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Texas Pro-Life Group's Effort to Change Futile Care Law Held Up by Politics
Life News ^ | 8/8/07 | Texas Right to Life

Posted on 08/08/2007 4:09:44 PM PDT by wagglebee

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To: bjs1779

Order by Judge Greer. Michael shall “remove” (on page 3)

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder02-05.pdf


101 posted on 08/13/2007 4:48:46 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: bjs1779

While they could have just stopped feeding her through the tube, removal of the tube was a medical procedure, requiring a doctor’s orders. In fact, Hospice care requires a doctor’s orders and the morphine most certainly did.


102 posted on 08/13/2007 4:54:09 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
While they could have just stopped feeding her through the tube, removal of the tube was a medical procedure, requiring a doctor’s orders.

Then name the doctor that did it and show me where Greer ordered doctors to obey Michael as you just said.

In fact, Hospice care requires a doctor’s orders and the morphine most certainly did.

To be admitted into a Hospice in Florida, it requires two doctor's signatures. Her personal doctor, Dr. Gambone, never signed it. The actual admittance record is floating around someplace I'm sure, one signature short. Maybe you could find it?

103 posted on 08/13/2007 5:26:03 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: ran20
Even without her health nationalization something like 50% of health spending is now government. And I would guess in these type of long term end of life care examples its higher then 50% already.

Do you have an references for these numbers or are you just making them up?

Hillary would probably go farther then me.

So you and Hillery advocate the same thing, just to different degrees. If I can pay for the life sustaining medical treatment I need, through my own direct savings or an insurance policy, neither your nor Hillery's opinion should have any say in the matter whatsoever.

For me the main question is what is in the best interests for the life, includign quality of life of the patient.

Putting what some third party believes is the "best interest" of the patient over the expressed interest of the patient is the goal of socialized medicine. No one should be allowed to prohibit the purchase of live sustaining medical treatment.

Hillary and especially some of her friends add another question. What benefits the collective.

That difference is only subjective. Once you prohibit people from the life sustaining medical care they want to pay for, you have lost any meaningful distinction. The decision should rest with the individual alone.

I think she would actually prefer government administrators maybe doctors themselves but in high level bureaucratic positions, to make rules that doctors in the government system must follow.

It's clear that there isn't anything more to debate. Thank you for your frankness in clarifying this statute's real socialistic purpose.

104 posted on 08/13/2007 9:05:19 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: hocndoc
I don’t play golf - mine’s the water garden - these days that has to be done early in the morning.

Well at least you have a hobby for when you aren't working to kill innocent people by cutting of their life sustaining medical treatment against their will.

And I don’t “pull the plug.”

Just as with abortion, anyone who works to keep it legal is culpable with those who wield the weapon, be it a electric vacuum aspirator or the switch of a dialysis machine. Your guilt is equivalent.

Instead, my husband and I have dedicated our resources to pro-life activism and bioethics

If you and your husband falsely proclaim that defending a statute that allows the legalized removal of life sustaining medical care against a patient's wishes as being pro-life, than you are truly as duplicitous as you are murderous.

105 posted on 08/13/2007 9:08:47 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek

Do you ever drive on government owned roads? Do you ever use a toilet that’s hooked up to a municipal water/sewer system? Do you ever use telephone service which is regulated by the government? Do you ever eat food which has been inspected by a government agency? If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” then why are you insisting that people should be required to perform surgery on themselves rather than hire a doctor who is licensed by the government?


106 posted on 08/13/2007 10:54:31 PM PDT by BykrBayb (In memory of my Friend T'wit. ~ Þ)
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To: Ronaldus Magnus

We never stop treating and caring for the patient. However, I must use my medical judgment to decide whether a technology or medication prolongs dying.

I will not write orders for treatments that cause pain, continual insertion of needles, suctioning by that wall vacuum you mentioned, catheterization of the bladder, disimpaction of the bowel, itching, collapsed lungs and broken ribs when a patient is dying - sometimes faster because of these treatments - any more than I would write orders to over sedate a patient with narcotics.

The safe guard is the review of the facts by the ethics committee, and the Medical Board and community scrutiny are backups.

The ill-advised attempts to change the law so that doctors could never bow out of the case, and which deliberately removed legal protection when the doctor refused to do what he or she believed harmful, risked making every case a legal judgment rather than medical. Emilio Gonzales’ mother lost guardianship of her son because her lawyer talked her into taking his case to court. His lungs collapsed repeatedly from the ventilator pressures, and yet she still was encouraged to fight for surgery for a tracheostomy, so that she could be political tool at her baby boy’s expense. And the judge ended up in charge of her son’s fate.

You may say anything on this forum, that is free speech and the purpose of this forum. However, that does not make it right, necessary or helpful. You are wrong on this point, just as you are wrong to make it personal.

I pray that the Lord will give you peace and wisdom.


107 posted on 08/14/2007 2:49:42 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: bjs1779

I’m not arguing with you. I am saying that it was wrong for any doctor to act in a way that intended death.


108 posted on 08/14/2007 2:53:59 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
I’m not arguing with you. I am saying that it was wrong for any doctor to act in a way that intended death.

What is your opinion on putting a non-terminal patients in a hospice for 5 years?

109 posted on 08/14/2007 4:34:14 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: bjs1779

I know that I had 2 patients on hospice at home, for 3 years. One with very unstable chronic bronchitis, another with unstable angina and heart disease. Each died, in the hospital, within a month after being “kicked off” hospice.

The hospice I know is one way of coordinating and funding care that includes nursing care and medications to relieve symptoms when disease is untreatable, and death is expected within 6 months.

I can’t help but believe that the symptom relief that came from the hospice nurses eased the breathing of the first and took stress off the heart of the second, and that’s why they lived so long. Without the hospice nurse checking in on them, each ended up in the hospital, possibly much later in the course of an attack than they would have if the nurse had been there. The high-tech and medication-intensive environment of the hospital most likely increased both the mental and physical stress.


110 posted on 08/14/2007 8:15:13 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
We never stop treating and caring for the patient.

What a psychotically deceitful thing to say. Your false statement above is only nominally true if you perversely consider "treating" and "caring" for a patient to include cutting off their life sustaining medical care against their will.

However, I must use my medical judgment to decide whether a technology or medication prolongs dying.

Every medical treatment for every condition "prolongs dying" since living is also inherently dying. Your medical judgment has been exposed as being intrinsically perverted.

I will not write orders for treatments that cause pain,

So no orders for recuperative physical therapy from you. No gain is worth any pain in your sick school of medicine.

...continual insertion of needles,

So no need to proscribe insulin for diabetics, they are better off dead.

...suctioning by that wall vacuum you mentioned,

That was used in analogy to your false and polluted view of immunity from culpability.

...catheterization of the bladder,

Whoa, you'd even off everyone with a urethral stricture? You are one sick puppy.

...disimpaction of the bowel,

So you think your patients with chronic constipation are better off dead?

...itching,

You'd whack someone for dry scalp?

...collapsed lungs and broken ribs

I wonder if your local high school's football players know that you consider a hard tackle worthy of a death sentence?

when a patient is dying

Again, we're all dying. People like you just like to speed up the process for everyone else.

The safe guard is the review of the facts by the ethics committee, and the Medical Board and community scrutiny are backups.

Based on what you have written on this tread, if the participants in these organizations are anything like you the process is hopelessly flawed.

The ill-advised attempts to change the law so that doctors could never bow out of the case, and which deliberately removed legal protection when the doctor refused to do what he or she believed harmful, risked making every case a legal judgment rather than medical.

So cab drivers and tow truck operators can be required by law to take every request in the middle of the night, but incompetent hack doctors can't be burdened by providing life sustaining medical care for fear of higher insurance premiums when they choose to kill people.

Emilio Gonzales’ mother lost guardianship of her son because her lawyer talked her into taking his case to court. His lungs collapsed repeatedly from the ventilator pressures, and yet she still was encouraged to fight for surgery for a tracheostomy, so that she could be political tool at her baby boy’s expense.

You attribute malicious thoughts to woman trying to keep her sick child alive. Wow, a psychopathic medium! I'd ask if you read palms too but from what you have written here I am fairly certain you don't put that much effort into your diagnoses.

And the judge ended up in charge of her son’s fate.

But according to you that is a better outcome than his own mother who's mind you say you can read.

You may say anything on this forum, that is free speech and the purpose of this forum.

And you can apparently get off on killing your patients in the sad state of Texas.

However, that does not make it right, necessary or helpful.

Nor does all your killing. I'm just glad to have contributed to getting a sicko like you to document the perversity of their murderous thought process and clearly incompetent medical reasoning.

You are wrong on this point, just as you are wrong to make it personal.

The deliberate murder of innocent human beings is always personal. Only a homicidal psychopath wouldn't already know that.

I pray that the Lord will give you peace and wisdom.

I pray that the Lord will have mercy on you and all of the pitiful patients unfortunate enough to have you involved with overriding their expressed desire for life sustaining medical care.

111 posted on 08/14/2007 10:06:40 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: Ronaldus Magnus

And the surest and fastest way to “kill” Emilio would have been to do what his mother demanded: attempt to place and use a tracheostomy.

Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience, as well as being an unimpeachable pro-life activist and ethicist, and the Council of Bishops of Texas even agreed that it was ethical to turn off the ventilator in the case of Emilio Gonzales. (I probably would not have gone that far, but would have refused to increase the technology or do painful maneuvers to maintain the ventilator.)

Life at all costs is not medicine.


112 posted on 08/15/2007 4:49:19 AM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
I know that I had 2 patients on hospice at home, for 3 years. One with very unstable chronic bronchitis, another with unstable angina and heart disease. Each died, in the hospital, within a month after being “kicked off” hospice.

I don't believe that is what I asked you. Do you know what I asked you? Remember, Terri had no such problems. Whats with the detour?

113 posted on 08/15/2007 4:58:11 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: bjs1779

Sorry, I thought I had - The hospice that I know is for people who are expected to die from their disease within 6 months. As in the case of my man and woman, sometimes we’re wrong about that diagnosis of terminal or end stage disease. (In their cases, the hospice care actually prolonged their lives and was the reason my diagnosis turned out to be wrong.)

However, Terri Schiavo did not meet the Medicare criteria for hospice from a medical standpoint - only a legal one.


114 posted on 08/15/2007 7:31:57 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
And the surest and fastest way to “kill” Emilio would have been to do what his mother demanded: attempt to place and use a tracheostomy.

I don't recall anyone at the time claiming it would hasten his death. The only concern your side expressed was that it would lengthen his life.

Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience, as well as being an unimpeachable pro-life activist and ethicist, and the Council of Bishops of Texas even agreed that it was ethical to turn off the ventilator in the case of Emilio Gonzales.

Don't know him, but I highly doubt that he said it would be permissible to do so against the mother's expressed wishes.

(I probably would not have gone that far, but would have refused to increase the technology or do painful maneuvers to maintain the ventilator.)

Based on what you have written here, I am confident that you would attempt to override his mother's expressed wishes with whatever course of action resulted in the boy's murder as soon as was possible.

Life at all costs is not medicine.

Medicine by definition is the science of prolonging and improving life. Only an incompetent hack wouldn't know this. Your immoral attempt and perverting the real definition betrays your depraved conscience.

115 posted on 08/15/2007 8:55:13 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: Ronaldus Magnus

I’m surprised that you haven’t heard of Father Tad at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. You ought to look him up.

In addition to discussions at the blogs linked to before, the second Ethics Committee report explained why a trach wasn’t appropriate. It was published on line by the North Country Gazette after his mother’s lawyer leaked it to the press. It’s available in a Word Document here: http://www.northcountrygazette.org/documents/PediEthicsCommitteeReport.doc

Medicine cannot always “prolong and improve life.” Father Tad and the 23 active Bishops in Texas agreed that doing what the mother asked, placing a tracheostomy, would have been medically innappropriate.


116 posted on 08/15/2007 11:10:57 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
However, Terri Schiavo did not meet the Medicare criteria for hospice from a medical standpoint - only a legal one.

You have a short memory. It takes two doctors signatures to make it it legal.

117 posted on 08/16/2007 5:07:33 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: bjs1779

I thought you said there was never a second signature. So, event the legal loophole was not met.

However, as I understand the Federal regulations of Medicare, *Medicare* hospice funding - and I believe by extension, Medicaid - in order for a patient to qualify, the doctor must say that the patient is expected to die within 6 months due to the disease. Of course, Mrs. Schiavo didn’t meet this criteria at all.

I’m sure that State laws differ, however, medicine does not. If anyone named her “end-stage” anything, he or she contradicted the court and what we know of the medical facts. If so, this is fraud.

The extra “loophole” in her case could have been her insurance. Was she Medicare, at all?

There was nothing so sickening as watching those last few months of her life. I have always opposed using substituted judgment in these cases. Then, the trips to the hospital to remove and replace the tube - I believe there was news of a second removal or near-removal - were abuses of medicine, to me. In the final decrees, Greer refused oral food and hydration as “medical experimentation,” which, again, is not appropriate medically, only under a twisted legal definition.

I felt as though I’d entered the twilight zone when the Federal appeals court was more concerned with precedent and judges than with this woman.

All of which proves that judges and lawyers should not practice medicine.


118 posted on 08/16/2007 5:40:02 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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To: hocndoc
Was she Medicare, at all?

Well, she was in the George Felos Woodside Hospice. She was approved for Medicaid by petition by Felos and approved by Judge Greer with a still healthy sum of rehab money in her trust fund. Does that help?

119 posted on 08/16/2007 6:09:30 PM PDT by bjs1779
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To: bjs1779

That’s what I thought. She didn’t qualify under Medicare guidelines - only by the maneuvers of the judge.


120 posted on 08/16/2007 6:14:52 PM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/index.html)
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