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Union Leader...

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WHEN U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, declared that in his medical opinion Terri Schiavo was not brain dead — though he had never examined her — the world scoffed. Under a bill to be voted on in the House today, it is conceivable that patients could have their life support removed after such a long-distance diagnosis.

One provision of House Bill 656 would allow a patient to be declared "near death" or "permanently unconscious" by "two physicians or a physician and an ARNP." Nowhere does it say that the physician or advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) has to be one who has attended or treated the patient.

The bill also allows the attending ARNP alone to determine whether the patient "lacks the capacity to make health care decisions."

If this bill were to become law, a husband could legally pull the plug on his wife without a doctor who has examined her ever being involved in the decision.

The bill contains dubious definitions of "near death" and "permanently unconscious," and it gives a tremendous and unwarranted amount of power to ARNPs. ARNPs are nurses with graduate degrees in certain nursing specialties. They are highly trained. But they are not medical doctors. And yet this bill treats them as such.

This bill has been a mess ever since it was introduced. Its supporters claim that it merely clarifies when life-sustaining treatment can be withdrawn. But it does far more than clarify. It makes it easier to deny such treatment. It even manages to cut the attending physician from the process.

This is a terrible bill. The House should kill it and try again next year.

Inviting death: Pull the plug on resuscitation bill

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Martin Anderson update...

North Country Gazette

TALLAHASSEE---Within hours after Hillsborough County medical examiner Dr. Vernard Adams issued his findings that a 14-year-old boy who was beaten at a Bay County boot camp had died by suffocation at the hands of sheriff's officials who had shoved ammonia capsules up the boy's nose, Gov. Jeb Bush wrote the Bay County Sheriff and urged him to fire the camp's former supervisor.

The juvenile boot camp in Panama City where Martin Lee Anderson died on Jan. 5 has been closed. ''I believe it is essential that you identify and take appropriate disciplinary actions for each individual who may have had knowledge or responsibility for authorizing guards to force youths to inhale ammonia in order to obtain compliance,'' Bush wrote Friday to Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen.

Gov. Bush Seeks Ouster Of Boot Camp Supervisor

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"One provision of House Bill 656 would allow a patient to be declared "near death" or "permanently unconscious" by "two physicians or a physician and an ARNP." Nowhere does it say that the physician or advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) has to be one who has attended or treated the patient."

That'll make it easier for the decision making to be outsourced to bioethics call centers in India. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. There's a pattern: the most cynical and outlandish sounding predictions about the death culture's next moves are scoffed at initially, then proved correct six months to a year later.

"The bill also allows the attending ARNP alone to determine whether the patient "lacks the capacity to make health care decisions."

When more people have the power to declare someone to be a useless eater, more useless eaters will be found. As will more insurance profits and salable organs. It's a neocon's delight in the land of fascism on the march. Of course, Americans will figure that unless they see literal goosestepping, everything is fine. It must be a case of PVS of the collective consciousness.

"If this bill were to become law, a husband could legally pull the plug on his wife without a doctor who has examined her ever being involved in the decision."

With this bill the plug could be pulled whether the husband wants to or not.