8mm
Posted on 08/12/2008 8:05:23 AM PDT by Daniel T. Zanoza
Precautions and Alternatives
From the Editor: This is the second in a series of columns first posted on the Illinois Right to Life Committee's (IRLC) website [http://www.illinoisrighttolife.org/] written by Bill Beckman, IRLC's executive director. The RFFM.org re-posting of the column discusses how living wills can cancel out the wishes of patients and loved ones regarding end of life issues. Also, readers can learn how to seek out alternatives to living wills and find ways to ensure their end of life issues are respected and adhered to. Included are examples of how living wills have been used to disregard patients rights.
The following was written by Bill Beckman:
We knew the push for living wills based on the Terri Schiavo case would be dangerous to people who took the bait. Recently, some cases are coming to light that confirm our fears about the dangers of such documents. A living will has nothing to do with living, but everything to do with dying...
(Excerpt) Read more at rffm.typepad.com ...
So you were hoping that we’d buy your opinion as fact?
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No DJ, if I wanted my opinions to masquerade as facts, I’d write more like you, with bombast and uppercase words.
Can we agree to disagree?
You and I have no idea what went on between doc and patient, so all we have is our personal opinions on this matter.
He was conscious and communicating, so there was no need to formally invoke the living will OR THE SURROGATE. His communication was consistent with his living will, therefore there was no reason to doubt that he was of sound mind when he declined treatment. The living will was important evidence of his sound state of mind, even without being formally invoked.
LikeLight: Relatives often maintain desperate hope for weeks, months, or even years. Their emotional state — inability to accept that they are going to lose their loved one — is not just a “heat of the moment” matter. One of the purposes of a living will is to take decisions to discontinue treatment out of the hands of the relatives, so that they will have no choice but to accept the end coming as the patient wanted, and will not feel guilt over discontinuing treatment.
Now that's a fact! ;)
Proof, please.
I know that facts are very often inconvenient to the culture of death's agenda, but he NEVER declined treatment.
One of the purposes of a living will is to take decisions to discontinue treatment out of the hands of the relatives, so that they will have no choice but to accept the end coming as the patient wanted, and will not feel guilt over discontinuing treatment.
Yep, just turn them over to the medical death squads.
[Judge] Kirkwood noted in his order that Alice Pinette did not offer independent evidence to challenge the doctors' conclusions. "Her credibility is questioned considering the medical evidence," Kirkwood stated. "She presented no independent verification of her perceptions of his abilities." In other words, she couldn't get a single person -- relative, friend, nurse, anybody -- to tell the court he was able to communicate as she was claiming.
But the doctors told the judge that Pinette is in a terminal state, cannot make decisions for himself and is unlikely to recover. He is hospitalized at Lucerne Hospital in Orlando, kept alive by a ventilator, a dialysis machine and medication. . . . "I have not seen any cognitive response from Mr. Pinette for weeks or months," Herran said. "He has had his ups and downs. The last few months, it has been all down." Doctors also noted that he was suffering not just from congestive heart failure, but from multiple organ system failure, and that his organ functions were being maintained mechanically.
Obviously, if he had been able to communicate, the doctors would have consulted him about whether he desired to continue treatment, and would not have overridden his wishes. He clearly wasn't able to communicate, despite his wife's claims to the contrary, and was in precisely the sort of condition that his living will contemplated. And although there was no mention of the patient's religion, I would note that the Catholic Church -- the only major religious organization that has promulgated detailed teachings on this subject -- does not advocate the use of "artificial means" to extend life, and thus the decision to stop the mechanical life support that Mr. Pinette was on was consistent with Catholic teaching.
gnip...
Our family has always believed a living will would be a mistake. We have watched it used against others. This article puts it all together. My sympathies to Mr. and Mrs. Pinette.
Liberal views have even infected Republicans and Conservatives. Life is now subjective. Morality is subjective. Honesty is subjective. Truth is subjective. There is no right and wrong...it all depends on your POV. How sad.
> While trying to prove that murder is the best thing for all concerned
Insults will not convert people to your point of view.
> you are not reading eyewitness and personal reports by Freepers on how living wills are used to murder.
Pardon me, but I certainly am. I would be naive to think that hospitals and courts have the family’s best interest at heart. It is precisely that concern about the intrusion and misconstruing of individual and family will that lead to pursuing a legal instrument such as a Living Will.
This is the MAIN reason why I asked you if you were supported the right to a personal decision to refuse care when one is in a persistent vegetative state.
Camp 1:
If you do support our right to forgo months or years with tubes stuck in us, mute and shut off from any engagement with the world other than to be wiped down and medicated, then we can have a conversation about what is the best legal tool for us to use to ensure that patient and family’s will is respected above all. It may very well be true that some version of Living Wills that are hospital boilerplate may be very flawed documents allowing for egregious misuse. But we can have a rational discussion about that, at least, if you are of that mind.
Camp 2:
If in fact (as I suspect) you want to make sure that *no one* has the right to decide this question for themselves because this right is reserved for God alone, then we have a profound disagreement and I don’t think we can trust you in a discussion like this.
Which camp are you in, so I know where this conversation can go?
Not an insult, it was the truth.
It is precisely that concern about the intrusion and misconstruing of individual and family will that lead to pursuing a legal instrument such as a Living Will.
And it is that very instrument that is allowing murder with family members helpless to stop it. Read the posts again.
This is the MAIN reason why I asked you if you were supported the right to a personal decision to refuse care when one is in a persistent vegetative state.
And I answered you 3 times. But you should also be aware that persisten vegatative state is subjective. There are no difinative tests.
The camp that I'm in is not to murder for convenience. Read again the 2 Freeper posts on this thread. Peopel are trusting Living Wills and they are being used to murder them. As this article points out, there are better alternatives.
Let me tell you a story. There was a little girl born in 1913. At the age of 3, she had polio. It ravaged her body. Her parents were told that she'd never walk again or use her right arm. They chose not to tell the little girl and she did learn to walk. However her right arm never grew.
When she was 5 or 6, her brothers and sisters were having a snowball fight and included her. She ran inside and told her Daddy what they were doing to her. He told her to lob some back at them. Her parents never told her that she couldn't do something. She learned to play piano with one hand and grewup and attended college. She got batchelor and masters degrees in several languages, botany, astronomy, latin and went on to teach. She married and had 3 children.
At the age of 80, she fell and broke an ankle. After 6 weeks in a wheelchair while it healed, doctors discovered that the "new" pathways that had been forged when she was a child had quit working. She never walked again. No problem. She was teaching other residents in the assisted living facility, where she lived, to read. She didn't need to walk for that.
Then she contracted pneumonia. The doctors wanted to put her on a ventilator. The family refused as they were afraid she'd never breath on her own again because of the polio. She pulled through.
Then came the cancer. She was 88. She wanted to try chemo. The first week on it, she did fine. But the week she was without it, her body went into withdrawal. It just couldn't adjust. We lost my mother-in-law in 3 days. We let her slip away. There was no Living Will or any other such directives. We didn't need them. We knew who she was and what her choices were. No doctor or hospital ever interfered and the choices were ours and hers.
DJ - where there are human beings involved, there is always room for abuse. Families being torn apart by greed and insensitivity did not start with living wills. That kind of BS has been going on forever.
How many times do you think the living will has been used appropriately, with sensitivity to all concerned, patient and family? Of course we don’t know, because there are no stats, and when things such as a living will work smoothly, we never hear of it. Squeaky wheels getting the grease and all that. And I happen to believe, again no stats, just belief, that the abuse of the living will constitutes a barely recognizable percentage of the cases in which living wills are utilized. Again, JMO, but this again seems a case where the vast middle is being painted by the tiny extreme.
You, and those arguing along with you, seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Since it can and has been abused, it must be shut down seems to be your position. If we shut down everything that has and can be abused, what are we left with?
I am fine with folks who choose differently from me. Are you? I don’t particularly care for being accused of being infected by the culture of death (as we have in this thread) because we choose differently from you. Yes, you have given us lip service that the choice is ours ... but that (at least for me) is overshadowed by your accusations of the culture of death.
Since there are better alternatives to a Living Will, why even take the chance of it being abused? No one signs one believing it will be misused. Families find out the hard way.
Oh and you were pinged to post 89 because it was in answer to post 86 to which you were pinged.
Since there are better alternatives to a Living Will, why even take the chance of it being abused?
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I have no problem with that, if that is what you and your family choose. I just wish you and your cohorts would lay of the culture of death accusations, that we are, in essence, enabling murder.
Sorry but a Living Will does exactly that.
Sorry but a Living Will does exactly that.
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In all cases? All the time? Without exception?
Why are you defending a document that results in vaible peoples deaths when there are better alternatives?
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