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Abstract Patients who are in the last few days of life are often too frail to take oral fluids and nutrition. This may be due entirely to the natural history of their disease, although the use of sedative drugs for symptom relief may contribute to a reduced level of consciousness and thus a reduced oral intake. Rehydration with intravenous (i.v.) fluids is the usual response in acute care settings, whereas the hospice movement has often argued against this approach. The issues are complex and involve not only physical, psychological and social concerns, but also ethical dilemmas. A review of the...

OTTAWA, February 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Canada has a “moral imperative” to fund palliative care because people have a dignity that “comes from God,” Canada’s top ranking Catholic cardinal told the special joint parliamentary committee on “physician-assisted dying” last week. The dignity of the human person is “inherent” and remains regardless of their circumstances, Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Toronto archdiocese told the committee. “That’s why we don’t believe it’s right to kill them.” This belief in the intrinsic dignity of the human person motivates the Catholic Church’s mission of providing health care, including care for the dying, he said....

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...

(CNSNews.com) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is soliciting applications for federal grants worth up to $275,000 to research ways to provide elderly patients with “palliative care” – even in hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units. Palliative care is commonly understood to mean medical treatment that focuses on relieving symptoms, including pain, instead of trying to treat or cure the underlying disease. But researchers will not be studying the use of palliative care to relieve the suffering of dying patients. “Hospice and end-of-life settings are not included within the scope” of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), the grant...

The idea of dying is a source of discomfort for many, but as a new study proves, death instils in its witnesses a healing wisdom which defies our habitual attempts to deny or control it. University of Calgary researcher Shane Sinclair completed a cross-country study on the impact of death on palliative care workers and the results, recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, prove how wrongheaded society's ingrained thinking about end-of-life issues remains. Sinclair's study is based on interviews with palliative care staff from doctors and nurses to janitors and volunteers in five major Canadian cities, including Calgary....

Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) -- A disturbing new poll from Canada finds an equal number of respondents would choose palliative care over euthanasia at the end of their lives. The results find death is increasingly becoming an alternative for pain relief for patients, the elderly or disabled.The Environics polling firm queried Canadians and found 44 percent would choose euthanasia and the same amount would choose palliative care. The final 12 percent were undecided.Dr. Delores Doherty, president of LifeCanada, the group that commissioned the poll, told LifeNews.com she is concerned by the results, which appear to show changing attitudes in different generations.Among...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

<p>RICHMOND, Va. -- The palliative-care unit at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center offers plush carpeting, original watercolors and a kitchen for visiting families. A massage therapist drops by often, and a chaplain is available 24 hours. And there's High Anxiety, a fluffy white Lhasa apso that patients love to pet.</p>