Posted on 04/14/2011 12:45:28 PM PDT by wagglebee
Simon Fitzmaurice with his wife and children
DUBLIN, April 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a powerful op-ed in today’s Irish Times, an Irish man with degenerative motor neurone disease (MND) has revealed how he was heavily pressured by the medical community to refuse the ventilator that is keeping him alive.
After having been admitted to intensive care for pneumonia, a common complication for paralyzed patients, Simon Fitzmaurice began receiving assisted breathing and a feeding tube. Shortly after being admitted, Fitzmaurice said, a doctor came in and told him it was rare and expensive for patients to have a ventilator at home.
According to Fitzmaurice the doctor told him, with his wife and mother present, “That it is time for me to make the hard choice. He tells me that there have only been two cases of invasive home ventilation, but in both cases the people were extremely wealthy.”
“He looks at me. ‘This is it now for you. It is time for you to make the hard choice, Simon.’ My mother and my wife are now holding each other, sobbing.”
But Fitzmaurice’s instinctive reaction was for life: “While he is looking at me, my life force, my soul, the part of me that feels like every part, is unequivocal. I want to live. It infuses my whole body to such an extent that I feel no fear in the face of this man.”
Two days after this encounter, he wrote, he and his family were informed that the home ventilator he needed was covered by Ireland’s national health insurer, the Health Services Executive (HSE), and that the home care package needed to run the machine could be covered by the HSE and his family.
Fitzmaurice recounts that was later asked by a neurologist why he wanted to live, even though he had a degenerative disease that would eventually kill him. His answer: “Love for my wife. Love for my children. My friends, my family. Love for life in general. My love is undimmed, unbowed, unbroken. I want to live. Is that wrong?”
“Motor neurone disease is a killer. But so is life,” continued Fitzmaurice. “Everybody dies. But just because you die, just because you will die at some point in the future, does that mean you should kill yourself now? For me, they were asking me to take my own life. Or to endorse euthanasia. I refused.”
Experts say that Fitzmaurice’s experience is not uncommon and that incidents like these are becoming a trend in medical practice – a trend that has become nearly universal in developed countries, especially those with nationalized, government funded health care.
“Sadly, his story is all too common,” said Alex Schadenberg, head of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Schadenberg said that philosophical trends away from traditional medical ethics, combined with massive tax-funded health care systems, have given rise to a new utilitarian-based ethical paradigm in treatment decision making.
Under this paradigm, called bioethics, Schadenberg said, “value judgments and negative attitudes toward people with degenerative conditions have led to imposing death on people who are vulnerable.”
Hospital bioethics committees now routinely decide to withdraw treatment that could save lives, based on the principle of “patient autonomy” that holds it is in the patient’s “best interests” to be “allowed to die,” often by the withholding of food and water.
These decisions are increasingly being taken without the consent, and sometimes actively against the will, of the patient and his family. In some countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, the new ethical system has led to legalized euthanasia and widespread abuse of the legal “safeguards” surrounding it.
Recent studies out of Belgium have shown that 32 percent of all legal euthanasia deaths are committed without request or consent by patients or families and only 47.2 percent of all euthanasia deaths are reported. In the Netherlands, the number is 550 deaths without request or consent each year and at least 20 per cent of all euthanasia deaths unreported.
Schadenberg said, “Everyone needs to be aware, society is already imposing death on vulnerable people and if euthanasia or assisted suicide becomes legal then it will simply be done in a quicker and quiet manner.”
As for Fitzmaurice, he writes: “I do not speak for all people with motor neurone disease. I only speak for myself. Perhaps others would question whether or not to ventilate. But I believe in being given the choice, not encouraged to follow the status quo.”
“I am not a tragedy,” he said. “I neither want nor need pity. I am full of hope. The word hope and MND do not go together in this country. Hope is not about looking for a cure to a disease. Hope is a way of living. We often think we are entitled to a long and fruitful Coca-Cola life. But life is a privilege, not a right. I feel privileged to be alive. That’s hope.”
I have chewed you and your friends up and spit you out like pieces of gristle. Now we come to the ad hominem part. I’m not interested in that. Go get some better arguments for next time. I’m seriously done with this.
still denying reality...unsurprising.
Hardly! IF you have the courage, answer post 76.
Scary how close we are to Jim’s post right now. That’s as relevant as it ever was, more’s the shame.
I see that you and DJ have scared off the troll. Too bad, but I believe that you have made our points. Excellent work.
Quote from one of my posts something that you disagree with and explain why.
RC one never responded to anything I said. Nothing. And yet makes false boasts in Post 81.
Even liberals who don’t know they’re liberals have a mental disorder. You did well anyway. He may have been ill equipped to deal with two smart, committed conservatives at the same time.
No, you have demonstrated enthusiastic support for death panels.
Now we come to the ad hominem part.
What label do YOU think should be applied to someone who praises death panels?
Go get some better arguments for next time. I’m seriously done with this.
Nonsense, you've been pushing death panels for a long time:
There seem to be two concepts that you folks can’t grasp: 1.) healthcare resources are limited and 2.) everybody has to die eventually.
based on your original question to me regarding what I think pro-life means, you seem to think that pro-life entails not only being against abortion but also requires one to hand over all of his/herhard earned money to the government so the government can keep every single person alive for as long as humanly possible. I disagree with that. Now, if you have the courage, tell me how your position differs from mine.
A legend in your own mind. And humble and modest to boot.
Yes troll, people who are pro-life understand that it entails much more than just being anti-abortion.
shouldn’t you be trimming someone’s toenails for tax dollars? How much do you charge the taxpayers to trim toenails btw Doc? seriosuly.
OK, tell me exactly how, in your opinion, it entails more so we’re all clear on what is expected of us.
You claim to be a nurse, if you do not understand that the pro-life movement comprises more than just opposition to abortion you are even more hopeless than I thought.
You never even read anything that I said, did you.
Pay close attention to what is in bold and what I ACTUALLY said.
Its one thing to spout off at the mouth about fighting corruption in gov't spending (like you do), its another thing altogether to do something concrete to help stop it.
Pro-life also means not putting money above people.
How mercenary.
Oh good, Welfare ends tomorrow. (/sarc)
Anybody that wants a ventilator or other seriously expensive technology to stay viable beyond the obvious expiration date that God has stamped on them should be able to have one at their own expense. Tax payers should not have to pay for it.
Dagnabbit, but I've checked all the parts I can see, and even had my wife check the rest, and even under UV light just couldn't find that expiration date stamp. Maybe you can tell me where it is.
If this man, a taxpayer paid his taxes, and this is a State (taxpayer) funded health care system, why shouldn't he be entitled to the care he paid for?
Or do the taxpayers just get to pay for it, not benefit from it?
This is especially true, IMHO, if the root cause of your underlying disease process can be attributed to poor lifestyle choices on your part.
I thought the disease was genetic. Maybe he should pick parents with better chromosomes next time.
Furthermore, if Doctors warn you hat if you gte pregnant you will give birth to a child with massive medical complications that will result in large financial obligations and you choose to become pregnant and go forward with the birth, that’s on you, not me.
Well, now, you want everyone to pay for you, but not the other way around. All other moral issues aside, in or out. Either you want such a program for everyone or you just want them to pay for you.
It's funny, but some of the most incredible complications in pregnancy aren't genetic nor are they related to lifestyle. (Google TTTS) Thanks to modern medicine, I have two (more) healthy great-granddaughters, neither of which would have made it alive thirty years ago, but for whom the long term prognosis is excellent. BTW, giving birth to a live child Does result in huge financial obligations, even if they pay their own way through college.
He was born this week. No heart malfunctions. Not deaf. And his brain appears normal. Imagine that!
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