8mm
Posted on 12/16/2007 1:06:27 PM PST by wagglebee
Christopher Buckley's dark satire Boomsday imagines a Social Security crisis that pits the generations against each other, and a public relations campaign to persuade older Americans to do the "right" thing and check out early. There are even financial incentives and free Botox if you schedule your suicide.
But what if, in such a world, it were the women - the always dutiful women - who felt the pull of responsibility most strongly and signed up first?
That is exactly what Susan Wolf, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota and an opponent of physician-assisted suicide, fears.
Wolf made her case in a recent The New York Times Magazine article written by Daniel Bergner about the efforts of former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner to pass a physician-assisted suicide law like the one on the books in Oregon.
Women are caretakers of children, parents and husbands, she argued. Aren't they more likely to want to avoid being a burden themselves when they become old or very sick?
Wolf also said women are more likely to acquiesce to the authority of a doctor, who is most often a man.
If assisted suicide were one of the options the doctor presented, as he would be obliged to do if it were legal, wouldn't a woman be unduly influenced toward that choice?
In Bergner's article, Wolf also talked about the literary and cultural traditions of suicides by women, going back to Sophocles' Antigone and Shakespeare's Ophelia.
Wolf was unavailable to elaborate on her theory of the particular vulnerability of women in a society that permits physician-assisted suicide. Her office at Minnesota said she was dealing with a health crisis involving her mother.
But something about this point of view didn't sit right with me, particularly because statistics from the first decade of the Oregon law show that assisted suicides have been split pretty evenly between men and women.
So I pursued it with Dr. Peter Terry, a professor of medicine in pulmonary and critical care at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of Hopkins' Berman Bioethics Institute.
"The Oregon statistics don't on the surface suggest that there will be a propensity of overinvolvement by women," he said.
And, he said, "There are relatively good sociologic studies that suggest that women tend to have larger support groups as they age than men.
"The effect of the support group might counter any propensity."
Exactly, I thought. My girlfriends would never let me check out, and they'd make sure I was cared for.
It also occurred to me that, while my mother's generation might have been vulnerable to a suggestion that once her care-giving days were over, she was expendable, I doubt that this generation of women would think that way.
We are the boomers, after all. We think we are the center of the universe.
"I think that is a good point," said Terry, laughing slightly.
Wolf did not limit her fears of vulnerability to women. She expressed concerns for minorities, too. On that point, Terry agrees, and it is fundamental to his opposition to physician-assisted suicide.
"The health care system that we have does not provide equal opportunity to all. The poor and those who aren't able to afford comfortable end-of-life care, because they are suffering, might choose this."
However, Dr. Thomas Finucane, who specializes in geriatrics at Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, agrees with Wolf.
"I think women are more vulnerable," said Finucane, who also is a member of the Berman institute. "Elderly women are more likely to acquiesce to the suggestions of men wearing the cloak of respectability."
And the mere availability of assisted suicide as a medical option, Finucane said, would "poison every single conversation a doc has."
Besides, he said, suicidal thoughts are a function of depression. That means you treat the depression. You don't write a script for a deadly cocktail.
"In both genders, there is strong evidence to suggest that if you are considering suicide, you have major depression, and that's true even if you have advanced cancer."
In his 25 years as a geriatric physician, Finucane said, only one patient has asked that death be expedited.
"And that was a man."
Jack Kervorkin was a psychopathic serial killer. He was not a clinician, had no experience with any patients (who were not already dead), and he began his killing spree with the specific intent to murder persons who were not terminally ill and who, in most cases, were suicidal because of depression.
He was appropriately charged, convicted, and imprisoned, and his case has nothing to do with what I am talking about.
http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/hindu/sati.htm
Sati (Su-thi , a.k.a. suttee) is the traditional Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.
“Sati” means a virtuous woman. A woman who dies burning herself on her husbands funeral fire was considered most virtuous, and was believed to directly go to heaven, redeeming all the forefathers rotting in hell, by this “meritorious” act. The woman who committed Sati was worshipped as a Goddess, and temples were built in her memory.
Sati was prevalent among certain sects of the society in ancient India, who either took the vow or deemed it a great honor to die on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Ibn Batuta (1333 A.D.) has observed that Sati was considered praiseworthy by the Hindus, without however being obligatory. The Agni Purana declares that the woman who commits sahagamana goes to heaven. However, Medhatiti pronounced that Sati was like suicide and was against the Shastras, the Hindu code of conduct. It is believed that they were not coerced, although several wives committed Sati. The majority of the widows did not undergo Sati.
Second-degree murder.
Guilty as charged.
He is a monster that I hope is around when the time comes.
I have struggled with this
At what point can do we transition from
- Healing the living, extending life
: Hippocratic Oath holds, no exceptions
to
- Prolonging the process of dying
: Ok to relieve suffering if it means accelerating death
Any physician who stands at the cusp of this decision,
without quaking at their inadequacy,
is severely damaged
babbling.geez. some people take offense over anything. talk about a martyr.
However, we don’t live in a country where the government is supposed to be imposing your religious beliefs on people who don’t share them. And “profound deterioration in Self Love” is just silly psychobabble (and certainly doesn’t have squat to do with neurology).
The desire to die may stem from depression in some cases, and may stem from a reasoned analysis of one’s future prospects in other cases, and may stem from unusual religious beliefs in yet other cases. Blanket claims that the desire to die is always the result of depression are unfounded. Furthermore, some people have suffered all their lives with severe clinical depression, and have tried every treatment known to modern medical-psychiatric science without relief, and have made a reasoned decision that they do not wish to continue living in this condition and that the prospects of new medical breakthroughs in the near future are too small to be worth suffering further in hopes of getting some benefit from them. The government has no right to force them suffer further, even if they lack the capacity to kill themselves (i.e. severely physically disabled or in a secure psych ward with anti-suicide measure in place).
Take a look at how government is funneling more and more money into the medical profession and related businesses, with more and more being spent on treatments not wanted by the patients in question. There’s plenty of financial incentive on both sides (government and the medical industry) to legally mandate forced care and forced suicide prevention). The ideas that there’s a government solution for every problem and that there’s a medical solution for every problem are becoming progressively less distinguishable from each other.
Indeed. And that's ONE of the reasons why we need to fiercely fight the imposition of socialized medicine. It's not a reason to fight legalizing doctor-assisted suicide. Two anti-freedom wrongs don't make a pro-freedom right.
All Neurologists are cross trained in Psychiatry
All Psychiatrists are cross trained in Neurology
The Boards are quite similar, different only in emphasis
These are the last “Linked Disciplines” in Medicine
Oversight agency, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
I trained at one of the remaining sites where Psych and Neuro were in the same Department.
My Department head is now the Vice President of the ABPN
Daniel K. Winstead, MD
I trained in one of the most violent locations in the US
Charity Hospital - New Orleans
I have treated uncounted numbers of deranged persons
in 21 years of clinical practice, having over 62000 charts,
many quite sick at multiple levels
And at the bedside of hundreds at their deaths
I may be in error
But my impressions cannot be easily discounted
In addition, just in this thread I have embedded
themes of other belief systems, Buddhism for example
Our image of who and what we are is a profoundly important construct
Determining our behavior
I made no comments re: government and law
Proverbs: “Those who love death hate me.” (God)
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