Posted on 03/21/2009 1:24:43 PM PDT by wagglebee
According to a new study, terminally ill cancer patients who “drew comfort from religion” don’t want to die if they don’t have to. Well, no surprise. But, says the Times, they’re less eager to die than people who don’t draw “comfort from religion.”
Well that’s interesting, perhaps, but there is a more important as well as more troubling aspect to the story that’s going unnoticed.
The study appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston used questionnaires and interviews “to assess the level of reliance on religious faith for comfort” of 345 terminally ill patients.
The “vast majority” of the patients—some 90 percent of those who were religious and 97 percent of those who were not—did not want “heroic measures,” such as mechanical ventilators or CPR, to be used in their cases.
Based on that seven percentage-point difference the New York Times proclaimed “Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients.” Please.
Do a little more math and you will realize that sweeping generalizations like “far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care” are based on the responses of approximately 25 people.
The researchers acknowledged that the study didn’t explore why this small handful of religious patients sought “extensive end-of-life care.” That didn’t stop them from speculating anyway. One of the study’s authors disabused Times’ readers of the idea that “spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands.”
Instead, she told the Times, “to religious people, life is sacred and sanctified . . . they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”
That has it backwards. If 90 percent of the religious people in the study refused heroic measures, then it’s more accurate to say that they don’t feel such an obligation—possibly because they believe that their lives are in God’s hands.
If all that was going on here was yet another mis-characterization of the faithful, it wouldn’t matter. But the Times let its readers know why they should care: cost.
The Times noted that Medicare “spends about one-third of its budget on people who are in the last year of life, and much of that on patients at the very end of life.” The study noted that the religious patients “were less likely to have completed advance medical directives, such as a living will or do-not-resuscitate order.”
Anything, including religious belief, that might motivate people to seek “aggressive treatment” toward the end of life, costs money. Ominously, Wesley J. Smith has documented the “growing utilitarian emphasis in medicine,” in which saving money increasingly takes precedence over “doing right by suffering patients.”
Little wonder, then, that what amounts to a statistical blip becomes the stuff of headlines. Religion can be a problem if it makes people want to stay alive longer. As we nationalize healthcare, as Smith warns, the sick and infirm will soon be told they should do the patriotic thing: go quietly.
The "duty to die" is fast becoming a reality.
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So, more than three decades of atoning for his past isn’t enough for you?
I suppose you reject the New Testament because well over half of it was written by a man who persecuted Christians?
Yes, he has done good works, but that does not mean that he is no longer a convicted felon.
What PRECISELY does his status as a convicted felon have to do with what he writes?
“What PRECISELY does his status as a convicted felon have to do with what he writes?”
Everything. If he had not been convicted in court, chances are he would never have been convicted in his heart.
What the crap is your problem with Chuck? Let’s hear it.
That was not exactly what I was referring to, but you make an excellent point. Though, Colson's conversion began before he was convicted and it was his faith that lead him to plead guilty.
Judgemental a**hat ping.
Go spill your drivel on DU.
Nothing at all, but he one can not scrub the taint of being a convicted felon from one’s biography.
“Nothing at all, but he one can ..”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Answer this if you can.
If it has nothing to do at all with what he writes; then why bring it up?
I don’t think Colson feels the slightest bit tainted by the classification. Can you tell me a single thing that Colson is unable to do because of his past conviction?
“..and it was his faith that lead him to plead guilty.”
Thank you for that chrono. My memory is fuzzy on it (as with most things!), but I recall his telling of how he was in his car after talking with a friend and coming to his born again moment. I guess sitting in his own car would be hard to do if he had already been convicted!
Here is Chuck Colson’s biography from BreakPoint/Prison Fellowship:
http://www.breakpoint.org/Bio.asp?ID=211
Well then, if it does not bother him, it should not bother you and the fact of his felon status should not be scrubbed from the first paragraph of his biography.
If you’re an atheist, what’s the point in struggling? Might as well get it over with and croak sooner rather than later. There’s no hope and nothing really matters anyway, so why endure?
Well, in some states, he can’t get a concealed-carry permit, if he wanted to.
It doesn't bother me, I just wondered why you brought it up since it has NOTHING to do with this column.
his felon status should not be scrubbed from the first paragraph of his biography.
What difference does it make what paragraph in which it appears? You act as if Colson is trying to hide his past.
** crickets **
I am fairly certain that Colson could have obtained a presidential pardon a long time ago if he wanted one, my guess is that he WANTS his conviction to stay on the record.
Here is the opening portion of his biography on BreakPoint, NOBODY would print this if they were ashamed of their past:
Almost 25 years ago, Charles W. Colson was not thinking about reaching out to prison inmates or reforming the U.S. penal system.
In fact, this aide to president Richard Nixon was "incapable of humanitarian thought," according to the media of the mid-1970s.
Depends on the state and/or county.
I am fairly certain that Colson could have obtained a presidential pardon a long time ago if he wanted one, my guess is that he WANTS his conviction to stay on the record.
That wouldn't surprise me.
And if his online bio had actual paragraphs, instead of sentence breaks, the part about his guilty plea and prison term probably *would* be in the first paragraph.
I'm a big fan of Mr. Colson's. I just can't help answering a question when one is posed!
I didn't even notice that until you pointed it out.
It’s one of my pet peeves of online journalism. I don’t know if the authors actually write that way, or if it turns up in the formatting step.
It must be the way it was written, latter parts of his bio DO have multiple sentences in single paragraphs.
It's not as bad as the habit that some FReepers have of actually breaking up sentences into multiple paragraphs.
Looking at the article on this thread, most of the paragraphs are single sentence, and a minority contain two or more. None would pass as a paragraph for English-class purposes.
It must just be a convention of the medium. They do the same thing with Thomas Sowell’s columns.
LOL - with no punctuation or capitals! Catz typying.
I must flee - we’re taking Anoreth out to dinner to celebrate her 18th birthday (a week early)!
These commentaries are actually taken from his daily radio broadcasts. My suspicion is that he writes it this way because it "reads better" with the breaks and then what he writes is put online without being correctly formatted.
I WAS NOT referring to xsmommy, she is a dear FRiend of mine (though I often wonder how she made it through law school without learning to captitalize).
Never occurred to me. I was thinking of some of the bizarre vanities and posts from wacky websites.
Both have had multiple operations and radio/chemo therapy after-wards, both given bad prognosis and yet both are still here and fighting. One is the non believer is currently in remission from what I heard through a friend and the other our neighbour who is a believer has just been told that the cancer has spread again and showing in her bones again.
This lady has beaten the odds the last year and half being told that she was unlikely to see another Christmas back in January 2008. She is just about to undergo 57th chemo treatment and due to have a pic line put back in shortly, I think they need to build her up first because she is naturally very petite and she does struggle with food. Though they say she is still terminal they judge that a further course will extend her life and may even cause the cancer to retreat a little.
I think maybe the real story may well be your attitude to the actual disease which may in many cases given a Christian a more positive reaction if they understand the endurance aspect of their faith on the other hand it can work the other way and make them more fatalistic and not fight as much.
i explain it this way— posting to FR, to me, is like taking notes in class or scribbling a note to a friend.i am not writing a brief or a treatise : ) Not referring to you guys, but there are those on FR who utterly delight in their proper use of punctuation etc and love to rag on those who don’t feel similarly compelled to use it. i smile at them, indulgently, happy that they have that one small thing to hug to themselves and about which to feel superior ; )
Someone once told me that criticism is the unconscious tribute that failure and mediocrity pay to success.
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