No Mercy in Florida

Weekly Standard via email ^ | 10/20/2003 | Wesley J Smith

[MarMema]

The horrifying case of Terri Schiavo, and what it portends.

AT 2:00 P.M. on October 15, 2003, Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is to be removed, after which she will slowly dehydrate to death. This is to be done at the request of her husband, Michael Schiavo, and at the order of Judge George W. Greer of the Sixth Judicial Circuit, in Clearwater, Florida. If the order is carried out, Terri will die over a period of 10 to 14 days.

The Schiavo case is only the most recent "food and fluids" case to make national headlines, after Nancy Cruzan (Missouri), Michael Martin (Michigan), and Robert Wendland (California). But Terri's case has gone a step beyond all the rest: Not only are Michael Schiavo's conflicts of interest so blatant that he should be allowed no say over her care, but Terri is also being denied rehabilitative therapy that several doctors and therapists have testified could wean her off the feeding tube.

Terri Schiavo collapsed from unknown causes in 1990 and experienced a devastating brain injury. Michael brought a medical malpractice case in which he promised the jury that he would provide Terri with rehabilitation and care for her for the rest of his life. The jury in 1993 awarded $1.3 million in damages, approximately $750,000 of which was set aside to pay for her care and rehabilitation. But once the money was in the bank, Michael refused to provide Terri with any rehab. Moreover, within months, he had a do-not-resuscitate order placed on her chart.

Had she died then, Michael would have inherited all the money. But he denies having a venal motive, claiming that the trust fund money is now exhausted. If true, this is bitterly ironic. For the past three years he has been in litigation, opposed by Terri's parents and her other relatives. Rather than the funds going to pay for medical therapists to help her, as the jury intended, much of it instead paid lawyers that Michael retained to obtain the court order to end her care.

Michael's second conflict of interest is deeply personal. He is engaged to be married and has had a baby with his fiancée, with another one on the way. The couple would like to marry, but Michael's wife, inconveniently, is still alive.

Judge Greer ordered Terri dehydrated based on dubious testimony from Michael, his brother, and his brother's wife that Terri told them she did not want to be hooked up to tubes--something he never told the malpractice jury when he sought a financial award. To the contrary, the malpractice jury was told that Terri could expect a normal lifespan.

Whatever Terri said or did not say, she certainly never asked to be denied the very treatment that might allow her to eat without medical assistance. Yet, in the ultimate injustice, Judge Greer refuses to permit Terri to receive rehabilitative therapy that could help her relearn to eat by mouth, even though several doctors and therapists have testified under penalty of perjury that she is a good candidate for tube weaning.

True, experts hired by Michael disagree. But so what? This isn't a case where we have to believe one side's medical experts or the other's. The issue can be decided empirically by providing Terri with six months of therapy to see if she improves. But Judge Greer, in a decision that elevated procedure over justice, won't do that because, he ruled, it would mean retrying the case.

In that unreasonable denial, it looked as if Greer might have crossed a crucial line. St. Petersburg attorney Pat Anderson, who represents Terri's blood family, believed that denying food and water and potentially rehabilitative therapy that could have made the feeding tube unnecessary, reeked of discrimination against the disabled. She filed a civil rights lawsuit seeking a federal injunction against the dehydration. Adding to the suit's potential legal heft and credibility: Florida governor Jeb Bush dramatically signed on to the federal case, urging the court in an amicus brief to prevent Terri's dehydration until she received treatment to determine whether she could relearn to take food and water by mouth. But once again, the law turned its back on her. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Lazzara ruled on October 10 that the federal courts had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case.

People are often shocked at how Terri has been treated as somehow less than a fully human person by the legal and medical experts who are determined to see her dead. They shouldn't be. This case illustrates how utterly vulnerable people with profound cognitive disabilities have become in this country. Not only are many routinely dehydrated to death--both the conscious and unconscious--but often the people making decisions to stop food and water, like Michael, have glaring conflicts of interest.

Some of the worst such conflicts come not from family members but from a medical establishment eager to remedy the chronic shortage of organ donors. The literature is brimming with advocacy that death be "redefined" to include a diagnosis of permanent unconsciousness. An article just published in Critical Care Medicine, the journal for doctors who specialize in treating the most seriously ill and injured patients, urges the adoption of an even more radical policy. Drs. Robert D. Troug and Walter M. Robinson, from Harvard Medical School and the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital, Boston, want to discard the "dead donor rule" requiring that vital organ donors die before their organs can be procured, writing: "We propose that individuals who desire to donate their organs and who are either neurologically devastated or imminently dying should be allowed to donate their organs, without first being declared dead."

The authors urge that the relevant question about organ donors should be changed from the current query--is the patient dead?--to, "Are the harms of removing life-sustaining organs sufficiently small that patients or surrogates [e.g., Michael Schiavo] should be allowed to consent to donation?" This is a prescription for moral freefall. Not only do the authors strongly imply that some of us have less value than others but that those so denigrated can be killed for utilitarian ends.

Troug and Robinson attempt to justify their homicidal proposal by claiming that we already take the organs of those declared brain dead but that such patients are really alive. I don't believe this is true, assuming proper diagnosis. But if I am wrong, it is a scandal of the highest order, for it means that society was sold a bill of goods about brain death by bioethicists and organ transplant professionals.

The answer to such a moral travesty would not be to expand medical homicide beyond patients who have suffered a total cessation of brain activity. Rather, it would be to permit doctors to procure organs only from donors who have been declared dead in the traditional manner; because their hearts have ceased beating without hope of restarting.

Advocacy in Critical Care Medicine for discarding the dead donor rule follows on the heels of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine's advocacy for legalizing "futile care theory," which would permit doctors to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment--including "low tech" treatments such as antibiotics--based on the doctor's perception of the "quality" of the patient's life. "Given finite resources," the Ethics Committee stated in 1997, "institutional providers should define what constitutes inadvisable treatment and determine when such treatment will not be sustained."

This plan is currently being implemented. Medical and bioethics journals have reported in recent years that futile care protocols are being adopted quietly by hospitals throughout the country.

The Schiavo case has drawn attention only because her family is in profound disagreement about the care she should receive. If futile care theory takes hold, we may see fewer such cases, if only because the unilateral refusal of treatment will quietly take place without anyone speaking up for the patient.

The sad truth is, many practitioners of bioethics, medicine, and law no longer believe that people like Terri Schiavo are fully human. As a consequence, these patients are being systematically stripped of their fundamental right to life and, perhaps worse, are increasingly looked upon as mere natural resources whose bodies can be plundered for the benefit of others. If it is true that a nation is judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens, a lot is riding on the Schiavo case.

[MarMema]

Oh, that was the other thing my priest said yesterday.... When I was talking to him about the New England Journal of Medicine and all the discussion about redefining death there, he said they had already redefined life.

Your links are excellent on this.

More later...

[MarMema]

The regulation, cleared by the Clinton administration on Jan. 17 but then postponed by the Bush administration, states that a newborn is still considered a "fetus" until it is determined the baby will live by "independently maintaining a heartbeat and respiration." Only when this determination is made is the baby considered a "child," according to the rule.

Also this reminds me of Peter Singer and his versions of when a child becomes a human.

[MarMema]

When I go to the website for Project on Death in America and look into their international work, look at the countries they seem to be really targeting.

Romania, Serbia, and England, for the most part

We have to get the church involved and wake them up!

[windchime]

"Soros seems to be the biggest person behind all this so let's nominate him for the anti-Christ. :-)"

 

I second the nomination!  He's behind a lot and is accomplishing many of his goals.

Following are the links I posted regarding PDIA:

#615        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/971896/posts?page=615#615

In November 1994, George Soros delivered a speech on the questions raised by the culture of dying in America. His speech, reproduced here, elaborated much of the origins and aims of the Open Society Institute's Project on Death in America.

Excerpts:

Third, we must increase the availability of hospice services for terminally ill patients removing restrictions on admittance and enhancing reimbursement regulations. We should consider laws that permit next of kin to decide to forego life sustaining medical interventions even when a patients wishes are not known. The government may have to help family members financially so that they can take care of dying persons at home by the least expensive means. These are only a few of the approaches to transforming the culture of dying that our project will be exploring in the months to come.

More:

This brings me to that hotly debated subject, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This is the one aspect of dying that is talked about everywhere -- on television, in public forums, in newspaper headlines, and serious journal articles. Voters in Oregon just approved a law that makes it the first state to lift the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide.

As the son of a mother who was member of the Hemlock Society, and as a reader of Plato's Phaedra, I cannot but approve. But I must emphasize that I am speaking in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the Board of the Project on Death in America. There are members of the Board who take a different position and the Board as a whole wants to steer clear of the issue because it feels it has plenty to do before opening that Pandoras box. Instead of getting embroiled in the debate on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, they want to support the training of health care professionals, enabling them to provide humane, compassionate care to the dying, including improved physician-patient communication, patient-centered care, better physician judgment on withdrawing or withholding care, and familiarity with the principles and practices of palliative care.

****

I believe someone posted a reference to Judge Greer's interest in politics.   George Soros is heavily involved in politics.   Maybe there's a connection with George Felos, also.  Guaranteed they are both dems.

Recent links:

Billionaire Pledges $10 Million to Defeat Pro-Life President

Multibillionaire Soros commits $10 million to new Democratic-leaning group

Soros Backs Anti-Bush Campaign With $10 Mln

George Soros   Link to material on FreeRepublic

George Soros   Google goes on for pages

I can't find a website for the specific Soros group, Americans Coming Together or ACT, although there are many by that name.  Perhaps it isn't set up yet or perhaps they are obscuring it in some way.

615 posted on 09/01/2003 6:58 PM EDT by windchime

 

#626  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/971896/posts?page=626#626

The mission of the Project on Death in America is to understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement through initiatives in research, scholarship, the humanities, and the arts, and to foster innovations in the provision of care, public education, professional education, and public policy.

Since its inception in July 1994 , the Project on Death in America - Grants Programs have provided funding for innovative approaches to understanding and changing the process of dying and bereavement. To learn more about our past funding click here.

*******

This caught my eye because Soros is associated and hospice is prominently mentioned.  He is involved in everything worldwide and has close associations with X42.

I have not spent the hours that would be necessary to examine the entire site.  This particular group has been active since 1994......that's 9 years they're ahead of us.  But for Terri's plight, I wouldn't know this group existed. 

They could be using Terri's case as a landmark case.  Florida is a good state in which to engage this battle because ramifications of the controversy could have secondary political benefits.  And....we do have plenty of old people......if unsuccessful, they can try, try and try again.  Also, perhaps there's financial reward for those who participate that would make the original $700,000 look like chicken feed.  All this is speculation, but 8 years of WJBC has led me to look carefully (and suspiciously) at events.

626 posted on 09/01/2003 8:48 PM EDT by windchime

# 1043    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/971896/posts?page=1043#1043

Found the connection between George Felos and Project on Death in America (George Soros).  Am posting what's available so far until further research can be done (my pages are suddenly unavailable).  

From the....   Hospice is for Caring ... or is it for Killing?

How did this situation arise? Hospice chairman of the board at the time, George Felos, is the attorney representing Michael Schiavo's efforts to kill Terri. When Michael Schiavo contacted Felos, George had just the place to kill Terri: his very own hospice! So, he stepped down from the board, temporarily of course, until the legal battle to kill Terri is over. After the legal battle, we're sure good old right-to-kill-patients-advocate George will be right back on the board. George  (Felos) is a student of Ira Byock, MD (a well known hospice physician) who advocates adding "aid in dying" (through terminal sedation) to the mix of "services" provided by hospices.

Dr. Ira Byock, long time palliative care physician and advocate for improved end-of-life care, and a past president of the American Academy of  Hospice and Palliative Medicine, provides written resources and referrals to organizations, web sites and books to empower persons with life threatening illness and their families to live fully.

Project on Death in America and Ira Byock-  Profiles of PDIA-Funded Researchers and Projects

Exerpt:    (located below midpage)

Ira Byock, M.D.
Barbara K. Spring, M.D.
As a hospice physician and medical director, Dr. Ira Byock is only too aware of the difference between a "good" death and a "bad" death, and the fact that the latter far outnumber the former. But instead of working only with the medical profession to reverse this equation, he and gerontologist Dr. Barbara K. Spring set out to engage an entire Montana town in examining the dying process and making it better. The Missoula Demonstration Project: The Quality of Life's End is the most ambitious effort of its kind in the United States. Modeled after a famous long-term heart disease study which collected data on an entire community, the 15-year Missoula Demonstration Project aims not only to improve the quality of life's end in Missoula, but to stimulate other efforts throughout the country. Organized in 1996, and overseen by an international advisory committee, the project is engaged in several studies to understand people's experiences, attitudes, values, customs and concerns about death. By looking at 250 families which experienced a death within a one-year period, for instance, and by gathering data in all health-care settings that treat or care for dying people, researchers hope to create, as Byock puts it, an "intensive, high-definition picture of dying, death and bereavement in Missoula." "Our approach," says Barbara Spring, "is to focus on what people seem to worry about the most-pain, the length of the dying process, isolation, and other things that make them miserable."

 *****************

Finally!!  A good cleaning helped!  Will continue looking.
1,043 posted on 09/03/2003 10:16 AM EDT by windchime

 

#4294    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/971896/posts?page=4294#4294

Think I've got (at least) loose connection with all but Judge Greer linked here.  Sorry for my seeming obsession with Project on Death in America, but those connected with PDIA have an agenda that is definitely being served here in a variety of ways.

Syriacus, you have a way of finding credentials...Universities attended/graduated, etc.  Would you please see if you can find anything on Ira R. Byock M.D.  I can't come up with this info.  He shows up in very important places, but his alma mater and precise degree isn't mentioned even in biographies.  Wondering if it was Case Western Reserve University.

2003-04-15 From: Newsday, NY,US
Seeing Signs Of Life
Woman is aware, her family says

NASJVP Expert Witness Directory

Case Western Reserve University + Peter Bambakidis

Case Western Reserve University + Project on Death in America Exerpt:

Current Research Projects:

* Principal Investigator (in collaboration with Hospice of the Western Reserve), "Family Assessment Collaboration to Enhance End-of-Life Support," Project on Death in America, The Open Society Institute.

Google Page-Case Western Reserve Univ. + Project Death America

Health Care Ethics Consultation: Nature, Goals, and Competencies Exerpt:

From University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Case Western Reserve  University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Grant Support: The Society of Health and Human Values–Society for Bioethics Consultation Task Force on Standards for Bioethics Consultation is supported by a  grant from the Greenwall Foundation and contributions from numerous other organizations, centers, and networks. The Soros Foundation supported the participation of Robert M. Arnold and Steven Miles as Faculty Scholars for the  Open Society, Project on Death in America.

Clinical Consultation Services - Case Western Univ. - PDIA

Google-Case Western University + Ira Byock

Google-Hospice of the Western Reserve + Ira Byock

Dr. Ira Byock Biographical Info- can't find academic info??? unusual-not listed in AMA physician search either

Ira Byock-Nader 2000 supporter-  list of who's who - way left

Ira Byock, Director, Practical Ethics Center, University of Montana- STILL no academic credentials listed

Peter Bambakidis - Assistant Professor 96-98 University of Montana

Living & Dying Well With Cancer: A Community Conversation  Byock Speaks at Case Western Reserve

Hospice is for Caring ... or is it for Killing?      Felos Student of Byock

Post #1043 This Thread-  Byock Listed Under Projects and Researchers -  Project on Death in America

 4,294 posted on 09/17/2003 2:19 AM EDT by windchime

 

#4340    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/971896/posts?page=4340#4340

'My friend', Byock!  Is Quill mentioned in Terri's lawsuits?  If he is, I missed it!  

Seems that Quill and Greenwall Foundation are prominently mentioned with Project on Death in America.

T. E. Quill + Project on Death in America

Greenwall Foundation + Project on Death in America

4,340 posted on 09/17/2003 3:14 AM EDT by windchime

 

[syriacus]

What a wonderful column, MarMema! Smith is so good at informing us as he slices a trail through the jungle of pro-death lies.

Thank you for posting it.

From the article:
Troug and Robinson attempt to justify their homicidal proposal by claiming that we already take the organs of those declared brain dead but that such patients are really alive.

This is sick. The slippery slope at its slimiest.

[windchime]

Bump!

[syriacus]

Those who are designated organ donors undoubtely have more "faith" in government and the "system" than most of us here do.

Like sheep to the slaughter.

[syriacus]

Has your father thanked you for overriding his living will?

It's great that his family stood up for him, when they could see he was very much awake.

Judges 5:23

'Curse Meroz,' said the angel of the LORD . 'Curse its people bitterly, because they did not come to help the LORD , to help the LORD against the mighty.'

[syriacus]

the AMA had just that year ruled that it was ethically permissable to remove the organs of anencephalics, since they had no legal "interest in life."

The pro-deathers in Terri's case, "cherish" her right to privacy. In her case,
Terri's right to life is unimportant.

But according to the AMA,
the right to life was too important for anencephalics to deserve it.

Hmmmmmm....

[Theodore R.]

Still, Syriacus, some of us have "faith" in government so long as it is occupied by someone with an "R" label regardless of the policies. I just wish the "Rs" would be real "R's."

[syriacus]

I woke up at about 5 this morning. C-Span was showing speakers from a Book Fair in Nashville. One of the authors who spoke had read many primary sources on the eugenics programs in the early 20th Century.

He said that plenty of people were frightened at the thought of eugenics. Plenty of people publicly spoke out against the programs. Plenty of people ridiculed people who believed in eugenics.

But, even with all that opposition, eugenics legislation passed, thanks to the pressure of influential groups like the Carnegie Foundation.

It was frightening.

[syriacus]

Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey, [aka Melvil Dewey] the youngest of five children, was born on December 10, 1851 to a poor family living in a small town in northern New York. [snip] Following graduation, Melville worked towards improving library classificaiton systems.

[syriacus]

Oh look, the [Troug] is a pediatric anesthesiologist. How convenient.

And Schiavo is a respiratory therapist. What a team they could make!! (if Schiavo's license is good)

[phenn]

Wesley J. Smith and David Kirkland will be featured guests on Coast to Coast AM tonight starting at 1.00am ET. This is discussing Terri's case and the culture of death. Please let everyone in on it.

www.coasttocoastam.com or www.artbell.com

[syriacus]

www.coasttocoastam.com or www.artbell.com

Thanks, phenn.

My son just told me Hannity and Colmes will discuss Terri's fight in a bit.

[MarMema]

ping

[america-rules]

If I was Terri Schiavo I hope they put me under 9 years earlier !

This is disgusting keeping her alive !

[MarMema]

I am more than sure that you will not have any problem being killed if that is what you choose.

However these issues are about something other than the right to die and make choices about your future.

Many of the people dehydrated to death prior to Terri have asked for food and water, but the judge in the case ruled that they were incompetent to request it for themselves. And they were killed.

Several people killed in this manner under the "right to die" specifically said they wanted to live, but were killed anyway.

The real issue here is that the disabled are being labeled as useless eaters and children in a neuro unit at Boston Childrens ICU are being considered potential organ donors, alive.

The other issues are the coming utilitarian medical society, when soon you won't have the choice to live if you want to anyway, because the hospital or your doctor will say care is useless, since what you suffer from is "incurable". Even if it is diabetes or some other condition that many people live with ok for years.

The other thing is that right now in the UK there is a bill in Parliament that will allow physicians to euthanize any person they consider mentally disabled, because the physician deems their quality of life to be less than they would prefer.

So, many, like yourself perhaps, think this is about a right to choose, when in reality it is all about losing the right to choose.

[pc93]

Call Jeb's Office at 850-488-4441 and ask to speak to Lauren O'Conner (Aide to
Governor Bush). Let her know that by Jeb's own admission in his Amicus
Memorandum that Terri is being denied due process. Let her know that Jeb as
Govenor has an obligation to step in and bring a halt to Terri's execution.
Do not stop calling.

Please spread the message!

[pc93]

Call Jeb's Office at 850-488-4441 and ask to speak to Lauren O'Conner (Aide to
Governor Bush). Let her know that by Jeb's own admission in his Amicus
Memorandum that Terri is being denied due process. Let her know that Jeb as
Govenor has an obligation to step in and bring a halt to Terri's execution.
Do not stop calling.

Please spread the message!