Posted on 06/12/2014 11:28:12 AM PDT by redreno
Radio personality Casey Kasem has been taken off life support after a judge ruled Wednesday that daughter Kerri Kasem could start withholding medication, food and fluids.
Mr. Kasem, 82, is suffering from Parkinsons disease, sepsis and dementia, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Transitioning our fathers treatment to comfort-oriented care was one of the hardest decisions weve ever had to make, Kerri wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday.
For people who do not understand the natural dying process: Giving food and water to a dying body creates pain and further suffering, she wrote in a later post. The body does not want or require food or water anymore in the dying process. My father can no longer digest foods and fluids fill his lungs up and will suffocate him. My Dad IS on pain meds.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
How did people die before the machines took over. I think when you are in your last days, you are better off going to your eternal reward, then lying there comatose while someone fills you full of crap just so you can “live” another miniscule amount of time. People insist on this in hopeless cases just to raise the hospital bills.
“Food and water are not life support.”
Is he getting his food and water orally or through IV’s? Is he even cognizent of his surroundings? What kind of life is he living? Is there any hope of a recovery?
It is a tough decision for a relaive to have to make. I had to do it with my mother. My wife has had to do it with both parents. My neighbors have had to do it with one just yesterday with her mother. It is a tough decision to have to make.
He disinherited the kids making the decisionslong ago. I presume the kid by his current wife is not disinherited
Basic human rights are basic human rights and have nothing to do with so called “quality of life” or whether the patient is awake and alert. Food and water are basic human rights. They are rights independent of the quality of life of the patient. Withholding food and water causes the patient to die by dehydration, a painful merciless death for which people are jailed if they do it to a pet. How did we get to the point of excusing it in human cases?
I'm with you on this.
If his heart is beating on its own and he's breathing without the need for a ventilator, then God is keeping him alive.
If you withhold food and water, then you are killing him.
Regardless of what the doctors say, we have no way of knowing whether someone is still there or not. So, the only truly compassionate thing to do is to make them as comfortable as we can, for as long as necessary, until God decides it's time for them to come home.
Food and water are not a basic human right. No one is entitled to be fed and hydrated simply by virtue of being born human. “Those who will not work, shall not eat.”
Free speech, freedom of conscience, free assembly, RKBA... these are human rights. Food and water are not.
Its just food and drink either way. A drink of water is a drink of water whether a person pours themself a glass and drinks, a mom puts it in a bottle and holds it for a baby, it's mixed with thickener and delivered through a straw for an elderly patient with difficulty swallowing, or through a couple inches of tubing through a feeding tube or IV. It's still just a drink of water, a basic human right that cannot be arbitrarily withheld based only on method of delivery or someone's subjective evaluation of "quality of life." Human life is precious and sacred regardless of ObamaCare's or anyone else's evaluation of how much that life is contributing to society.
No one can really tell whether people are cognizant or not.
There are plenty of examples of people who were declared brain-dead by the doctors only to wake up later and tell of being trapped in their own bodies and being fully cognizant of their surroundings. See: overhears doctors talk about organ donation and woman comes out of coma, organ donation
Wow, radical libertarianism of the worst sort.
There's a difference between refusing to work and being unable to work. Pagans let those unable to work die, or actively kill them. Americans don't.
Even infants?
Aren't you the lucky one whose mother and father didn't apply this biblical rule to you after you were born.
Looks like we have about 40 million people that need to go in this country alone.
(Can't say that in most cases I don't agree with your sentiments, although I would include the qualifier: able-bodied)
Hear, hear!
Just like the only advocates for abortion are those who themselves have already been born, those who say we should withhold food and water from the infirmed are those who themselves were (mostly) lovingly fed food and water as infants.
Plus they want us to believe that death by dehydration is all comfy and euphoric, and natural and painless.
Anyone ever get the flu and get really dehydrated? How did you feel? Pretty bad, right? Downright painful - body aches, muscle aches, headaches, everything HURTS!
Did you go to the ER and get an IV to get rehydrated? Notice how quickly you felt better, like a light switch?
And they want us to believe that death by dehydration (thats the reality of death by starvation, the dehydration is what kills) is a comfy, euphoric way to die?
Sorry, but we cant let this BS go unanswered. The reason they ALWAYS give morphine when they take away fluids is to mask the reality of how torturous the process is.
The way I see it; Terri Schiavo was not dying; her family wanted to get her therapy, which was denied. We will never know if she would have responded, but she was never given the chance.
Casey Kasem is in the end stages of his disease, and is dying; if the food and fluids are not being absorbed and making his dying process more uncomfortable, they are thereby serving no useful purpose.
I refuse to second guess his doctors and family; this is not an easy decision.
My only point was this: the law is supposed to be consistent. In the Schiavo case, the court clearly said the spouse has the final call. In fact they really wouldn’t let people argue the medical pros and cons to a great extent. In this case, the kids are being given the final call and the spouse shut out. Where is the consistency?
(And a personal note, if I am given the warning, I would take things into my own hands. The last thing I ever want is to lay in a bed helpless being tended to by who knows what!)
There’s a difference between charity or welfare and basic human rights. I’m sorry but food, water, shelter, etc. don’t come to people as a human right. They may come from altruism, socialism, or many other means but not as natural human rights.
And Batman’s sidekick Robin.
Talk about reductio ad absurdum. There is a difference between familial relationships and child-rearing, and defining a human right to food, water, shelter, etc. This is the language of the Left: living wages, health care as a right, etc. Absolutely people should be charitable to each other, but defining a basic human right to food and water is ridiculous.
I wish you a good passage, my first boss. Thank you for everything.
Denying water/hydration just seems utterly sadistic and depraved.
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