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.
They need to know their idea of "treatment" nearly cost your son his life.
don’t slow down too much, you might be declared a vegetarian or something
Bring me the individual who coined the phrase vegetative state - a human being isn’t a vegetable, unconscious or not. I want to meet them, and rip their arms and legs off. Nah...that would be too good for them.
There’s a lot to be said for taking care of your own at home, no mother would starve her adult unconscious child until they died. And what happened to Terry Chiavo placed a blot on the soul of America which can never be wiped away. Never.
lol No chance of that.
Terri was not a human being to the progressives/leftists/democrips. She was a thing to be used to impose the will of the death cult upon the nation. Those of such deep evil don’t really care if you show them Terri was in pain as they murdered her. The Terri Schiavo case showed me all I need to know about Jeb Bush and the family of Bushes. They are globalist serving the oligarchs. Terri was less than nothing to Jeb Bush. Imagine what these evil bastids will do when they have EVERYBODYS healthcare in their control!
The way to end this nonsense is straightforward: that murderous “caregivers” need to be put on notice by family members that “self defense” also applies to using lethal force to prevent others from being murdered as well. And revenge killing, in the absence of justice, is righteous.
Even the murderous “caregivers” are fully aware of this, and extremely nervous about it. They know what they are doing is wrong, the worst kind of wrong, and that a veneer of legality will never protect them from vengeance.
Eventually, it might even go beyond families, since many who are murdered are helpless and effectively alone. And while the term vigilante is not well applied to someone who carries out such acts of justice, it has been popularized to that definition.
Even the myth that such an executioner exists would do much to persuade the murderous “caregivers” that perhaps what they are doing is not kind nor caring, but imperils their own lives as well. Not worth the price, if they have to pay.
I do plan to talk to them about it. I am not going to complain about the care too much because the folks there were instruments of God’s healing. Our son has been in rehab for the last few weeks, and we have been told over and over again that rehab does not see patients like our son. That’s because the patients in similar accidents do not ever make it to rehab. :(. We thank God for saving our son and for his continued healing. Nevertheless, when we return to the hospital where son was starving, I will let them know what I think. So much of what is done in modern medicine is incredible. But there are lots of things that need tweaking. Nutrition is one of those things.
Another way hospitals starve patients is with spiritual starvation. We found that son’s first hospital stop was loaded with believers who were part of the team caring for our son. I have found the rehab hospital to be starved of such open believers. We are very thankful for the wonderful people we have met during this journey.
All the best to you!
At any given moment, humans are a couple seconds away from committing unspeakable horrors.
Nurses have been known to confiscate a vase of flowers brought into a hospital for a loved one.
I have to wonder why do “kind, loving people” consider withholding water and nourishment to be humane, yet these same folks just might consider other death inducing options to be inhumane? To me such a view doesn’t make sense. Except that the other options are more obviously violent then death by purposeful neglect appears to be as the victim cannot response.
There are enough resources. There is not the will.
I hope and pray if I am in this State they pull the plug on me.
Laying in a bed listening to my family grieve and having them make sacrifices to come and see me slowly rot away is something I would not wish on a dog.
Pull the plug on me. If other wish to punish their loved ones in this manner that is fine with me. Personally I do not want it.
This is about starvation/dehydration, not disconnecting artificial life support, “pulling the plug.”
I hope your son is on the mend. When my grandma was in ICU, she was begging for food and liquids.
Here is one group of self supporting individuals who will benefit immensely by our tax dollars.
“This is about starvation/dehydration, not disconnecting artificial life support, “pulling the plug.”
I agree. If it comes down to it, I want my family to authorize “pulling the plug” on me, as I believe my time will come to go back to a spiritual existence, saved by Jesus. However, regarding just removing a tube for water and nutrition—that scares me. Don’t do it without also administering morphine or a continuing general anesthetic. I know a young man in his thirties who went through this, and through the grace of God, recovered and now is a flourishing human being. He told me about being in a vegetative state, but suffering the excruciating pain of laying there and going through much of this. Horrific. If someone is in a vegetative state, I think you must assume that they can hear you, and can feel pain, just as someone conscious would. It won’t always be the case, but the consequences of it being the case are too serious.
Bioethics born out of relativistic post-Christian culture cannot come to moral decisions. Unless the first priority is to protect every individual life and the second is to minimize pain as much as humanely possible, the wrong answer will almost always result.
It’s one thing if a machine is making your heart beat, when on its own it would stop. It’s something else again to be deprived of food and water. Sometimes people could eat, but have been on tube feeding for the convenience and the medical advantages. When “the system” decides to starve these people, they don’t let anyone give them a bit of ice or a swallow of applesauce, either.
Someone should make jeb bush sit down with this woman and understand what he did to Terry.
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