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Doctors across the country are deciding whether to adopt standard policies for not resuscitating patients with coronavirus in an effort to curb possible virus exposure for medical staff. In Chicago, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital has been debating how to implement a universal do-not-resuscitate policy for infected patients. The policy would void the wishes of the patient or their family members. The death toll for Covid-19 in the United States has risen to 823 with more than 60,000 confirmed cases, and the burden of the pandemic continues to intensify in hospitals across the country. ... Similar discussions around not resuscitating have...

WESTMINSTER, United Kingdom, February 14, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The House of Lords has passed a bill that will allow the English branch of the National Health Service to take the organs of anyone who dies without “opting out” of organ donation. On February 1, the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill 2017-19 was passed by the House of Lords at the committee stage without alteration and will soon be signed into law. The new law will assume that residents of England have consented to the removal of their organs after death for transplant if they have not registered their objection to...

“Potentially unethical.” That’s how one expert described an Italian scientist’s plan to perform a “head transplant” by severing two heads at the same time, then cooling and flushing out the ‘recipient’ head before attaching it to its new body with polymer glue.That is “POTENTIALLY unethical?” Making one person out of two, and throwing away the unused halves, is only “potentially” unethical?Shock and awe.* * * * *Neuroscientist Sergio Canavero is undeterred by criticism, however. Canavero now reports that it’s possible to merge bone marrow, surgically cut with an ultra-sharp knife, when fusing one person’s head onto another person’s spine. The...

I know... but I wanted to see what they were saying about the Wisconsin election. I just happened to catch a segment where Joe Klein was being interviewed and he was talking about the importance of "Do Not Resuscitate" orders.

Elderly patients are being condemned to an early death by hospitals making secret use of "do not resuscitate" orders, an investigation has found. The orders – which record an advance decision that a patient's life should not be saved if their heart stops – are routinely being applied without the knowledge of the patient or their relatives. On one ward, one-third of DNR orders were issued without consultation with the patient or their family, according to the NHS's own records. At another hospital, junior doctors freely admitted that the forms were filled out by medical teams without the involvement of...

A Colorado inmate has filed a lawsuit because prison guards revived him in contravention of his do-not-resuscitate orders. Daniel Self claims he was wrongfully convicted in the shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend, and his life sentence is worse than death, the Denver Post reports. “Death would be welcome relief," he tells the newspaper.

In some of the rooms in the hospice unit at Franklin Hospital, in Valley Stream on Long Island, the patients were sleeping because their organs were shutting down, the natural process of death by disease. But at least one patient had been rendered unconscious by strong drugs. The patient, Leo Oltzik, an 88-year-old man with dementia, congestive heart failure and kidney problems, was brought from home by his wife and son, who were distressed to see him agitated, jumping out of bed and ripping off his clothes. Now he was sleeping soundly with his mouth wide open. “Obviously, he’s much...

Methods to identify a patient with a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order are incredibly varied across hospitals, ranging from written documentation practices to the use of color-coded wristbands. According to a new study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, a national effort to standardize color-coded wristbands, likely around a few specific indications (e.g., DNR status, allergy, fall risk, etc.), would remove current practice variations and the associated potential for errors. There are currently no standards of color choice for hospitals using color-coded wristbands, and each hospital has a different set of colors for different indications. This lack of standardization creates...

Mary Wohlford has made it perfectly clear what her final wishes are: it's written in ink — on her chest. Wohlford, 80, had the words "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" tattooed on her chest in February. Wohlford hopes she's made her wishes perfectly clear should she become incapacitated. She also has a living will hanging on the side of her refrigerator. "People might think I'm crazy, but that's OK," she said. "Sometimes the nuttiest ideas are the most advanced." But Wohlford's decision to have her final wishes imprinted on her chest have raised some legal issues. Some medical and legal experts doubt...