Posted on 06/12/2014 11:28:12 AM PDT by redreno
Radio personality Casey Kasem has been taken off life support after a judge ruled Wednesday that daughter Kerri Kasem could start withholding medication, food and fluids.
Mr. Kasem, 82, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, sepsis and dementia, the Detroit Free Press reported.
“Transitioning our father’s treatment to comfort-oriented care was one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make,” Kerri wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday.
“For people who do not understand the natural dying process: Giving food and water to a dying body creates pain and further suffering,” she wrote in a later post. “The body does not want or require food or water anymore in the dying process. My father can no longer digest foods and fluids fill his lungs up and will suffocate him. My Dad IS on pain meds.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
An infirmed parent or sibling has the same basic needs for food, water, shelter, etc. as an infant child.
Would you leave your infirmed parent to die because they 'will not work'?
Once again you’re missing my point.
People should and are caring and charitable to one another for many diverse reasons. But the idea of human rights, yea the phrase and words themselves, have a meaning. When we casually define everything as a human right we cheapen the real meaning of human rights.
I invite you to read John Locke a familiarize yourself once again with natural rights.
You got that right. I think this is a horrible way for people to rationalize murder. He will pass on in time. To withhold water and food is to murder him.
Have you ever personally and physically dealt with someone during end of life care? If you have, you’d know that attempting to force (and I say force because many refuse) food and water on a terminally ill person can hasten their death.
No, I'm not. I understand your point.
You're putting words into my mouth and arguing with me for something I never said.
Please show where I said on this thread that food and water are a human right.
Facebook? Thank goodness it wasn’t announced on Twitter. That would have been tasteless.
Yes. I work for a hospice provider so I’m very familiar with when food and water becomes overly burdensome at end of life versus when its taken away simply to hasten death. The latter is far more common these days than the former, unfortunately.
Food and water basic human rights?
So you’re saying that these days, the actual death of the dying is often hastened because medical professionals and family members starve and dehydrate the patient...even though this dying person can still eat and drink? What hospice provider would permit this, and why have you not documented and reported the staff to your state boards?
Conflating "life support" and the withholding of food and fluids is Nazi-esque euphemism at its worst.
It happened in a Florida hospice a number of years ago. Maybe you heard of the case? The victim’s name was Terri Schiavo. It was going on before then and has exploded in prevalence since then. I’ve spoken to Terri’s brother, sister and mother at several pro life conferences now. They are dealing with multiple cases like hers every day.
Google search hospice and Medicare fraud. The most common charges are certifying patients as hospice eligible who are not actually terminal. If you take an elderly patient who is not terminal and certify them as terminal to bill Medicare, and take away all their chronic meds (to save money, the hospice provider has to pay for all meds related to terminal diagnosis) that patient suddenly appears to be hospice eligible very quickly and nobody asks questions.
Yes, I’m saying this is happening every day all across the country. Yes, I have personally witnessed it.
No, the government is not in the least interested in investigating it because its one of the ways ObamaCare plans to balance the books.
If only one out of five hospice and palliative care patient is dying prematurely due to premature removal of nutrition and hydration (pro life leaders I have personally spoken with fear the number is higher) and 1.6 million Americans were cared for within the palliative and hospice fields in 2013, then that’s about 300,000 cases of euthanasia per year today in the USA. It might be only one out of ten, it might be one out of four, but it’s the biggest pro life battle Christian conservatives are facing right now and very few are aware of its scale, and very few are willing to address it.
I’ll not go down this road with you. You know darn well what this conversation is about and what started it. Good evening to you.
“Life Support” is a Respirator.
Intravenous Nourishment and Fluids aren’t.
Life and liberty basic human rights? Let someone withhold your fluids for a week and see how well those other rights work out for you. If you have a right to life, then the innocent and defenseless also have a right to food and water - Unless you think the right to life is conditional upon being born or being able to feed yourself from the moment of birth until death.
Force feeding me against my written directive is not exercising my rights.
It could be a form of torture.
I know from my experience with my father and my mothers experience with her sister.
It’s sanctimonious to talk about rights and insisting they be forced upon suffering people and against their will.
The days of being hooked up to machines against our will are in the past. Everyone has advance directives.
The days of our lives being taken from us because we are not actively contributing to the state coffers are upon on, my FRiend. You need not fear artificial nutrition and hydration against your will. Fear instead rationing and denial of care. The former is an irrational fear, the latter a very real one.
Nobody is talking about forcing anything on anybody.
Sanctimonious?!? People are routinely being euthanized by dehydration and you are so obsessed with your libertarian narrative that you don't give a damn. Just so long as YOUR advance directives are carried out you don't care that the vulnerable and defenseless are being denied food and water.
I have seen people in my family in pain for weeks before passing away.
If that’s libertarian then that’s your problem.
We took care of my wife’s mom 24 hours a day for months when she was dying of stage IV cancer. The cancer had spread to her spine and she had experienced several pathological fractures. That’s pretty the textbook definition of intractable severe cancer pain. Yet we were able to keep her comfortable for the most part with good pain management. And she received an IV to assist with pain management when she could no longer swallow. Dehydration makes that type of pain worse. Properly treating the dehydration relieves pain and therefore is an essential element of good palliative care.
Dehydrating people to death is not compassion.
On a thread about a daughter wanting to remove the feeding tube from her invalid father and you quoted a biblical passage about 'those who will not work, shall not eat."
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