Transcript of Glenn Beck Interview with Ken Mullinax (Re: Starving Mae)

Ken: I’m the nephew of Mae Magouirk in LaGrange, Georgia. My family lives in Alabama. They’re from Addiston, Alabama and I live in Birmingham, Alabama and we love my aunt Mae very much and we can’t believe that, uh, she is being withheld substantial nourishment…

Glenn: Ken, tell me this, tell me the situation, uh, be, because your grandma has, your grandma had, or your aunt has a, um, a living will!

Ken: Yeah, she has a living will and the living will is not being obeyed. As a matter of fact her attending physician, Doctor Stadde of LaGrange, Georgia, said in probate court that even though Mae Magourik’s living will says tha, uh, that her nourishment and fluids should only be pulled if she’s comatose or vegetative, that he feels her life is such that it should be pulled regardless.

Ken: And those of your listeners that are sitting by, complacent, thinking “oh, poor Terri Schindler-Schiavo.” And I was one of them last week. I said, “Oh it’s terrible, but it’s just a freak, it’s an anomaly. It couldn’t happen to us.”

Glenn: Let me ask you this Ken, let me ask you this. How did your, um, uh, how did your aunt’s uh, granddaughter get control of the situation?

Ken: Well I’ll tell you what. First of all she bluffed us. Uh, we went to the hospital in LaGrange when my aunt was first sick and Beth told my uncle, she said, “Uncle Buddy, don’t even start with me. I’ve got the medical durable power of attorney. I’m making the decisions.” And I said, “Beth, you know, we’re right here in front of your grandmother. Even though she’s on morphine, we shouldn’t talk about this. We should go out in the hall.”

We went out in the hall and we explained my mother’s in uh, she’s had a great quality of life for the last two years even though she was in a coma. [Ken's mother was only in a coma for 3 months, she is now living a normal, active life.] We can treat it without surgery. And she said, “Listen,” she said, she started crying, she said, “I’ve been praying about this and, and I’ve been praying to Jesus. Jesus has told me it’s time that grandmother went home to Jesus. She’s got glaucoma. Now she’s got a dissected aorta and her quality of life is just terrible and we just think she should just go to hospice.” And I said, “Beth, hospice is a synonym for death. We’ve got doctors who are ready to take care of her today.”

She goes, “no, I’ve got the medical power of attorney and that’s it.” So we thought our hands were tied, Glenn. A week goes by. Last Thursday my uncle and my mother independently started thinking, “this is wrong.” Since I used to be on Capitol Hill as a senior staff guy in Washington, I know my way around, so they said, “Kenny, get involved see what you can find out, we want to bring May to UAB hospital.” So I call hospice, I say to Frita the hospice nurse. I said, “what are my aunt’s vital stats at. She said, “well today, her blood pressure is 160/88 with a pulse of 84.” I said, “well that’s not so bad.” I said, “my aunt’s going to make it, isn’t she.” She says, “Oh no, your aunt’s not going to make it because we have withheld nourishment per geth…Beth Gaddy since March 28th.” She said, “I’ve been off the past few days. I’m surprised your aunt’s still alive.” I said, “What!”

Next time, I, she says, “call the hospice attorney.” I called Carol Todd, hospice attorney, ug, said “we’re going to be litigious.” She said, “let me check into it. Heard nothing all day, last Thursday, March 31st until 4 in the afternoon. Carol Todd called me up, “Oh my God, we made a mistake.” I said, “What are you talking about, mistake?” She said, “Beth has power of attorney, but it’s only financial, not medical durable power of attorney. And guess what? Your aunt has a living will and it says only should fluids and nourishment be withheld if she’s comatose or vegetative, she’s neither.”

I said, “Guess what, Mother, get on the phone.” Mom got on the phone. She said, “start IV fluids immediately.” They said, “we can do that.” She said, “start a temporary feeding tube just in the nose to give her nourishment and get her electrolytes back up so she can start feeding herself.” They said, “We can’t do that, you’ve gotta come in and sign the papers.” So, uh, Mom stayed here because she’s a little sick. My uncle Buddy, Aunt May’s brother and I went, the three hours from our homes to LaGrange, Georgia from our homes in Alabama. Hospice attorney Carol Todd was to meet us at 10 o’clock. She didn’t show up and the hospice head nurse talked to us, “oh, she needs to die. You know, the life’s over, no quality of life.”

And finally, we listened to this for about an hour and a half, and I said, “This is B.S. We want my aunt out of here now. I have world-class doctor Raed Agel of UAB’s cardiovascular unit arranging life-saver helicopter.” They kept inching us on out, Glenn, until Carol Todd the hospice attorney showed up and gave us a piece of paper. Turns out hospice had told Beth Gaddy the granddaughter that we were coming over, that she no longer had durable power of attorney and she went before the probate judge that morning and got a temporary emergency guardianship.

Glenn: Oh, I gotta tell you, you can go to all the law schools, you say everybody on the Supreme Court, everybody on the 11th circuit court, everybody down in Florida, they all passed the bar and I gotta tell you man. Just because you went to school and, and passed the bar and you are an attorney and then you become a judge, doesn’t mean that you have common sense. I’m sick of these judges, man, sick to death of these judges. So let me ask you, did they put, did they, so they didn’t put the feeding tube back in. Was she, did, uh, did, how long has she been without food and water?

Ken: No, but they did have an IV in that we ordered on last Thursday and it was in her Friday, April 1st. But when the hospice person gave us this emergency decree from the probate judge, they took the IV liquids out right in front of us.

Ken: That’s why I couldn’t wait on this compromise. It was supposed to be 24 hours from Monday. I waited all the way till Thursday. But how much time does she have? I don’t know. Because she’s 81 and the worst thing about it, you know, it’s bad that she’s not getting adequate nourishment or adequate fluids, but this is a little thing that, that may not mean anything to anybody but me or my aunt. But she, she has glaucoma. She can’t produce tears. She has to take drops to keep her eyes lubricated. She hasn’t had those drops in the last two weeks. She’s blind practically now. Opening her eyes is, is a terrible pain. And they won’t give her the drops.

http://www.hopsicepatients.org/terri-schiavo-10-12-02-press-rel.html (snip)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Ron Panzer, President
Hospice Patients Alliance, Inc.
http://www.hospicepatients.org

(616) 866-9127

Hospice Patients Alliance Blasts Hospice Agencies
That Terrorize the Chronically Disabled

by Ron Panzer, President HPA
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - October 15, 2002 - Terri Schiavo currently is being held in a Pinellas County Florida hospice that is not licensed to provide care for the chronically ill. Terri Schiavo is a non-terminal disabled patient with brain damage. Terri's own treating physician, Dr. Vincent Gambone, testified before the court,saying "her condition is one that there is no recovery. The damage that is done to the brain is not repairable."1 However, the chronically disabled are by definition not going to recover completely. These are not terminal patients, and the disabled can live many years so long as they are not intentionally killed.

Terrorizing the Disabled in America
The practice of enrolling chronically disabled patients into hospice endangers all disabled citizens of the United States and directly violates their Constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The disabled are not so much afraid of getting anthrax or being shot; they are afraid that society will toss them away like a used tissue and kill them. The disabled are terrorized by those holier-than-thou self-proclaimed bioethicists who have no morality and no sense of humanity and proclaim, like Adolf Hitler, that the disabled are "better off dead."

Adolf Hitler summarily executed the mentally ill and developmentally disabled "for the greater good of society." The utilitarian philosophy which promotes the killing of patients in order to save health care resources for others has plunged the US health care system to a depth which calls for shame and disgust. If hospice is to become a killing center for the disabled, then hospice agencies that do so are no different from the gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

Adolf Hitler had his program of euthanasia going on throughout World War II. He relished the opportunity that wartime gave him to carry out his agenda to kill the disabled:

Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, unworthy of life. At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.

The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. 2

Terri Schiavo would have been summarily executed by Hitler's agents of death. Anyone who harms her, by removing her feedings and causing her to become dehydated, is killing her just as if they shot her with a bullet, just as if they were part of Adolf Hitler's Nazi death squads.

Hospice that enrolls Non-Terminal Patients Commits Fraud
The United States Office of Inspector General has issued its warning to the public about questionable hospice agency practices and stated that some hospices have been found to engage in, "practices which ... have inappropriately maximized their Medicare reimbursements at beneficiary expense. These practices include: Making incorrect determinations of a person’s life expectancy for purposes of meeting hospice eligibility criteria."3 A hospice that bills Medicare, Medicaid or a private insurer for a non-terminal patient is violating the contracts which allow hospices to provide services for the terminally ill.

Hospices are not licensed to care for the chronically ill. In order for a patient to be admitted to hospice, the physician must "certify" that the patient is likely to die within six months due to a terminal illness. Terri Schiavo has no terminal illness; the only cause of death in her case would be her intentional murder by those intent on ending her life.

Original Hospice Mission Violated
The original hospice mission is to care for, support and manage the symptoms of the terminally ill until a death occurs in its own natural timing. Every hospice nurse and physician knows that hospice is supposed to neither hasten death nor seek to cure the terminal illness. Hastening the death of a patient goes against everything hospice stands for.

Although Terri Schiavo's case will be decided in a Pinellas County courthouse, any hospice that accepts a chronically ill patient has violated not only the spirit of hospice and the mission of hospice, but the federal regulations governing hospice4

Hospice Organization Remains Silent on Euthanasia Case
It is mind-boggling that the national organizations promoting hospice in this country have remained silent about Terri Schiavo's case, the stream of intentional killings in hospices across our nation and the killings going on in Oregon. Anyone who is informed about the killings in Oregon know that the state of Oregon is NOT reporting the full truth about the cases and that there are cases which are not even recorded by the state.

Hospice lobbying groups like the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and the state hospice associations need to act immediately to preserve the hospice mission before hospice practice descends into the gutter and hospice becomes synonymous with "house-of-murder." It is common knowledge among the public that some hospices routinely kill their patients with overdosages of morphine and sedatives before the patient dies a natural death from the terminal illness.

These national groups need to take a stand for morality, ethics and compassion. They loudly proclaim that hospice is "compassion and caring for the dying," but killing the disabled is the furthest thing from "compassionate" or "caring." They do nothing when non-terminal patients are threatened by those who wish to kill them in a hospice. Hospice staff throughout the nation eagerly learn how to terminally sedate patients and then end patient's lives (through dehydration and circulatory collapse) when they have no medical need for sedation.5 Many physicians are more than willing to end the lives of their patients. (See 6, and 7. And approximately 50 per cent of physicians in our nation approve of physician-assisted suicide8!)

Yes, the death culture is reaching for us all and not by the means that God has planned for us.

The fact that there is no dissenting opinion among more than a half dozen households causes me to wonder if it's because the democrat households are just nominally liberal (being deep in red state territory.) Something I find sorta plausible, they all at least profess to be Christian, though some don't have a clue what that involves as I know it.

But, also, this is a "middle class" working neighborhood. Some of us are financially secure, others struggle from paycheck to paycheck. If the question were brought out in the open I think we'd all have to say we'd be on a hospice death list if physical circumstances took a turn for the worse. So, maybe your immortality question has some meat in it.

All of us except one couple have been in situations where we have had to care for dying relatives also. Because we've been there we fail to grasp the motives (we agree on money being the motive) of the families who promote death.

On the west side of me is an older couple. The man has a serious heart problem. I think they are actually "living" in a similar situation now to that Mae is in. I'm thinkin' that man's wife or either of his kids would kill somebody that tried to dehydrate and starve Chuck. (They are conservatives not liberals anyway)

See, I wasn't kidding, this afternoon's conversation and lack of disagreement from *anyone* along my alleyway have really made me think. I hope this bodes as something that could turn to momentum for LIFE. I just can't give up hope. This at least seemed positive though I can only speculate as to the root of our agreement.

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.