Posted on 01/21/2015 12:54:18 PM PST by wagglebee
Immoral bioethical policies and practices advance toward implementation through discourse–first in professional journals, and then in elite popular media columns.
That process is now gearing up regarding what I call “VSED-by-Proxy.”
VSED stands for “voluntary stopping eating and drinking”–suicide by self-starvation–pushed for the elderly and others by those compaaaaa–ssssss–ionate death zealots at the Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices.
But what about mentally incompetent residents of nursing homes who willingly eat, but who years previously stated in an advance medical directive that they wanted to be made dead by starvation under such circumstances?
We see increasing advocacy in bioethics that nursing homes be required to starve such patients to death–even if they are then happy, even if they willingly eat, and even, one supposes, if they ask for food. In other words, the idea is that the demented patient is incompetent to decide to eat if he had earlier directed that he be starved to death!
And now VSED-by-Proxy has been validated by respectful reportage in the New York Times. From, “Complexities of Choosing an End Game for Dementia,” by Paula Span:
Jerome Medalie keeps his advance directive hanging in a plastic sleeve in his front hall closet, as his retirement community recommends. That’s where the paramedics will look if someone calls 911. Like many such documents, it declares that if he is terminally ill, he declines cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a ventilator and a feeding tube.
But Mr. Medalie’s directive also specifies something more unusual: If he develops Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, he refuses “ordinary means of nutrition and hydration.”
A retired lawyer with a proclivity for precision, he has listed 10 triggering conditions, including “I cannot recognize my loved ones” and “I cannot articulate coherent thoughts and sentences.” If any three such disabilities persist for several weeks, he wants his health care proxy — his wife, Beth Lowd — to ensure that nobody tries to keep him alive by spoon-feeding or offering him liquids
This is an extremely dangerous culture of death aggression because it would erase the boundary between medical treatment that can be refused–and basic humane care, no different ethically from turning a patient to prevent bed sores or providing hygiene–which all patients are required to receive regardless of their condition.
Just as an advance directive instructing that a patient not be kept clean should be disregarded, so too should an order to starve the patient who willingly eats.
This too is important: VSED is suicide. Legally requiring nursing homes to commit VSED-by-proxy would be forcing them to kill—and to kill cruelly. A legal regimen that forced medical personnel to assist a patient’s suicide by starvation would drive many doctors and nurses out of medicine.
After all, most doctors and nurses want to be healers, not killers. And how safe would we be in other areas of medicine if the professions were filled with people who would willingly starve patients to death when they happily eat.
But let’s not kid ourselves. VSED-by-proxy is a stalking horse for opening the door to lethally injecting Alzheimer’s patients, and probably doing so en masse. After all, why force anyone to undergo a slow and potentially agonizing death by VSED or VSED-by-proxy when he or she can be dispatched quickly?
Euthanasia pursuant to advance directive is already practiced in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is possible that this has been the stealth goal from the time advocacy for removing feeding tubes from incompetent patients began decades ago—and that now, with the open advocacy of VSED and VSED-by-proxy, the real agenda is finally coming out into the open.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
Exactly!
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
What they do s sedate them so heavily that they lose interest in eating, put a diaper on them and secure them to a wheel chair. They go down hill really fast then because they lose all sense of life around them. It is not unusual to hear patients begging to be allowed to go home from these places, where they are usually involuntarily committed.
If the Times has its way, most of us will die of starvation.
I think the starvation and over medicating should start with the editor on down at the NY Times. Lets do a test run.
As someone who just lost his father 6 weeks ago to this terrible disease, I take serious issue with your characterization. If that is the nursing home care one of your loved ones encountered and you did nothing it is on you. The care my father received was compassionate up until his final minute.
I don’t remember where I read it, but in view of the New York Times editorial staff, “A society should be judged on how it treats the very young and very old”. I would say that we aren’t doing that well, we murder babies in the womb of their mothers and call it pro-choice, and now we are going after the sick and old. Shame on us.
I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s two years ago. In the advanced stages of the disease, she lost the ability to swallow properly and developed repeated bouts of aspiration pneumonia. Basically, she was inhaling food, water and saliva.
We might have been able to keep her alive for several more months by inserting a feeding tube, which would have required that she be strapped down 24/7 (when she had to have a feeding tube inserted for brief times to administer medication she would always panic and try to pull it out).
Fortunately, we had long talks with her about her wishes years earlier when she had full capacity. She also signed written advance directives. She made it clear that she would never have wanted to be kept alive that way so we did not impose it on her. We moved her to a hospice where she was kept comfortable and family members were able to stay with her around the clock until she passed.
I have Alzheimers on both sides of my family. There is a significant likelihood that it is how I will die. I have made it very clear to my children that I do not want to be kept alive on feeding tubes or IVs. It is not euthanasia. It is simply not pointlessly prolonging the agony of a dying loved one.
That’s why we have to get them to think of our babies and old people as beloved pets, cocker spaniels, tabby cats and kittens - would you starve them to death or leave them to rot in their own feces.
Our future is being played out daily in the UK:
https://www.facebook.com/DailyMail/posts/870017639724652
Unfortunately for many there is no home to go home to. They cannot take care of themselves living alone, they don’t have enough money for a full time in-home caregiver and they either have no family or they have no family willing or able to take them in.
It’s a horrible situation.
bump 4 later
Was anybody surprised by this? Did you remember what the left did when Teri Schiavo was killed?
They want the elderly to die. Most of the elderly are White, and they want Whitey to die out and be replaced by the beard and burka crowd.
In some states, the state takes the home to pay for the care, and turns the money over to the nursing home. I know because it happened to my mother’s second husband.
Don’t they know the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”?????
BTTT for your comments.
words fail me. I knew this was coming.
Thats what Hospice does
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.