Posted on 11/12/2013 4:10:03 PM PST by NYer
We dehydrate to death helpless people to death in this country because they have a catastrophic cognitive impairment. Advocates for dehydration say it is just medical ethics, the withdrawal of the medical treatment of tube feeding. (Now, there is even a lawsuit to compel starvation by withholding spoon feeding–not a medical treatment!)
Dehydrating helpless people to death was once unthinkable. Then, in the 80s, bioethicists began advocating withdrawing tube-supplied food and fluids. And so it came to pass.
Advocates for dehydration started by claiming it should be reserved strictly for those who are unconscious. They have, of course, broadened the dehydration caste since. But recent scientific studies have now also shown that many supposedly unconscious patients aren’t unaware at all.
And now we learn some are paying attention to their surroundings! From the Cambridge University report:
A patient in a seemingly vegetative state, unable to move or speak, showed signs of attentive awareness that had not been detected before, a new study reveals. This patient was able to focus on words signalled by the experimenters as auditory targets as successfully as healthy individuals. If this ability can be developed consistently in certain patients who are vegetative, it could open the door to specialised devices in the future and enable them to interact with the outside world.
And get this:
These findings suggest that some patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state might in fact be able to direct attention to the sounds in the world around them.
If this is true of other patients, imagine the horror of hearing doctors and family discussing removing your food and water. Imagine the pain of the actual event!
Actually, we know what that is like. Kate Adamson, thought mistakenly to be unconscious after a brain stem stroke, underwent abdominal surgery with inadequate anesthesia. She was then left unfed (but hydrated via drip) during the healing process–and it was more painful than the sensation of being cut open!
I wrote about this during the Terri Schiavo fiasco. From my piece, “A Painless Death?”
In preparation for this article, I contacted Adamson for more details about the torture she experienced while being dehydrated. She told me about having been operated upon (to remove the bowel obstruction) with inadequate anesthesia when doctors believed she was unconscious:
“The agony of going without food was a constant pain that lasted not several hours like my operation did, but several days. You have to endure the physical pain and on top of that you have to endure the emotional pain. Your whole body cries out, “Feed me. I am alive and a person, don’t let me die, for God’s Sake! Somebody feed me.”
Unbelievably, she described being deprived of food and water as “far worse” than experiencing the pain of abdominal surgery. Despite having been on an on an IV saline solution, Adamson still had horrible thirst:
“I craved anything to drink. Anything. I obsessively visualized drinking from a huge bottle of orange Gatorade. And I hate orange Gatorade. I did receive lemon flavored mouth swabs to alleviate dryness but they did nothing to slack my desperate thirst.”
By the way, the take away from all this? Many will say these patients are suffering by knowing of their condition, justifying doctors to lethally inject, anesthetize and dehydrate, or kill by harvesting their organs. Indeed, some bioethicists already have.
P.S: If someone you love is thought to be unconscious, assume they can still hear you. Stories of “unconscious” people recalling all that went on around them are ubiquitous.
Ping!
If you did this to a dog you’d have the humane society asking the prosecutor to indict you.
Horrific. Can you imagine what Obama’s “ethicists” have cook up?
Buddhists for eons have believed that the dead continue
to hear as they begin the death experience. Prayers and
guidence is said repeatedly into their ears for a time.
Works for me. “O Nobly born, what thou art experiencing
is the void blissful and shining...”.
We’re rapidly becoming a very inhumane society. Killers. But what the heck! It ain’t ME! ME! ME! ME! That’s what it’s all about! ME! ME! ME!
Horrifying I’ve always thought that someone who is alive even if on a machine, has some awareness of what’s going on around them.
Dignity...demands care!
The semi-conscious will be second to be brought before the death panels, right after the elderly.
somehow I doubt that anyone who pulled the plus or advocated pulling plugs will feel bad when they see this. They will deny it, they will justify what they did anyway they can.
What they did to Schiavo was sick, depraved. They wanted to kill her, but didn’t have the courage to do it in the least painful way possible. And no, I don’t support her killing.
I should post the photo I took a few weeks ago when our son was in ICU. He wrote more than once, “Feed me!” He lost 36 pounds in three weeks in ICU. The “nutritionist” would not bend regarding the number of calories she believed he needed. They also went from him being on constant fluid IVs to nothing but tube feeds with inadequate calories. Son could not speak, but he could write. His begging for food was very difficult to take as a mom. :(
You mean "cooked up for us", right?
Some say it’s too expensive to support these bedridden citizens, but yet the govt will hand out trillions to perfectly healthy individuals too #ing lazy to support themselves.
Why do they do this to “vegetative” patients such as Terri Schindler? Why not just give them a shot of chloroform?
right!
good point
Try and find a liberal who actually cares. Diogenes had an easier job.
Yep, if we’d stop supporting illegals and crack ho’s/joe’s with FreeS#!t, we’d have no problem supporting our elderly, disabled and veterans in the manner which they’ve respectfully earned.
Yup—sometimes I need to slow down, since I don’t type too well. :)
If you deny a fellow human's humanity and get away with it, you can do anything you want to them.
We have an incredible challenge before us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.