Posted on 07/30/2011 1:36:30 PM PDT by wagglebee
he death of Terri Schindler Schiavo in 2005 is a distant memory for most Americans. But for the family that spent seven years fighting Terri's estranged husband and the court system to stop the starvation of their daughter and sister, recollections of the 13 days Terri lingered without food or water before finally succumbing to death remain vivid and painful. And the knowledge that other brain-damaged patients could suffer a similar fate has propelled this once-ordinary family into around-the-clock activism.
"It was almost like there really wasn't an option," said Terri's sister, Suzanne Schindler-Vitadamo, when I interviewed her last weekend in Kansas City, Kan., at an end-of-life ethics conference sponsored by the St. Gianna Physician's Guild.
Along with her mother, Mary Schindler, and brother, Bobby Schindler Jr., Schindler-Vitadamo now works full time for the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, a non-profit group that advocates for disabled patients threatened by health-care rationing and euthanasia.
"I used to be a stockbroker; Bobby used to be a high school teacher," Schindler-Vitadamo said. Yet, after witnessing how her brain-damaged sister died on the orders of judges and medical professionals who regarded Terri's life unworthy of even the basic care of food and water, she said, "none of us could ever imagine going back."
Before his death in 2009, Terri's father, Robert Schindler, also dedicated himself to raising awareness about the dangers posed by a culture that increasingly judges the right to life on a sliding scale, a scale on which lives like Terri's count for little.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
LOL!!
You did well, the Troll is gone. And back to his cave in Hell I hope.
But while I was reading some of his tripe, I also did a little link clicking on the nonsense he was spouting - 'quality of life', 'cost to taxpayers', blah, blah, blah -- bullcrap! And what it all led back to, was that it seemed to come from one 'expert' source in that field of 'medicine', called Bioethics.
And lo and behold that 'doctor' who seemed to write the book on 'pulling the plug', is one Bioethicist named Jacob M. Appel. And what a guy he is!
"Appel has argued in favor of abortion rights, assisted suicide (not only for the terminally ill, but also for those suffering from long-term mental illness), and fertility treatment for homosexuals. He has also argued against electronic medical records. He has raised concerns regarding the possibility that employers will require their employees to use pharmaceuticals for cognitive enhancement and has urged that death row inmates be eligible to receive kidney transplants. He generated considerable controversy for endorsing the mandatory use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis as part of the in vitro fertilization process to prevent the implantation of embryos carrying severe genetic defects. Appel has also written in support of an "open border" immigration policy.Now this 'Doctor' is the leading expert who everyone follows, sets policies and laws from (How about them apples). I don't know how but this guy must have studied under Dr Josef Mengele at Auschwitz and then somehow escaped to America.
'SERIES" This s.o.b. is EVIL personified and makes 'dr' Jack Kevorkian look like Mother Teresa. And Rahm Emanuele's sick and twisted 'dr' brother, Ezekiel, too. Another Bioethicist who says, 'kill them all'.
Thank you, sweet man.
You’re here, and I bet there are a lot of folks who join me in being very happy about it.
That was a particularly tasty pile of Viking Kitty Chow.
I don't fear what lies beyond. But that doesn't mean I have the right to decide someone's life should end because of conditions out of my control. That's God's decision; not mine, not yours.
You apparently like playing God. Well, we enjoy a lesser but powerful tool, idiot. So here's to you you stupid, insipid troll...
ZOT!
I keep meaning to tell you that I love that graphic. Won’t steal it though. It’s too you!
BINGO ....
A few years ago, when your ilk were praising this murder of Terri Schiavo and posted that same ‘comparison’, some of us pointed out to your deceitful ilk that the images are not viable for comparison because they represent very different depths in the braincase. It is obvious to anyone who has looked sectional readings and even a dead-soul fool like you could tell it if you weren’t such a deceiver that you even deceive yourself. ... Just for starters, the image on the right is high up in the braincase because there are no nasal sinuses showing up. But in the image on the right, clearly nasal sinuses are in the image. This difference can be attributed to a different picturing angle OR to a different depth of image. But in typical progressive death-monger style, you chose to deceive, if you could get away with it.
Make that the image on the left has no nasal sinues showing up ... I make more mistakes when I’m angry.
Oh fiddlestix! The troll has been zotted. Oh well, there will be others.
Thread by markomalley.
A mother who was told by doctors to consider aborting her baby has spoken of her joy after he was allowed to leave hospital despite being born four months early.
Jacob McMahon became Britain's most premature surviving twin after he was born on February 22, just 23 weeks into pregnancy, at a weight of 1lb 4oz.
Five months later he has now been deemed healthy enough to leave hospital with his mother Sara Fisher, 25, and father Scott McMahon, 26.
Doctors had advised Miss Fisher to abort Jacob after his twin sister, Emie, died when she was born at 21 weeks and six days due to an infection.
But Jacob followed eight days later, twelve hours before doctors would have demanded a final decision from the family on whether to terminate the pregnancy.
The legal upper limit for abortion is 24 weeks, but Jacob is one of a growing list of babies who survived despite being born before the threshold.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Thread by NYer.
ORLANDO, Florida, July 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In disturbing testimony during court proceedings against a well-known Florida abortionist, a fellow abortionist reportedly admitted that some aborted children are delivered alive and left “wiggling around in the toilet,” where they are allowed to die.
The testimony occurred during proceedings against abortionist James Pendergraft, who was forced to pay over $36 million last week for a botched procedure that left its intended target alive, but severely disabled.
Pendergraft, who was convicted of felony extortion in 2001, was told by an Orlando County jury to pay $18 million in the civil suit itself and another $18 million in punitive damages, totaling over $36 million.
Michele Herzog of Pro-Life Action Ministries, a witness in the courtroom, said that jurors listened as abortionist Randall Whitney, one of Pendergrast’s accomplices, “cavalierly stated that yes, babies are delivered in the toilet all the time and many times are still alive, wiggling around in the toilet.”
“I would say it was eye-opening, but we all know what really goes on in these abortion mills. But to hear the abortionist so coldly explain how they kill the children is so hard to hear and so unbelievable to think that it is allowed in our great nation,” Herzog said.
The civil suit was launched by Pendergrast’s former patient, Carol Howard, whose infant barely survived a 2004 medical abortion at his facility. The girl, now ten years old, suffers from a host of disabilities in connection with the attempted killing, including cerebral palsy, loss of function on the left side of her body, strokes, mental disability, chronic lung disease, and seizures.
The jury last week awarded Pendergraft to pay Howard $18,255,000 in damages, as well as $462,000 in court costs, according to reports. The next day, the jury awarded Howard punitive damages of over $18 million, bringing the total to $36,766,000.
“[Pendergraft] has an abortion dynasty around the state of Florida. He only cares about money, and I say hit him where it hurts!” said Howard’s attorney during closing arguments to the jury, according to Herzog.
Although Pendergraft was still in jail for extortion in Marian County at the time, Howard said she was drawn to one of his five abortion clinics because the facility’s website touted his credentials as a board certified OB/GYN. When she got there, she was given RU-486 by a medical assistant to abort her pregnancy at over 22 weeks.
Herzog reports that, according to Howard’s attorney, Howard was given fifty times the standard dosage of Cyotec, a brand name for the labor-inducing drug misoprostol. When Howard began undergoing violent contractions and asked for pain medication, she was told by medical assistants to walk her labor off outside in the parking lot, or else leave, according to the pro-life group. Meanwhile, there were reportedly no doctors or nurses present.
Howard wound up going home, but called 911 and managed to give birth to her baby at a hospital.
Thread by me.
On Saturday the Daily Mail ran a poll with the question, “Should ‘minimally conscious’ patients be allowed to die?
As of this writing (on Saturday), 29% said No, 71% said yes.
I have to wonder though, if the people who clicked Yes had given much thought to the form of the question. Something I learned as a lobbyist paying close attention to various pieces of legislation is to always look very closely indeed at the pages of the bill that give the definitions of terms. What does it mean to be “allowed to die”? And what, exactly, are we talking about when we refer to “minimally conscious” people?
I’ll help here with some research I have done into the question at hand. In the cases I have studied closely, that of Terri Schiavo in the US and Eluana Englaro in Italy, neither woman was a) terminally ill, b) on a respirator c) sick in any way. Both were brain damaged, but the damage did not impair any of their vital bodily functions. In both cases, the only care they needed was ordinary nursing care, bathing, clothing and, most crucially, feeding. Both of them could have lived a normal lifespan if these had been continued.
In the case of Terri Schiavo, her family made it public knowledge that she was not “in a coma,” not in a “vegetative state”. In her case, the public was shown video and photographs of Terri awake and responsive to the people and stimuli around her. In the case of Eluana Englaro, although we were shown no photos, it was revealed to the public that she was not ill, was not on a respirator, was not in a coma and required only food and hydration via a feeding tube. In the US, the delivery of food and water via a tube is classified as “medical treatment” that can be refused by a patient or (and here’s what killed Terri) by a patient’s guardian. In Italy this is not the case, but the artificial delivery of food and water was not specifically dealt with in law. However, in both countries, “assisting a suicide” is an offense, as is homicide.
We are all aware of the media frenzy, including a great deal of misdirection, surrounding the case of Terri Schiavo. In Italy, there was also a loud uproar and the media paid a great deal of attention to the case, particularly towards the end of Eluana’s life. In most cases, the media consistently used this phrase: “allowed to die,” a piece of deliberate and conscious misdirection, that I maintain is maliciously motivated to promote the cause of legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia, a favourite cause on the left in Europe and the US.
In parliaments too, the phrase is consistently used as a type of pacifier by legislators trying to lift prohibitions on assisted suicide. It sound quite natural and harmless doesn’t it, and it plays on the perfectly moral principle that patients who are near to death from illness should be able to refuse extraordinary, aggressive or painful procedures if there is little chance that they will significantly prolong life.
If a cancer patient is in the last stages of the disease and all normal measures have been taken, everyone agrees that it is not only perfectly licit but in fact desirable to provide palliative care and allow the patient and their loved ones some quiet time before the end.
But the question asked by the Daily Mail above doesn’t mention “terminally ill” patients. It doesn’t specify that a person who is potentially to be “allowed to die” is about to do so anyway and is being plagued with aggressive extraordinary treatments. All it says is “minimally conscious” and “allowed to die”.
Let’s examine the following scenario. A healthy person has been drugged into minimal consciousness. He is strapped to a gurney and wheeled into a room and left there without provision for food and water.
Now, ask the following question: Is he being murdered or is he being “allowed to die”?
Now, let’s examine another scenario. A healthy person is in a car accident and is rushed to the hospital with a severe head injury. It is determined in the hospital that although she remains otherwise healthy and undamaged, her brain function is never going to be what it was and she will require help with feeding, dressing and bathing etc., very likely for the rest of her life which, barring future illness, should be a normal span. She is taken to a nursing home run by nuns who are happy to take on the duties of caring for her for the rest of her life. This includes delivery of food and water via a stomach tube.
If the nuns then removed her food and hydration tube and refused to care for her and she died, should they be liable for charges of neglect causing death? Perhaps even homicide?
Is it “allowing a person to die” if he is helpless and is refused food and water?
I wonder how the British public would be answering a poll question like the following:
“Should vulnerable patients be deliberately starved and dehydrated to death when their lives are deemed to be worthless by a hospital ethics committee?”
Thread by Pinkbell.
Jack Kevorkian might be gone, but his spirit lives on -- well, maybe living isn't the best way to put it...
For the first time ever, this Friday night, a website will run a live broadcast of a terminally ill man ending his life in a case of assisted suicide.
Nikolai Ivanisovich, 62, is terminally ill with brain cancer. He will die before cameras and a worldwide audience at a clinic in Switzerland, with the use of lethal injection administered by a physician.
The filming of his death will be broadcast on BattleCam.com, a 24/7 Reality TV website where live events are regularly cast to a wide range of audiences. The site is run by billionaire businessman Alki David, who purchased the exclusive rights to broadcast the process.
"I am grateful to Mr. David and his team for making this possible," Ivanisovich told Russia Today. "My family will be able to live in prosperity after I pass. May God bless Mr. David for his kindness and generosity.
"Projecting the moral questions that will arise from this event, I would like to add that I find nothing wrong with this at all.
“Death is a fact of life... many governments throughout the western world, including Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg, recognize the importance the right to each individual's right to end their life, free of terminal pain."
(Excerpt) Read more at radaronline.com ...
Thread by me.
NETHERLANDS, July 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An opinion poll conducted by the Een Vandaag Institution of 800 general medical practitioners shows that there is a broad acceptance of the practice of euthanasia and a general willingness among Dutch doctors to offer euthanasia to people in their care.
The survey was conducted from 21 to 27 July and published in the Dutch press.
The poll found that 86.5% of Dutch doctors would cooperate in principle with a request for euthanasia, while only 7.9% said they would not cooperate.
64.6% said they were “under pressure” regularly or sometimes to commit euthanasia. Increasing pressure from the family of a patient for euthanasia was reported by 36% of respondents. 80.3% of respondents said they feel increasing pressure by society in general to commit euthanasia.
68.1% of doctors said they had euthanized patients within the past five years, and more than half said they had done so from 2 to 5 times. Four percent of physicians agreed to a request for euthanasia more than 10 times over the past 5 years.
57.4% said they have never refused a request for euthanasia in the past 5 years, while 26.1% refused once. Among those who refused on principle, 39.4% said they sent the requesting patient to a colleague.
Just over half (51.3%) of doctors said they request the presence of a physician specialist panel (the SCEN) while euthanizing a patient, while 16.5% said they just bring in a colleague.
In regard to patients in the latter stages of dementia, 36% of physicians surveyed said they would honor a request for euthanasia made by a patient at the onset of the illness; 41.7% said they would not, and 22.3% were undecided.
For people who request the “right” to euthanasia because they are “tired of life,” 64.5% of survey respondents said they would not assist them, while 20.4% said they would fulfill the request.
However, 36.5% of doctors favor the introduction of the “Drion pill,” a medical kit that allows so-called “self-euthanasia” that people could keep in their medicine cabinets. 50.9% opposed the introduction of the suicide-by-another-name kit.
Finally, 89.1% of Dutch doctors disagreed with the statement, “Euthanasia has no place in general medical practice.”
Take it. It’s yours. It was my second attempt. Haven’t had much time since to make any more. Someday...
Thread by me.
We dehydrate profound cognitively disabled people to death in the USA–a death that comes slowly over about a two week period, often resultin in tissue cracking and even bleeding. We dress it up in nice clothes by claiming we are merely withdrawing unwanted medical treatment. But when the treatment is basic sustenance, not only are we intentionally causing death, but symbolically, we are saying that the dehydrated person’s life is so unworthy of being lived, we won’t even give them proper food or water.
This approach to severe cognitive disability started with people diagnosed as persistently unconscious, known officially by the pejoratively worded, persistent vegetative state. (No human being is a carrot.) At first, we were assured that such dehydration deaths would be limited to people who are completely unaware, the idea being that there would be no suffering caused. But even if the advocates for dehydration believed their own arguments, it would never stay that way. Humans are logical: Once we agree that medical treatment can be withdrawn–which I support–and that tube-supplied food and water is just another medical treatment like any other–which I don’t support, it should be in its own category–then at some point, it was only a matter of time for actual lack of awareness to have nothing to do with it.
The USA, alas, led this downhill march in medical ethics and humanity. We now dehydrate conscious and unconscious people in all fifty states, and no one hears about it unless a family member makes a stink, as in the Martin, Wendland, and Schiavo cases. The UK, which has its own severe medical ethical problems, has been much slower jumping off this particular cliff. Dehydration has been limited to the unconscious, which became legal as a result of the Tony Bland case. But now, a court is being asked to permit medically supplied food and water to be withdrawn from someone who is conscious. From the BBC story:
In a landmark legal case which begins on Tuesday, a judge at the Court of Protection in London will be asked to decide whether a severely brain-damaged woman should be allowed to die. There are legal restrictions on the reporting of the case. The woman, who is 51, is known only as M and is cared for somewhere in the north of England. She was severely brain-damaged in 2003 and is in what is known as a “minimally conscious state”. In a preliminary ruling on the case, Mr Justice Baker said the tragedy had had a “devastating impact”, not only on M, but on her family including her mother, sister and partner. Those family members had “come to the clear view that M would not wish to continue living in her current state and that it is not in her interests to do so.” A crucial point for the family is that they believe M is suffering and experiences pain. Lawyers for the family are seeking a declaration that artificial nutrition and hydration can be withdrawn.
This is the way it always is. First, bioethicists stated (or strongly implied) that dehydration deaths would be reserved for the unconscious. When we who oppose this process tried to save people who weren’t unconscious, we were told it was even more important for them to be “let go” because they were suffering.
All of this is softening us up for the time we will just lethally inject them. That’s what Kevorkian wanted. So far, his dark, utilitarian vision for the world is pretty much coming to pass. Oh, and then add in organ harvesting, already being done in such cases in Belgium and proposed in many of the most notable of the word’s medical and bioethical journals.
Thank you, darlin’.
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