Posted on 04/26/2009 12:14:37 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
CHICAGO – Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia.
The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
(Excerpt) Read more at rds.yahoo.com ...
Yep, this really pisses me off. I’ve had quite a bit of “drink” tonight and my gf of four years left me. Still, though, I don’t like the thought of playing god with people’s lives.
Don’t worry there’s still plenty of “sheepdogs” around.
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks. Tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox.
Is this the DHS memo again in a new guise?
Still, though, I don’t like the thought of playing god with people’s lives.
That is why they make the list.
In a situation such as a pandemic the need for medical care increases maybe in a geometric progression but the medical care resources can not. Some medical professionals will succumb to the disease and so the available medical care will actually decrease.
The list described will provide guidance to medical decision makers in a very difficult position. Someone will have to decide who will receive life saving care when there is not enough to go around.
This list will do more than decide who gets medical care it will also provide legal cover for those in the unenviable position of making those decisions. We all know that after the crisis is over the trial lawyers will be chumming the waters for clients disgruntled that some relative did not receive care.
This list will hopefully provide necessary cover for these people who will have to make decisions under very stressful conditions.
How time and value have changed.
Just about a century ago, the captain of the Titanic had to make difficult decisions too. Amazingly, the weak and the most vulnerable weren’t left on board to perish. Was the captain wrong? Would he make the same decision today? Just wondering. Afterall, we still call him a hero.
So my mother is dead. (older, disabled)
My son is dead. (diabetic)
My daughter is dead. (heart valve condition)
And I’m supposed to be OK with this?
Sorry, but I will fight to my last breath before I’ll surrender our most vulnerable to the government’s gentle ministrations.
We are NOT animals. We do NOT cull human beings. We fight for everyone, *especially* our weakest. Otherwise we’re no better than dogs.
Be a human being. Use your G-d given compassion.
First standard medicine needs to come up with an effective flu treatment, and then they can have the hubris to have this discussion. Right now, once you get sick with the flu it’s up to God, not your doctor, whether you survive.
Those of us who take 2000 IU of vitamin D daily feel somewhat protected from the flu. God helps those who help themselves.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51913.php
I have NEVER seen a triage situation where they *automatically* denied care to disabled and elderly people.
If they are most likely to survive, why waste scarce resources on them?
Those eliminated from scarce resources: Those most likely to survive; those mostly likely to die.
yitbos
In a triage situation where one has to choose between a normal adult with a 10% chance and a disabled person with a 70% chance of surviving that particular crisis you choose the disabled person. You don't assign a value to each person, as a *person*, then decide if you're going to treat them or not.
That is *eugenics*, not triage!
What brand of Vitamin D supplement do you take?
Honestly, I think that this is the socialist government's reaction to their own broken system. They cripple *everything* about our economy then decide to make the "hard decisions" (killing everyone but THEM) so that we can afford their evil version of "utopia".
Try acting rationally. As it happens I am older (66), disabled, diabetic, and am in 3rd stage Congestive Heart Failure and A-Fib. In the circumstances being considered I would be less likely to be treated than any of your folks. I definitely want to go on living, but if I found that a Doctor had to let a healthy young person die and treated me because of some policy of fairness, I would feel ashamed.
Those who had the most to contribute to society's future were saved-- i.e. children, their mothers, and other women who might bear children in the future. Weak, vulnerable, elderly men were left to go down with the ship.
It's also not directly comparable because what happened to the Titanic did not affect societal integrity as a whole. However, if doctors across the country chose to let healthy young men and women die in a pandemic so they could save the nursing home patients, retarded children, elderly multi-drug dependent cardiac cripples, and lunatics, who would rebuild civilization and look after all the others?
It sounds cruel and callous to let such helpless people die, but it is morally right and necessary in the case of a dire emergency.
-ccm
I was of course referring to those most likely to survive, IF TREATED.
You tell him that he's "life not fit for life" because G-d saw fit to "tweak" his immune system.
If people *choose* to give their lives to save another, that's fine. But it's IMMORAL to allow someone to die just because they're weak or disabled.
Sorry that I can't be "rational" about my only son being put on a eugenics culling list.
(My daughter might make it. Her problem is correctable with surgery. How *grateful* I should be that "they" might give her a chance to continue breathing. /s)
And YES, I believed that life is precious and worth fighting for *before* my son was diagnosed. "Compassionate" Conservatives, my ass!
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