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Commentary: When a feeding tube borders on the barbaric
Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | May 28, 1997 | Dr. Ronald Cranford, MD

Posted on 10/20/2003 9:08:00 PM PDT by Chancellor Palpatine

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To: TheDon
I read somewhere today, (it might even have been on these boards) that, since Denmark passed it laws on euthanasia, 20% of it's nursing home residents are being denied food and water like Terri. I wondered why there was not more uproar in Europe over the thousands of deaths during the heat waves this summer. Maybe they abandoned their elderly on purpose, then it could be considered an act of God when they die.
Stay out of Europe!
41 posted on 10/20/2003 10:03:06 PM PDT by tertiary01 (arity)
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To: fly_so_free
Oh yes, and something has to be done about the developmentally disabled, the blind, the crippled, vee really muzt do sumzing. Vee muzt find a solution for all zeese. Zey have no purpose, zey serve no funtion, zey are a burden on soziety, and zee State. Zey must be eliminated.......

That was really funny!! Thank you!

42 posted on 10/20/2003 10:04:56 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: xzins
I'm sending to you my tissue bill, Pastor.
43 posted on 10/20/2003 10:05:57 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: TheDon
"Cruel and unusual mercy" bump.
44 posted on 10/20/2003 10:06:58 PM PDT by wizardoz (Palestinians are just dynamite!)
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To: Chancellor Palpatine
All of this has shaken the public's confidence in the medical profession.

UM. NO. THIS is what tends to shake my confidence in the medical profession.

The above link is to a medical journal abstract from last month, advocating the removal of organs for use from brain damaged children, before they have died.

This is where the likes of Ronald Cranford and his Soros-teat-sucking cronies have gotten us.

45 posted on 10/20/2003 10:08:32 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: tertiary01
It does seem to be safe to visit Prague, however, as the Czechs admantly refuse to allow euthanasia at all.

And Ireland is a definite go because they put people in prison for helping with assisted suicide.

46 posted on 10/20/2003 10:10:02 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: Drango
Funy, you people who say "I wouldn't want to live like that" never quite finish to say exactly by which method YOU WANT TO DIE?
You only say half the equation.
47 posted on 10/20/2003 10:13:28 PM PDT by oreolady (have you checked your living will lately?)
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To: I still care
They also deny dialysis to anyone over 60 who can't pay for it on their own

Where did you hear this? Not doubting you, I just like sources.

48 posted on 10/20/2003 10:13:54 PM PDT by wizardoz (Palestinians are just dynamite!)
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To: MHGinTN
I will gladly pay it. Pray. All things are possible if we but believe.
49 posted on 10/20/2003 10:15:17 PM PDT by xzins (And now I will show you the most excellent way!)
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To: Nebullis
Back when grandma and the kids had to decide to sell the farm or keep grampa alive, extreme life-suspending efforts after "the appointed time to die" was a rare exception.

You've hit the nail on the head, Nebullis. This is still true in most of the world -- if you have the money, you receive the care; if you don't, well, you die. In America, as long as someone else (the insurance company, government, or hospital) is picking up most, if not all, of the tab, and providing the care, there is no incentive to face "the appointed time to die." What I'm concerned about is that as a way of rising keeping costs down we will go from one extreme to another -- from keeping a corpse alive on a ventilator to encouraging physican-assisted suicide (which might easily degenerate into involuntary euthanasia, as it has in Holland).

Many of the people on this board don't want to face the reality that we are not an infinitely rich nation and cannot spend the entire Gross National Product on medical care. A nation, like a family, must set priorities and cannot afford everything it wants. In childish, liberal-like fashion, they would rather name call and avoid answering the question of setting priorities.

50 posted on 10/20/2003 10:16:17 PM PDT by Siamese Princess
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To: Chancellor Palpatine
To some, you are what you post . . .

It does get tiring having to explain that you don't necessarily agree with the positions contained in the article posted.

No feeding tubes for me. I'll be on my way, thank you.
51 posted on 10/20/2003 10:19:43 PM PDT by BraveMan
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To: Siamese Princess
A feeding tube costs less than keeping one of my teenagers fed each day. PVS patients in this country cost about 3% of the national healthcare budget.

Tell me how much one bomb we dropped on Kosovo cost and get back to me.

You are being fed a load of lies and believing it.

52 posted on 10/20/2003 10:21:58 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: nmh
This "compassionate" appeal to murder people not up to his royal standards is common amongst our glorious traditional doctors. It all starts in medical school ... conditioning them to see compassion in killing people.

Someone posted the "new Hippocratic oath" which ever so delicately suggests one duty a doctor may see would be to kill. Barf retch gag vomit.

53 posted on 10/20/2003 10:23:13 PM PDT by The Red Zone
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To: BraveMan
It's not about your right to refuse medical treatment.

It's about the deliberate killing of the more vulnerable in our society.

54 posted on 10/20/2003 10:23:29 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla
ping
55 posted on 10/20/2003 10:24:03 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: Siamese Princess
Many of the people on this board don't want to face the reality that we are not an infinitely rich nation and cannot spend the entire Gross National Product on medical care. A nation, like a family, must set priorities and cannot afford everything it wants.

OK, you can die. I'll take your share. I'm not checking out until I do it myself!

56 posted on 10/20/2003 10:25:36 PM PDT by concerned about politics ( Have you donated to the Salvation Army? Liberals HATE Christian organizations! Tax deductable, too)
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To: BraveMan
Why do you think so many disabled people have been involved in the Schiavo case?

The issue is equality

57 posted on 10/20/2003 10:27:48 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: Chancellor Palpatine
Susan Smith and Robert Latimer: A Tale of Two Murders

by: Dick Sobsey, Director, University of Alberta
Developmental Disabilities Centre

According to the Associated Press, Susan Smith who killed her two sons in South Carolina says that she did it out of love. She wanted to spare them the pain of a broken family and being separated from their dear mother.

Canadian newspapers have been ablaze with stories of child murder in the last week. The community was shaken with outrage as Susan Smith, a South Carolina mother confessed to killing her two young sons. At first she had tried to cover up the killing with a false story, but in the end she admitted it. According to media reports, people in the small South Carolina town were traumatized and were having problems sleeping and eating. A dozen crisis counsellors had to be called into action to manage the situation. Flowers and sympathy cards poured in from across the 50 states and Canada. President Clinton called to express his personal condolences to the community. Teddy bears and crosses began to appear at the site of the drowning as throngs of grief stricken visitors tears mingled with with the murky waters of the lake. Susan Smith was thoroughly ostracised by the community.

The shock waves reached thousands of kilometres across Canada; Here in Edmonton, a three-meter-long sympathy banner proclaiming "Canada Cares" and filled with the signatures of well wishers is being sent to South Carolina to mourn the murdered brothers. Television and newspaper pictures showed a woman who covered her face with shame. She had to be held in custody at an undisclosed location and guarded from the outraged community as screams of epithets like "baby murderer" assaulted her at every confrontation with angry citizens. Our shock, dismay, and outrage that a parent could commit such an act (Two thirds of murdered children are killed by their own parents) are healthy reactions to a horrible crime.

In another story, a little closer to home, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, another parent is on trial for murdering his child. Like Susan Smith, Robert Latimer tried to cover the killing of his daughter with a lie, but confessed when the evidence became too strong. Like Smith, Latimer may have been under great stress. Like the community of Union, South Carolina, the community of Wilkie, Saskatchewan also reacted with sympathy and outrage, but their sympathy was for a father who confessed to killing his daughter and their outrage was directed toward the police and prosecutors who charged him with murder.

Unlike the two South Carolina brothers who were murdered, Tracy Lynn Latimer who was killed by her father was severely handicapped with cerebral palsy. Robert Latimer, her father is not ashamed and the rather than being ostracised, his friends and neighbors have taken up a collection to defend him for a "mercy-killing." Outside the courthouse where his trial began on Monday, he told reporters, "I think anyone who believes in this charge is a torture monger."

Some people may object to tying the Tracy Latimer's murder to that of Susan Smith, but the media has consistently tied it to Sue Rodriguez case which has less in common with it. It is true that unlike Michael and Alexander Smith, Tracy Latimer and Sue Rodriguez were disabled. However, unlike Sue Rodriguez, the South Carolina brothers and Tracy Latimer were all killed by their parents, and, more importantly, they never asked to be killed. Like Robert Latimer, Susan Smith says that she killed her children out of love. Which differences and which simialarities more important?

What makes the Saskatchewan case so different from the one in South Carolina? Where are the "Canada Cares" banners for children with disabilities?" Where are the flowers, cards, and teddy bears? Crimes against people with disabilities are chronically trivialized. This month, an Alberta Court of Appeals Court had to overrule the sentence of a male nurse who was given an 18 month sentence for sexually assaulting a woman who was strapped to a bed in the intensive care unit of local hospital because the original judge had given a lighter sentence because the woman's condition was considered "favorable" to the perpetrator.

We are worried about whether the violence of Power Rangers is a bad model for Canadian children, while we present a model that says its wrong for parents to kill their children unless they are disabled. Where are our tears for Tracy Latimer? Perhaps when we ask "for whom the bell tolls?" we should begin to realize that it tolls a lot louder for some children than others.

58 posted on 10/20/2003 10:30:35 PM PDT by MarMema (KILLING ISN'T MEDICINE)
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To: Siamese Princess
One could argue there was a built in boundary. When spoon feeding was no longer possible then it was time to go. Terri seems to be on the very edge of that boundary. She could possibly live on very careful spoon feeding and I think Michael has been very callous in this regard. Why should he care if she possibly chokes now and then, if the alternative is to die altogether? Something ulterior is up and it isn't pretty.

Of course we also see people who go on artificial feeding for months on end then come back lucid. It's agonizing.
59 posted on 10/20/2003 10:33:12 PM PDT by The Red Zone
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To: Chancellor Palpatine
"In Europe , feeding tubes are rarely seen in nursing homes"

That's because socialized medicine renders senior citizens who need medical care, "obsolete". They try to get rid of them, as soon as possible. But, "everyone has health care." Health care in Europe means "everyone" can go to the doctor for free. It works great, so long as you never get anything worse than a cold or the flu.

60 posted on 10/20/2003 10:38:52 PM PDT by fly_so_free (Never underestimate the treachery of the democratic party. Save the USA-Vote a democrat out of offic)
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