Posted on 04/14/2011 12:45:28 PM PDT by wagglebee
Simon Fitzmaurice with his wife and children
DUBLIN, April 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a powerful op-ed in today’s Irish Times, an Irish man with degenerative motor neurone disease (MND) has revealed how he was heavily pressured by the medical community to refuse the ventilator that is keeping him alive.
After having been admitted to intensive care for pneumonia, a common complication for paralyzed patients, Simon Fitzmaurice began receiving assisted breathing and a feeding tube. Shortly after being admitted, Fitzmaurice said, a doctor came in and told him it was rare and expensive for patients to have a ventilator at home.
According to Fitzmaurice the doctor told him, with his wife and mother present, “That it is time for me to make the hard choice. He tells me that there have only been two cases of invasive home ventilation, but in both cases the people were extremely wealthy.”
“He looks at me. ‘This is it now for you. It is time for you to make the hard choice, Simon.’ My mother and my wife are now holding each other, sobbing.”
But Fitzmaurice’s instinctive reaction was for life: “While he is looking at me, my life force, my soul, the part of me that feels like every part, is unequivocal. I want to live. It infuses my whole body to such an extent that I feel no fear in the face of this man.”
Two days after this encounter, he wrote, he and his family were informed that the home ventilator he needed was covered by Ireland’s national health insurer, the Health Services Executive (HSE), and that the home care package needed to run the machine could be covered by the HSE and his family.
Fitzmaurice recounts that was later asked by a neurologist why he wanted to live, even though he had a degenerative disease that would eventually kill him. His answer: “Love for my wife. Love for my children. My friends, my family. Love for life in general. My love is undimmed, unbowed, unbroken. I want to live. Is that wrong?”
“Motor neurone disease is a killer. But so is life,” continued Fitzmaurice. “Everybody dies. But just because you die, just because you will die at some point in the future, does that mean you should kill yourself now? For me, they were asking me to take my own life. Or to endorse euthanasia. I refused.”
Experts say that Fitzmaurice’s experience is not uncommon and that incidents like these are becoming a trend in medical practice – a trend that has become nearly universal in developed countries, especially those with nationalized, government funded health care.
“Sadly, his story is all too common,” said Alex Schadenberg, head of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Schadenberg said that philosophical trends away from traditional medical ethics, combined with massive tax-funded health care systems, have given rise to a new utilitarian-based ethical paradigm in treatment decision making.
Under this paradigm, called bioethics, Schadenberg said, “value judgments and negative attitudes toward people with degenerative conditions have led to imposing death on people who are vulnerable.”
Hospital bioethics committees now routinely decide to withdraw treatment that could save lives, based on the principle of “patient autonomy” that holds it is in the patient’s “best interests” to be “allowed to die,” often by the withholding of food and water.
These decisions are increasingly being taken without the consent, and sometimes actively against the will, of the patient and his family. In some countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, the new ethical system has led to legalized euthanasia and widespread abuse of the legal “safeguards” surrounding it.
Recent studies out of Belgium have shown that 32 percent of all legal euthanasia deaths are committed without request or consent by patients or families and only 47.2 percent of all euthanasia deaths are reported. In the Netherlands, the number is 550 deaths without request or consent each year and at least 20 per cent of all euthanasia deaths unreported.
Schadenberg said, “Everyone needs to be aware, society is already imposing death on vulnerable people and if euthanasia or assisted suicide becomes legal then it will simply be done in a quicker and quiet manner.”
As for Fitzmaurice, he writes: “I do not speak for all people with motor neurone disease. I only speak for myself. Perhaps others would question whether or not to ventilate. But I believe in being given the choice, not encouraged to follow the status quo.”
“I am not a tragedy,” he said. “I neither want nor need pity. I am full of hope. The word hope and MND do not go together in this country. Hope is not about looking for a cure to a disease. Hope is a way of living. We often think we are entitled to a long and fruitful Coca-Cola life. But life is a privilege, not a right. I feel privileged to be alive. That’s hope.”
yep
That is exactly where it leads.
Many routine medical procedures (childbirth, appendectomy, bypass, etc.) are fairly expensive procedures, but people live normal lives afterward.
I had a ruptured appendix when I was 15 and an infection set in, the whole ordeal was quite costly. Should my family have been told that either they pay for it or let me die? Would I have been considered "better" than other patients in similar situations because my family could afford it? It's a very slippery slope.
One thing that people need to realize is that nearly all Americans ALREADY PAY FOR THEIR HEALTH CARE, the money that my employer and I pay each month IS ME PAYING FOR IT.
You should see what Romneycare is doing to this state.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/2011_0412romneycare_a_big_bust/
Even an animal is hard to put down. I think sometimes pets are put down because their owners can't handle seeing natural death. People need to man up and face the music.
We can't go around killing and Libya is costing us $630 BILLION. Cry me a river the death lover trolls at the cost of caring for the vulnerable.
It's not freaking $630 BILLION.
Barack Obama makes me sick.
http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2007/06/value-of-human-life.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_makeup_of_the_human_body
To a liberal a late term abortion is ethical. To a national socialist exterminating 6.5 millions Jews was providing humanity a service. In this relativistic world with no absolutes, where it's simply a matter of mob rule and hedonism (which once God is removed it ALWAYS ends up being), where utilitarianism rules and where there is no deeper purpose, his life is worthless. Simple-
Costs aren't a consideration all of a sudden? Did I miss something? Have we found 1.6 trillion dollars to close our budget gap all of a sudden?
Who would you appoint to decide who does and does not deserve medical care?
who do you propose we raise taxes on to pay for medical care then?
The primary consideration is Christian medical ethics. First, do the right thing. First, do no harm.
Sometimes that which is the most ethical is also the most economical. Sometimes it isn’t.
Its all a matter of where your priorities lie. Would you ration care in order to subsidize welfare checks? Planned Parenthood? A new aircraft carrier or nuclear sub?
What are your first priorities, if you seem so eager to ration care for others?
I absolutely agree.
My old dog is the equivalent of a 90-year-old. His hips are going but he quite often makes it up the stairs of the shop or our home just to be with us. He eats well and can still chase and kill a raccoon or a possum or bark at the deer eating the windfall apples. He doesn’t hear as well as he once did, but, then, neither do I. He gets NSAIDS, thyroid supplementation, fish oil and glucosimine. We supplement his meals with liver or mackerel a couple times a week. His eyes are bright, his coat is thick and his teeth are still perfect.
Every day we tell him he has done well. We are trying to steel ourselves for the inevitable. But the time is not yet and he will either just let go peacefully or he will tell us it is time. Our vet thinks he is amazing and is also dreading the inevitable end. No way we will hurry it along.
We have had loved ones who went through misery and still were not ready to let go. It is the individual’s choice. In the case presented in the article, the ventilator was covered by the national health system. The doctor was totally out of line and I hope he is well-castigated in the press.
We pay for our dog’s health care and we pay for our own insurance and whatever falls within the deductible. It is not the place for anyone to decide who does or does not live and especially not based on cost.
This is massive hypocrisy, as you point out, in light of the arbitrary *war* in Libya.
Excellent post.
This isn't about Christian ethics, it's about your tax payer funded medicaid/medicare gravy train. Well, that gravy train is about to come to a stop whether you like it or not thanks to a $1.6 trillion budget deficit.
Would you ration care in order to subsidize welfare checks? Planned Parenthood? A new aircraft carrier or nuclear sub?
I think you're the one arguing for the government controlled/rationed healthcare system i.e. the gravy train here, not me. I just want to see the free market setting healthcare costs, not the government. As such, what you and I fundamentally disagree on is the role of government.
What now? Aren’t people dying off fast enough for the deathbots?
What doctors do you know of with those kind of Godlike powers who are able to make such a prediction of ANY woman? And just how often do you know of that exact situation coming up?
Do you have any idea how many times doctors have told already pregnant women that their babies had some *serious* birth defect and that they should *terminate the pregnancy* only to have the woman delivery a perfectly fine and healthy baby?
I sure hope the *RC* in your name doesn't stand for Roman Catholic because you sure are at odds with that church.
Someone ought to ask one of these clueless doctors sometime why THEY want to live.
College educated idiots, as a friend’s father used to call people with no common sense.
Just curious....
How expensive is something like a ventilator anyway?
Is it SERIOUSLY expensive? It sure can’t be too difficult to use if it can be used in a home setting. That kind of precludes SERIOUSLY expensive, or prohibitively expensive.
It's about money.
nice.....
Why are you on FR again? Did you miss the part about being pro-life?
there are numerous examples of identifying genetics abnormalities
I sure hope the *RC* in your name doesn't stand for Roman Catholic because you sure are at odds with that church.
Perhaps the Roman Catholic church would like to start footing the bill for the healthcare costs of people who made poor personal choices? I suppose they're too busy fighting for amnesty for illegal aliens to be bothered with that though. Me, I just want the government and the taxpayer out of the healthcare industry. period.
Once a doctor promotes killing a patient, nothing he says,
including discussion of costs, can be trusted.
Do you want to live in a capitalist free market society or not? If not, what are you doing here at FR or did you miss the part about being for small government, low taxes, fiscal conservatism, and personal responsibility?
Exactly.
Which guarantees nothing.
Perhaps the Roman Catholic church would like to start footing the bill for the healthcare costs of people who made poor personal choices? I suppose they're too busy fighting for amnesty for illegal aliens to be bothered with that though. Me, I just want the government and the taxpayer out of the healthcare industry. period.
If all someone has is government healthcare, as in this case, you'd rather just kill them off?
Every medical procedure was revolutionary and cost prohibitive at some point. As it was practiced and refined and became more widely used, the cost came down.
Following your line of reasoning, anyone without private health insurance should just die, no matter what it is that ails them.
No setting bones, no appendectomies, no insulin, no antibiotics. If they can't or won't pay for it, they die or live with the consequences if the injury doesn't heal right. Right? Is that what you're really advocating?
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