslavement.
The infant whose ribs and skull wouldn't grow was having lung damage due to the ventilator pressure needed to push the oxygen in his lungs that were compressed by those ribs.
None or your pathetic examples justifies killing innocent people who want to live.
People do not live on blood pressure increasing medicines - "pressors," such as dopamine and dobutamine - for years.
This doesn't in any way justify incompetent third rate doctors like you being allowed kill them.
For one thing, they are always and only used in the ICU setting.
So what. The more you write the clearer it becomes that you and your ilk are more concerned with costs than lives. You seem to be on the edge of calling these patients "worthless eaters."
For another, the side effects kill the tissue in the fingers, toes, it puts every area that normally develops bed sores even more at risk and greatly, greatly increases risk of strokes, kidney damage and heart attacks.
None of this justifies lazy and incompetent doctors like you being allowed to kill them.
In the case of the man who demanded frequent blood transfusions, the breakdown of the blood cells transfused were damaging his liver and kidneys and he required more frequent application of the harmful substance.
A sad side effect of living in this condition. If doctors in Texas spent more time trying to keep their patients alive rather than killing them, a more sustainable treatment might be found.
How often will you force me to cause suffering,
Giving people the life sustaining treatment they desire is not causing suffering. Only a lazy megalomaniac would make such an absurd statement.
to make doctors slaves or automatons who follow orders to the radical autonomy of another?
The natural desire to live is radical autonomy? If I knew where you lived, I would send you a Get Well Soon card!
Finally, there is no "oath." The Hippocratic Oath is sworn to Apollo and would prohibit surgery to remove a stone. Few medical schools have any sort of oath these days.
It sounds like your medical school required students to make an oath to Satan! Seriously, if you are really a medical professional and truly believe the rubbish you have written here, you are in the wrong line of work. May God have mercy on you, and especially on your patients.
As I said in my first response, see post # 15. Although, thank the Lord, the Act has never been used to remove food and water, the substitute Bill that everyone agreed to in the Lieutenant Governor’s office that day, and which the Senate passed, would have made sure that the Advance Directive Act was never used to remove or withhold food and water. The dems in the House effectively killed the bill, by grandstanding and stalling.
I hope we can get the tweaks passed in ‘09. In the meantime, the TMA, the Hospital Association and several regulatory agencies have agreed to work to include them in “best practices.” And, I assume, the Coalition will continue to meet to strengthen the improvements that are needed.
hocndoc,
Fascinating, isn’t it? “We want what we want when we want it, at a price we are willing to pay, and YOU physicians (and other care providers and their managers) must deliver or else!”
And they say the docs are playing God!? What rubbish. I can see why many are exiting the profession.
“Blue Ridge. Reality Check: People in health care plans for seniors are priced out of home health care by their said plan. Then the patient has no choice (Florida) but to go to a care facility. When they see how much it would cost to stay in their health care plan, it is astronomical so the patient is FORCED into Medicaid due to cost measures. The state then does then become in charge of said patient.”
That is, ‘I have a right to the services of other people at a price I can afford, and if I don’t get it, I will sue the pants off the gatekeepers to these requirements using my contingency fee compensated lawyer, while lobbying the lawmakers incessantly so said lawyer will have the tools to prevail in court and get me what I demand.’
Well, if it gives satisfaction and makes what remains of life meaningful, then I suppose that those with such expectations will litigate and lobby to the end of their days, won’t they? Having placed their lives in the hands of the modern secular salvation state and its various proxies in the form of limited liability corporations, regulatory agencies, and litigation systems, those who trust in that version of salvation will have their reward, one way or another. May they enjoy it, while they have it.
Given the prevalence of such people, it would be prudent to warn our offspring against entering the ranks of the caregiving professions, or seeking venues to practice their arts outside of the reach of these tyrants.
Psalm 39:4-7
4 “LORD, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am.
5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my age is as nothing before You;
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.
6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow;
Surely they busy themselves in vain;
He heaps up riches,
And does not know who will gather them.
7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in You.
8 Deliver me from all my transgressions;
Do not make me the reproach of the foolish.
Psalm 90:9-12
9 For all our days have passed away in Your wrath;
We finish our years like a sigh.
10 The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
I don't see anywhere in the Bible where poisoning the sick is an acceptable practice. Anna Nicole Smith wasn't a senior citizen but she's dead, right? She died of a poisoning event too.
Nice try but not quite. Terri was given the morphine as a part of the Exit Protocol to make her die faster. It was written into the protocol. We were reading it as she lay dying just yards away. She was a tough one for the killers, lasted thirteen days without a drop of water. That says something about her health.
Judge Greer wanted her dead and said so.
Wow, how much did they give her to make her die faster - and why did it still take almost two weeks?
I’ve been disgusted with the removal of the feeding tube, the placement of an IV for the morphine, and the refusal of oral food and water. These were medical interventions done only to kill her.
As I recall from the Protocol, it wasn’t an overdose at all, but part of the procedure to set up the body to shut down. I guess you know how that works. The protocol itself is being held by Hospice of the Florida Suncoast. Perhaps we can request a copy if it helps explain.
Yup, they had a hard time killing her.
You quote the Bible so maybe you can quote some more passages that discuss when it is ok to kill innocents.
Terri Schindler Schiavo was not "hooked up to machines". Had she been permitted instead of held hostage, Terri was able to move about by wheelchair but big surprise, IT WAS BROKEN and the guardian of the year wouldn't fix it.
Terri breathed on her own, she laughed, she cried, for gosh sakes, she recognized people, she even followed directions. Lightning speed? No, but she was quite active.
Many lies about Terri have already been revealed. The back story is less tragic but for the long haul, more compelling. For example, Robert Woods Johnson Foundation is for SCHIP. Why you ask? Because the SCHIP is harmful to seniors, cutting them off at the knees but providing socialized medicine to kids up to the age of 25 and EVEN ILLEGAL ALIENS would get free medical care.
That's another way to kill Granny when she gets her new Medicare premium and finds out the promise made to her of health care was gutted and laundered over to illegals and to 25 year old children.
Robert Woods Johnson Foundation is full of cultists imo. They wanted Terri dead in the worst way. So did George Soros. These are some non-republicans who are pro-death in addition to the ACLU who sat at Michael Schiavo's counsel table before the pro-death judiciary who backed up their buddy George Greer. Stand by your judge.
Backroom deals and blackmail arent always part of the death merchants' stew. In Terri's case, they were.
A sound bite that rings true. FV
I’m afraid that the *real* purpose was to sedate her enough to slow her breathing so that none of the people around her saw or heard her gasping. While slowing her breathing would also prevent her from breathing fast enough to get rid of the acid that builds up in the blood of starving people, I believe that the primary purpose was to make the people around her more comfortable and to salve their consciences.
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