Posted on 05/29/2005 6:40:54 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The whole world watched as 41-year-old Terri Schiavo was slowly starved and dehydrated to death by order of a judicial system that defied Congress, the president and – many believe – the law itself.
But the Terri Schiavo story was not unique, as a stunning new edition of WND's monthly Whistleblower magazine – titled "WHO LIVES, WHO DIES?" – makes frighteningly clear. In fact, Terri's case is only the tip of the iceberg. http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=108
Take the case of Marjorie Nighbert, for example. Although she had asked for nothing more than a "little something to eat" and a drink of water, a Florida judge ruled she was not "competent" to make such a request for food, and the 83-year-old stroke victim was starved and dehydrated to death in a nursing home with full agreement of her family.
And yet, for every high-profile case involving the courts, many other elderly and disabled Americans are being quietly "helped along" toward death before their time, behind closed doors, without public knowledge. In hospices and nursing homes across the nation, citizens are being starved and dehydrated by removal of a feeding tube, or by refusal to insert a feeding tube when one is needed, or by administration of overly high doses of morphine. It's a murky legal and ethical area where "quality of life" and economic considerations increasingly are trumping sanctity of life as society's highest value – ending in premature death for too many of the nation's elderly and disabled citizens.
This edition of Whistleblower will show how, despite America's many highly ethical hospice workers and nurses dedicated to life, the end-of-life industry has also been invaded by "right-to-die" activists.
"WHO LIVES, WHO DIES?" exposes the perverse state of "medical ethics" – where some of the top ethicists espouse some of the most unethical views imaginable. It documents the dangers of "advance directives" or "living wills." And it exposes the scandalous classification of food and water provided by a feeding tube as "medical treatment" – thereby justifying the denial of basic sustenance to patients who had intended to forego "extraordinary measures" like heart-lung machines, but not be denied food.
Highlights of "WHO LIVES, WHO DIES?" include:
"Our political vegetative state" by Joseph Farah
"America's quiet holocaust" by Sarah Foster, which reveals that since long before Terri Schiavo, the disabled and elderly have been starved to death
"Hospice whistleblower warns elderly," a chilling interview with hospice expert Ron Panzer
"Diary of a nurse," a poignant first-person account by registered nurse Christina Brundage of how hospice care can hasten death
"Exposing the 'death is beautiful' movement" by David Kupelian, showing how bizarre New Age beliefs influence the euthanasia/right-to-die camp
"The real Terri Schiavo story" by Diana Lynne, an in-depth investigative report unveiling frightening contradictions, cruelty and conflicts of interest
"Schiavo-like woman speaks after 2½ years" – in which the attending physician admits, "I have never seen this happen in my career"
"At death's door" by Lynn Vincent, exposing the mortal dangers of "futile care"
"Assisted suicide and 'death with dignity,'" by Rita Marker, an authoritative, concise euthanasia primer, including the surprising origin of the "Living Will"
"Nazis: Pioneers in medicine" by Patrick Buchanan, showing how America's slide into euthanasia uncomfortably similar to Hitler's early days
"Compassionate Nazis" by Msgr. James C. Brunner, documenting the step-by-step process whereby killing the disabled led to killing the Jews
"Human non-person: Terri Schiavo, bioethics and our future" by Wesley J. Smith
"Never again" – on what can be done to prevent other Terri Schiavos from being starved to death "Euthanasia – in all its forms – has been off the American public's radar for far too long," said WND Managing Editor David Kupelian. "Terri Schiavo got people's attention, but most still don't realize how pervasive this 'culture of death' has really become – not in the Netherlands, but right her in the U.S.
We need to let this simmer, then boil at election time. Somehow.
I've had a grandmother and great-grandmother who each died of stomach cancer. Both reached a point where they couldn't eat or drink. I don't know how they cared for my great-grandmother. For grandmother, her children kept her somewhat hydrated by keeping little chips of ice in a bowl by her bed. As she felt thirsty, she would put a chip of ice on her tongue to melt. That's how she lived the last two and half months of her life. Maybe she could have lived an extra few months if we'd taken her to a hospital and forced her to take nourishment from a tube, but she didn't want that. Maybe if we'd tried to do that, she'd have died a month earlier of a broken heart from feeling betrayed. Nothing about the decisions the family made was easy. There was consolation in knowing that grandmother was still in her right mind and that we were just doing what she wanted, but it was still hard. It was also none of anyone else's business.
The Terri Schindler S. situation was a travesty because Michael Schiavo should not have been making Terri's decisions once he had moved on with his life. We give the spouse those decisions in most cases on the assumption that spouses have a unique relationship to one another and have one another's best interests at heart. Michael Schiavo no longer had that relationship with Terri, and the courts should not have assumed that he had her best interests at heart.
Conservatives are making a mistake when they try to decide for everyone what the outcomes of all of these situations should be. Every situation is different, and the loved ones dealing with each situation are different. Rather than trying to impose a "one size fits all" decision on everyone, we should work to ensure that the right people make the decisions in every case regardless of what that decision is.
Bill
There are those that believe no one has a right to request that they be starved or dehydrated to death if they are in a PVS. It's that right to life thing. This has been hashed over many times during Terri's killing. There is a definite difference of opinion within the pro-life movement regarding this issue.
Kill 'em all!
In Terri Schindler's case this answer is simple.... Judge George Greer made that decision.
Terri is now dead, and George Greer will have to live with that for the rest of his life.
Ultimately it is God who is in control.
As mere mortals it is NOT our decision to make. While they are still with us we are not to starve them to death when they are still able to eat or dehydrate them when they are still able to drink. Anything other than that, IS playing God.
We are not talking about people who are truly "able" to eat or drink. A feeding tube is something that we give to someone who is no longer able to do either. In some cases, the use of a feeding tube is probably the right thing to do. In other cases, it may not be the right thing to do. In either case, the decision to give someone a feeding tube without consent is just as much playing God as the decision not to give someone a tube.
Again, the question is who decides when and for how long to use this unnatural means of giving nutrition. The point of my post is that while I understand some people's desire to decide for everyone, I disagree with that position. Instead of trying to decide for everyone, we should be doing all that we can to ensure that the decision is left with those who should be making it. When there is reasonable doubt, I agree that the default position should be to play God and use our unnatural, life-saving technology. As "mere mortals" we absolutely have to make decisions about when to use the technology that we develop. This decision absolutely is our decision to make, and the question should be whether individuals can make that decisions for themselves and their loved ones or whether others are going to try to usurp that decision.
Bill
"This decision absolutely is our decision to make, and the question should be whether individuals can make that decisions for themselves and their loved ones or whether others are going to try to usurp that decision." It is a difficult decision compounded in Terri's case by a judicial system that functioned broken. In Terri's case, it is the ones choosing for her and ignoring a mountain of evidence that spoke to the unfitness of the one given the right to make the choice, it is that broken functioning that most want desperately to fix, without playing God just trying to get the system which is clearly broken to err on the side of life instead of execution.
I agree. The whole problem in Terri's case was that all the wrong people were making the decisions. If conservatives focus on trying to keep decisions in the right hands, we could have some success. If we appear to be trying to put everyone's decisions in our hands, we will accomplish nothing.
"In either case, the decision to give someone a feeding tube without consent is just as much playing God as the decision not to give someone a tube."
No, giving someone s feeding tube is doing what you can. To NOT give them a tube, pretty much determines that YOU are calling the shots. Convince me that starving a person to death isn't just that - playing God.
As I mentioned, ultimately it is NOT you who takes the person move on. What I mean is sticking in a feeding tube doesn't mean the person will linger. A heart attack or another complication can easily claim them.
Ya know, killing someone off is just as much playing God, if not more, as using the technology that He gave us the ability to have to save lives.
If you want to kill someone off, they're gone. If you want to try to use technology to save their life, you *might* be able to or you might not. If God wants that person, they are His no matter what technology we attempt to use.
I have the impression that he hasn't lost a wink of sleep over his judicial "steadfastness."
Char
None of us controls whether someone's health falls to the point that he (or she) cannot eat. The question is only how far we'll go in employing unnatural technology to sustain one part of what that person needs to live. We aren't starving anyone by refusing to employ that technology. The disabled person is starving because his health has failed and God hasn't acted to save him.
It's obvious that I won't convince you of anything, but it's also obvious to me that you are the one with the God complex. That's why most of the American public doesn't want to put you in charge of their medical decisions.
See my reply on 16. You both have a God complex and that's why Americans don't trust you to make their decisions.
"The disabled person is starving because his health has failed and God hasn't acted to save him." What utter rubbish! Who made you sovereign of the universe to deny that the doctors sent to insert the tube for food and water are not 'there by God's grace'? Following your flawed logic, every ... oh never mind. You aren't worth the trouble to debate.
Of course Terri's folks were never allowed to find out if she could eat or drink. And this doesn't even apply to several previous cases where the people could eat and drink, but it was time consuming so feeding tubes were put in to keep staff costs at a minimum.
Christine Busalacchi ate and drank on her own well but her father had her dehydrated to death because of her incontinence.
There have been many other cases where people who ate and drank pretty well were dehydrated to death by family members for other reasons. So the feeding tube is not what this is all really about.
It is about killing the (expensive) disabled off in institutions.
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