Posted on 03/04/2009 10:37:50 AM PST by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In defending members of his euthanasia group who may have engaged in killing more than 200 people via assisted suicide, a lawyer for the Final Exit Network compared hospice with assisted suicide. Leaders of hospice groups that provide care to terminally ill patients are upset by the remarks.
Michael Kaminkow, who is defending two of the Final Exit Network assisted suicide defendants, has engaged in what some are calling slander against the hospice system.
"Whatever happened here is no more than what happened in a hospice," Kaminkow said of those who have been arrested in connection with a multi-state FBI sting operation. "In reality, a hospice is a suicide. It's just a little slower."
The statement has caused a fury of reaction, including comments from J. Donald Schumacher, president and CEO of National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
"Hospice compassionately cares for people who are near the close of life--but hospice isn't about how you die, it's about how you live. Hospice and palliative care focuses on how dying persons and their loved ones live each day, providing comfort and guidance along the way," Schumacher says in a press statement.
"The quote from that news article demonstrates a callous disregard for all those who receive care, including family caregivers, from our nation's hospice programs," he added.
David Simpson, the director of the Cleveland-based Hospice of the Western Reserve, is also upset.
"Associating hospice and assisted suicide is not legitimate," he said. "It demonstrates, at best, a superficial understanding of hospice care and, at worst, an effort to use hospice as camouflage for a pending courtroom battle."
"The hospice movement in the United States is now 30 years old. My own work at Hospice of the Western Reserve began nearly 25 years ago. In our entire history, hospice has never been equated with assisted suicide," he added.
"The goal of hospice care is to enhance both comfort and quality of life for one's remaining time without extending life or hastening death. Hospice care focuses on what people want during their crowning phase of life," Simpson said.
Wesley J. Smith noted the controversy and said he understands that some problems happen in a hospice setting, as they do in other places like hospitals and nursing homes, but he says hospice is a good thing for patients who might be tempted to kill themselves when faced with a debilitating medical condition.
"I am aware of the stories of abuse in some hospice cases. They make me sick, but I don't believe they are typical," the noted author and attorney says.
"But I have been a hospice volunteer. I have seen the tremendous good it does, including with my own father who died in hospice care from colon cancer," Smith explained.
"A wonderful friend who died of breast cancer a few years ago, received such good care she and her husband were able to enjoy a lingering lunch at her favorite restaurant with [my wife] and me only two or three days before she died at home surrounded by her family," he added.
"Hospice is important. It is truly compassionate. It must not be corrupted with the assisted suicide virus. I am glad that the NHPCO leadership felt strongly enough about this respond to that lawyer's nonsense," Smith concluded.
Exactly, the culture of death wants to replace hospice with mandatory euthanasia.
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Wow. Just wow. Hospice took such good care of my grandmother. When it was apparent that she would not beat cancer they kept her comfortable and the family comforted. Grandma felt no pain when she passed when GOD called her home. Hospice did not euthanize her.
I kind of have mixed feelings about hospice. When my Mom was very ill, they contacted hospice per her doctor’s advice. But they could not get hospice care because Mom didn’t want to agree to no more treatments. I understand that’s how they work, but it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. My Mom was just not the sort to give up.
Anyway, instead my Father, bless his heart, cared for her until she died.
It will come through backdoor. I think they see hospice as a good vehicle to use.
Early on, they will be allowed to load up a sick person with so much pain medication that they stop breathing. then say “well, the person was going to croak anyway”. A good cost cutting/rationing measure for Obama’s universal healthcare.
He died within hours.
Yesterday a former co-worker of my mother died the same way.
There have always been those who "help the sick pass away in comfort".
The question is:for whose comfort?
I hate these people. Hospice allows for dignity. Final Exit allows for a bag over your head while they restrain.
I think that nearly all hospices do wonderful work. When my grandfather died two years ago, the in-home hospice workers were wonderful.
Many people do get to the point where there just aren’t any further treatments, but this does not mean that they no longer need loving care and it certainly doesn’t mean that they should be killed.
Hospice “hastened” my step father’s death. They would not provide nutrition nor fluids. Nutrition and fluids are not extreme measures, they are necessities. Add to that the fact that they lied to my mother to get him in there and she spent his last days trying to find someplace else to move him where he could get the necessities. When one of the nurses saw my mother moistening my stepfather’s lips she screamed at her, you’re not giving him anything to drink are you?
He was in a Fl hospice at the same time the Terri Schiavo was bneing starved. My stepfather had cancer but he died of starvation and dehydration.
are you serious ? was there a lawsuit
That sounds about right. Hospice is really about the same thing as euthanasia.
Just makes everyone more comfortable to not think of it as euthanasia.
This is why it is imperative that the hospice be checked out beforehand. Talk to other families that have or are currently using the program and talk to the caregivers themselves.
FWIW, I would have sued the hospice your stepfather was in.
Grandma was on morphine and valium at the same time. She had aggressive cancer throughout her body, including her brain. There was nothing more the doctors could do for her. The pain was unbearable. I would never withhold morphine from a human in this condition because it depresses breathing.
I think he’s got a point. Hospice is about giving up on people, i.e., not providing any further “heroic” care for them. So in a way it is sort of like pulling the plug.
Granted, heroic care probably wouldn’t work for most people in hospice anyway, but you have to wonder if that’s always the case.
To my utter amazement, I once got sick and ended up in the hospital. My roommate was an alcoholic carpenter who was in his mid-30s. I was there when they marched into the room, pulled the curtain and told him they were moving him to hospice. Their tone was unbelievably cold-hearted and judgemental... You did this to yourself... Your liver, kidneys and heart are almost completely destroyed and we’re sending you to hospice tonight, etc. Poor guy didn’t even know what it meant.
No transplants for him. No second chances. Too high risk. He was scum to them and they pulled the plug. They might as well have shot him full of morphine right then and there.
The same happened with my father. Most of the doctors kept trying to push him into hospice, but if we'd agreed to hospice, we'd have to agree to no treatment. My father didn't want to give up, and we would never give up on him. So, those doctors actually became spiteful, punishing my father and us when we refused hospice. They would say, for example, "You know, in hospice, you can stay with your father all day and all night. We'll even order videos you can watch together - any video you'd like. But, if you want him to be treated, well, he'll have to be uncomfortable, and you won't be able to see him very often..."
Needless to say, I'm not a fan of hospice. I read later (too late) that there is a new option called "open-access hospice", but only certain insurance plans will cover it. "Open-access" means you receive all the comforts and care of hospice, but you also receive life-saving treatment, too.
I have almost exactly the same story as you.
My father died a year ago in hospice care at a VA hospital in Florida. They would not provide nutrition nor fluids. His colon cancer had spread throughout his body, but he died of dehydration. Also, he stopped breathing about an hour after receiving morphine for pain.
I am certain that if he had chosen hospital treatment instead of hospice that he could have lived another two or three months. He could have seen my daughter in person instead of only knowing her through pictures and video chat.
I believe you. They use the same cold-hearted, judgmental tone on "elderly" patients. I've witnessed it. Once you pass a certain age, they behave as if it's your duty to die. How dare you ask to be treated. After all, you're XX years old...
Are you serious? All they are required to do is bring in a tray and say Mr or Mrs____ here is your breakfast/lunch/dinner and when the patient doesn’t jump up to eat, the care staff is relieved of any responsibility/liability. And they heavily drugged him so there is “no pain”. he walked in talking and eating drinking that night an NPO oprder appeared above his bed and from then on he was drugged and starved/dehydrated. My mother spent days and nights on the phone with lawyers, elder care experts and hospitals and nursing homes, no one would help her. My stepfather had signed himself in.
BTW...the staff offered my mother the uneaten meals.
IMHO, if hospice isn’t assisted suicide, then it’s only one step away from it. The whole idea of hospice needs to be revisited. All doctors should be trained in palliative care. The fact that there is a special doctor, who’s only paid to treat patients on their death bed, is just not right. There’s too much incentive there to claim more and more patients are on their death beds.
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