Disability Matters

Euthanasia's Double Standard

2010-10-12T12:49:00.002-04:00

Frankly, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

A Canadian soldier has just been thrown out of the military for actions he took in Afghanistan – demoted and discharged for actions on the battlefield.

After a firefight, Captain Robert Semrau happened upon a severely wounded Taliban fighter. Because of the remoteness of the area and the severity of the man’s wounds, Captain put the fighter out of his misery with two quick rifle rounds to the chest.

Cue uproar in the Canadian press who are astounded that the officer avoided jail time and charges of at least manslaughter (if not murder).

But there is a terrible irony here.

What Captain Semrau did was exactly what the pro-death crowd in Canada are currently trying to make legal.

The pro-death crowd go on and on about how people should be allowed to be euthanized when they (a) have a poor quality of life, (b) when there is no hope of recovery, (c) when the condition is terminal, (d) to end suffering and (e) have someone close by willing to euthanize them.

These are the exact criteria Semrau used to kill.

Oh, there was one difference, you say: The Taliban fighter didn’t ask to be euthanized.

Nice try – there are thousands of people all over the world, but especially in the Netherlands and Belgium, who fulfill all the criteria above and who never asked to be euthanized.

Killing is killing, no matter where it happens, and painting it as compassion is unacceptable.

Pro-Death Lobby Not As Powerful As They Think

2010-09-27T14:27:00.003-04:00

There seems to be more conversation about assisted sucide and euthanasia now more than several years ago.

Currently, there are governmental hearings on euthanasia all over Quebec, a parliamentary debate in the Scottish Parliament, and a resurrection of the euthanasia debate in Western Australia.

The Dignitas death-clinic in Switzerland continues unhindered in spite of the Swedish Government tut-tutting that the clinic is giving Swiss euthanasia a bad name.

Even in parts of the developing world, including India, are being sucked in to this horror, to say nothing of New Zealand, Spain, and Tasmania.

I’d love to report that these are informed, serious debates that would show, quite obviously, that killing people for whatever reasons the pro-death lobby can manufacture is wrong.

Just wrong.

However, that’s hardly the case. The pro-death lobby is in high gear shaping most of these “debates” as nothing more than pro-death spin. Our side has been represented, to be sure, but it’s hardly a well-matched battle.

However, if you read reports from all these places carefully, there is a distinct shrill quality about the pro-death position.

It’s easy explained: The moment the pro-death lobby faces opposition they become startled and somewhat even more unreasonable.

Why?

Because they know, deep down, that what they are promulgating is killing, not “dignity” or “deliverance."

We need even more people to oppose the pro-death lobby; they’re not anywhere as powerful as they would have us believe.

Tony Lived Before He Died

2010-09-09T10:03:00.002-04:00

Two years ago, on a visit to South Africa, I met a most extraordinary man. Tony had lived in a hospice for several years completely immobilized by Motor Neuron Disease, except for being able to move his eyes, talk, and swallow.

Tony’s extraordinariness didn’t come from his disease, but how he coped with it. It wasn’t possible to ignore that he was in a hospice, or that his disease was degenerative, and that the room in which we talked would be the place of his death. However, that all faded into the background very quickly. We talked about old times (we discovered that we had been raised in the same neighborhood), politics (we argued quite a bit, as I recall), and of course, sport.

There were jokes, both light and decidedly dark while Tony enjoyed a cocktail or two.

He was a gentleman.

I visited Tony as often as I could, but soon it was time to return to the US. I vividly recall my last visit. Tony had a beer and toasted our friendship. I could tell that he wanted me to linger, and I did as long as I could before going on to a dinner appointment.

My last words to Tony were: “I promise you, I’ll see you again.”

I revisited South Africa this summer, but Tony was dead.

Several months ago, I learned, the final deterioration began, but Tony was ready for his death.

Quietly, over a period of about three weeks and at the end surrounded by those he cared about most, he succumbed.

I was several months too late to fulfill my promise.

I’ll bet Tony’s chuckling at that.

“Timing,” I think he would have joked, “is everything.” Or perhaps “Thanks for nothing Mark, a miss is as good as a mile!”

Tony didn’t volunteer for his terminal illness. However, in his witty biography, “Happy Chappie,” finished just before he died, he explains that he made the decision early on after diagnosis to live with his illness until he died rather than waiting to die because of his illness.

He’s bequeathed to us a profound lesson in what it means to be human, and how he coped, in “Living With Motor Neuron Disease.”

Go watch it. Share it.

That’s what Tony would have wanted.

The Healthcare Rationer Cometh

2010-07-08T09:49:00.004-04:00

President Obama has just made a recess appointment that, in my opinion, confirms what many of us have been saying for quite a while: That the current administration is committed to, and is acting to implement, a ghoulish system of government deciding who will receive medical treatment and who will go without.

The pieces of the puzzle continue to fall into place, most significantly having Zeke Emanuel as senior healthcare advisor behind the scenes. Emanuel and some of his colleagues suggested several years ago that it made the best economic sense to concentrate the vast majority of healthcare dollars on those older than 15 (because they have their whole productive life ahead of them) and those younger than 40 (because thereafter medical care generally starts to become more expensive all the way to the end of your life).

After a presidential campaign that went to great lengths to spin public perception away from healthcare rationing and socialized medicine while vilifying the opposition, now the truth emerges. The President’s recess appointee, Dr. Donald Berwick, is an unabashed fan of healthcare rationing.

Berwick has just been appointed (in recess because the President is well aware that getting this appointment approved by congress wouldn’t happen) to head the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Here’s what we’re getting, in Berwick’s own words:

In an interview last year in Biotechnology Healthcare:

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom and also, to some extent, the Institut National de La Sante in France have developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn. . . . Indeed, those organizations are functioning very well and are well respected by clinicians, and they are making their populations healthier and better off.

And, in the same interview, referring to NICE:

NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable, and — importantly — knowledge-building system. The fact that it’s a bogeyman in this country is a political fact, not a technical one.

And just in case you miss the point, Berwick goes on to say:

The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.

And here’s what Politico reported:

His comments on Britain’s NHS are drawing the most scrutiny. Berwick calls the system “far” from perfect, but he also describes it in glowing terms, citing elements that the American system lacks: universal coverage, “centralized stewardship” and guaranteed care regardless of income.

“I fell in love with the NHS,” Berwick said in a 2008 speech of the system that he had worked on since the 1990s. “To an American observer, the NHS is such a seductress. ... Like any lover, it took me a while to see the blemishes of my beloved, though I soon had help from people quite willing to point out the warts. . . .The NHS is one of the great human health care endeavors on Earth,” Berwick said in the speech on file with the Senate Finance Committee and circulated by Republicans. “It can be an example for the whole world — an example, I must say, that the United States needs now more than most other countries do.”

Uh-huh.

Only one problem: The UK’s National Health Service is a healthcare nightmare, where in the name of making healthcare equitable, people die unnecessarily by the hundreds of thousands, where many hospitals are only a step above cesspools, and is too often the last haven of many incompetent medical personnel.

We’d better wake up before we have to get in line for months for critical care, or be denied treatment because we’re too old, or too young, or just because the government won’t let us have it.

Euthanasia Escalates In The Netherlands

2010-06-21T12:07:00.002-04:00

Ahead of the official release of last year’s euthanasia stats in the Netherlands, the Dutch press is reporting that euthanasia is on the increase over previous years.

What surprises me is that the Dutch authorities continue to be surprised by the increase.

Let’s see:

Take the social taboo of euthanasia, allow it to happen undercover, then tut-tut that instead of happening behind closed doors, it should be regulated and ‘transparent.” This doltish idea was meant to ensure that undercover euthanasia was stopped and only happened under very rare and highly controlled circumstances.

It hasn’t turned out that way, as some of us predicted years ago.

Here’s the slippery slope:

First, euthanasia was meant for only those adults who were terminally ill and in unbearable and uncontrollable physical pain.

Then, euthanasia was allowed for those with unbearable physical pain, even if it could be controlled, and even f they were not terminally ill.

Then euthanasia was allowed for those who were not only not terminally ill, but for people in no physical pain whatsoever – psychological pain, controllable or not, was enough.

Then the age limit was extended to adolescents.

So, from DutchNews.nl:

The number of reported deaths by euthanasia rose 13% last year to 2,636, following an increase of 10% in 2008, the NRC reports, quoting figures due to be published at the beginning of July.
The 2008 increase led the health ministry to set up an investigation into the increase. That investigation is due to start this month.

This is not the whole macabre picture, either: These stats reflect ONLY patients who requested to be killed.

It does not include hundreds, and perhaps thousands, who are euthanized even though they never requested it.

It does not include the hundreds of newborns with disabilities that are murdered under the so-called Groningen Protocol.

It does not include legalized assisted suicides.

Here’s the truth: Euthanasia is now increasingly accepted as just another medical procedure. The social constraints have collapsed.

Need any more proof?

A recent survey in the Netherlands showed that there was strong public sentiment for making euthanasia available for anyone over 70 even if the only reason to die was because they were “tired” of living.

One final point: No, we’re not at the bottom of the slippery slope. It will get worse.

Final Exit Network Spin: It’s Not Killing, It’s Dignity

2010-06-10T12:47:00.002-04:00

The Final Exit Network (FEN) is a radical pro-death group that counsels people and then helps them to kill themselves.

That’s why several of its members have been indicted by the Feds for their activities in Arizona and Georgia. Other investigations are ongoing.

No matter, FEN continues to spin the charges as unfair, harassing, and, well, un-American.

What twaddle.

The latest pro-death propaganda appeared in the Baltimore Sun a few days ago penned by Jerry Dicin, FEN’s president.

It’s a tour de force of manipulation, arrogance and outright dishonesty.

After noting that his FEN colleague Dr. Larry Egbert, is awaiting trial related to assisted killing in both Arizona and Georgia, Dicin launches into how Egbert was not complicit in murder, but was actually doing what doctors are supposed to do, and that this abominable behavior is a solution for people with Alzheimer’s Disease – both for the victims themselves and because it will spare their loved ones watching the progression of the disease:

By talking to these folks, Dr. Egbert was fulfilling his responsibility as a medical professional.

To understand why, consider the plight of those suffering from Alzheimer's [who] . . . can expect a slow, painful descent into advanced dementia . . .. Friends and family who are forced to witness their fall into oblivion suffer indescribably.

Given this bleak outlook, it's easy to see why some Alzheimer's patients choose to hasten their own death. It's also easy to see why Dr. Egbert was determined to help patients suffering from conditions like Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease make this difficult decision.

It is time for the world to recognize the right and the rationality for mentally competent adults in such circumstances to take their own lives.

Just in case you missed it: How many people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s can be judged mentally competent? Well, they can’t, but that’s of little consequence to Dicin – making people dead is the ultimate goal, no matter what. In truth, the pro-death crowd don’t care about mental competence – they just care about death on demand.

Dicin then trots out the old horror line of pain and suffering:

That's your mother screaming in that bed, dealing every day with some terrible disease like Lou Gehrig's. She can look forward to a body that can't move, speak or swallow food, a life of total dependency on others for every act of maintenance.

Well, what’s the evidence here? The truth is that very, very few people’s pain at the end of life cannot be controlled by good palliative care and pain management. No matter, it’s the horror that’s meant to goad people into killing themselves.

Solution? Why, the good folks at FEN, of course!!!

That's where my organization, Final Exit Network, comes in. We provide information and counsel to patients who approach us seeking to deliver themselves from torture and make informed choices. The impetus comes from within them; we do not "encourage" anyone. We go to great lengths to ensure that the person is capable of choosing rationally.

Oh yes, those rational Alzheimer’s guys!!

But the preliminary reports of the Fed undercover sting showed much more: FEN advocates not even asking for proof that the victim had a terminal disease (or any disease, for that matter), and the inconvenient fact that the undercover agent was assured that once the assisted killing had begun, his FEN “guide” would hold his hands tightly enough so that he couldn’t change his mind and rip the gas mask from his face.

Without coercion, lies, spin, propaganda, and a healthy dose of narcissism, the pro-death crowd won’t win.

Unless, by remaining silent, we let them.

Dignitas: Kill Them All

2010-06-04T08:36:00.002-04:00

The Swiss death clinic, Dignitas, is in the news again.

You’ll recall that Dignitas has gained notoriety as a fee-for-service killing venue for those who wish to die via assisted suicide. Dignitas has been most exposed by high-profile visits from UK citizens who travelled to the clinic to die because in the UK assisted suicide is illegal, and allows for the prosecution (at least on paper) of those who help people kill themselves.

However, there’s a very ugly underbelly to all the spin that Dignitas is a haven of care and a celebration of human autonomy.

There have been reports of dingy and dirty surroundings, less than dignified treatment of those who come to be killed both before and after they die, and the nagging fact that this is all offered at a rather exorbitant fee.

It gets worse. Several months ago hundreds of urns with the cremated remains of Dignitas’ victims were discovered dumped in Lake Geneva. This matter is currently under investigation.

Dignitas is again in the news, and I’m not sure why this latest issue so surprises the media, because Dignitas is doing exactly what it has always said it was doing: Helping anyone who wants to to kick the bucket.

The latest flap involves Dignitas’ providing a suicide kit to a 39 year-old Spanish man with severe psychological problems. From London's Daily Mail:

Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas is under investigation over claims that it ignored a patient's distressed mental condition to give him drugs to end his own life. . . . But now details have emerged of a patient who was allegedly given a DIY suicide kit prescribed by a Zurich gynaeologist despite suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. . . . But a Dignitas report on the 39-year-old Spanish man's mental state was a few lines that barely covered half a page of A4 paper, say local media reports on the death.

Oops.

Or maybe not.

Here’s why: All the chatter about “transparency,” policies to “protect,” rigid controls to ensure that no “mistakes” are made is all smoke and mirrors on the way to the only goal the pro-death crowd have always wanted: Assisted suicide and euthanasia on demand and available for anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Don’t take my word for it, take those of Dignitas’ owner Minelli:

'Every person in Europe has the right to choose to die, even if they are not terminally ill.'

Chilling.

Toothless Brit Law Against Assisted Suicide

2010-05-28T10:50:00.004-04:00

The pro-death crowd in the UK has hammered away at laws criminalizing assisted suicide for the last several years.

They have been very successful.

From high-profile advocacy among activists such as Debbie Purdy, whose fight to commit assisted suicide at the Swiss death clinic Dignitas without her husband being charged in the UK; to the drumbeat of assisted suicide as a dignified and ethical way of killing; to the in-your-face “heroes” who have publicly flaunted UK law by assisting suicides in the UK, the law itself is beginning to falter.

It began after Purdy forced UK legal authorities to issue a “clarification” on laws allowing for the prosecution of those who assist in another’s suicide. The “clarification” actually muddied the waters even more and certainly left an impression that prosecution was unlikely.

This has just been reinforced by Michael Bateman, who assisted in his wife’s suicide and then went public, essentially calling the law’s bluff.

Unsurprisingly, the law faltered. After much staring at their collective legal navels, the Brit authorities have decided not to prosecute Bateman, who openly admitted breaking the law.

The message is now clear in the UK: It’s OK to kill people because the law will look the other way - not even look the other way – but to come out siding with the criminal.

From London's Evening Standard.

Husband who helped wife to die will not be prosecuted.

A devoted husband will not be prosecuted for assisting the suicide of his 62-year-old wife, Crown prosecutors announced today.

They said there was sufficient evidence to take Michael Bateman to court over his wife Margaret's death last October but a trial would not be in the public interest.

Mr Bateman helped place a plastic bag over the head of his wife who died from inhaling helium at the family home in Birstall, West Yorkshire. more

If You Love Obamacare, You'll Hate This Story

2010-05-19T11:06:00.004-04:00

If there’s anything at all we know about the forthcoming tsunami of Obamacare, it’s that it’s going to completely wreck the finest medical care system in the world. We’re starting to see the fallout already. Here’s just a sample:

a. The “I want therefore I deserve” class turning up at doctors’ offices the day after the law was signed looking for their “free care.”

b. CBO numbers, available but ignored before the law was signed, now trickling out to tell us that the rationale of Obamacare making things less expensive and more efficient is basically, well . . . a lie. It's actually going to be massively more expensive than the administration’s spin led us to believe.

We already know how this goes – look at the UK, where complete and utter medical incompetence captains the grand ship National Health Care.

Here’s another case that illustrates what you get in a system that focuses on bureaurocracy, union rules, and the concomitant disregard for the welfare of patients.

Five years ago in the UK, 35-year-old Cindy Corton went to a party. Drank way too much. Fell in the bathroom, landing on the upright handle of the toilet plunger. About 6 inches of the serrated plastic plunger handle snapped off in her buttocks. Friends called an ambulance.

Enter the National Health Care system. You know, the one some many Obamacare acolytes point to as how we might “improve.”

Cindy’s fairly minor injury should have ended as a stupid-drunk-tricks story with the added wink-and-nod about the site of the injury.

Instead, it was her death sentence.

The ambulance took Cindy to the Lincoln County Hospital. They were apparently none too happy at having to transport some drunk who fell in a bathroom. (I guess it's only sober people who can get hurt falling in bathrooms).

That set the ball in motion among caregivers’ attitudes towards Cindy, because none believed her story. At Lincoln, after explaining what had happened, she was “examined” and sent home with some painkillers.

Yes, you read right. Sent home with a 6-inch serrated plastic handle still inside her, but hey, at least she got something for the pain:

Husband Peter, 61, said that when his wife first attended A&E at Lincoln County Hospital she was sent home with painkillers, despite showing them the wound on her bottom. . . . "She wasn't properly examined by the doctor at Lincoln.”

Unsurprisingly, Cindy’s injury got worse, so several days later she went to a different hospital, Grantham, in the hopes that someone would take her story seriously.

They did. Kind of.

At Grantham she was actually x-rayed (imagine that!). However, the x-ray turned up nothing.

Problem solved. Home she went with her embedded plunger handle.

Fast-forward two years, to 2007.

Cindy still has the handle in her buttocks, and is finally able to convince a doctor to take a closer look.

Hey presto!! Still there!!

Now it’s more complicated: The handle has migrated and embedded itself in her pelvis.

No more funny drunk story.

Cindi undergoes two unsuccessful operations and is left in intense pain to the extent that she agrees to another risky operation in June last year.

Outcome?

Cindy of Sleaford, Lincs, spent more than ten hours in surgery at Nottingham's Queens Medical Centre but died from massive blood loss.

Can medical mistakes happen? Sure, no profession’s perfect.

This went way beyond mistakes. It smacks of incompetence, arrogance, and a failure to attend to duty that is, at the very least, unconscionable. Paramedics who treat drunks differently, hospitals that apparently can’t do some very basic procedures, and certainly doctors who for years didn’t even bother to investigate properly.

I can even give the doctors the benefit of the doubt (barely) for the initial admission, that Cindy in her inebriated state might have been embarrassed and made up the story.

But not even check? Or check later when she turns up sober with the same story?

I submit that the chances of this story happening in a US hospital is near zero.

At least for now.

Maybe coming soon to an Obamacare-run hospital near you.

Media Attack on the Schiavo Foundation: Let’s Make Disability Go Away

2010-05-02T10:41:00.002-04:00

Killing defenseless people with disabilities is not very difficult. They can’t fight back and, in many instances, either they have no advocates, or those advocates are overwhelmed in the unrelenting drumbeat for death.

It’s this latter point that Terri Schiavo’s family has had to live with since her untimely and completely unnecessary legal execution in 2005.

They fought as hard as they could, and were helped by many people who knew how dangerous the situation was. There were several disability organizations as well as faith-based groups who all saw that what was happening, and then did happen to Terri.

They all knew that it was a precursor of very bad things to come.

Terri’s family did everything they could, everything they knew how, but the pro-deathers prevailed.

Since Terri’s death, her family have lived and breathed her memory in a constructive and positive way – by establishing a small foundation to spread the word and also to help others in similar predicaments.

No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.

A TV station in Florida ran a piece yesterday headed “Terri Schiavo’s Family Profiting From Foundation.”

Now, with a lead like that, which way do you think the story was going to go?

Natch.

All innuendo and spin. Why would we expect anything else? Even all these years after her death, Bobby, Suzanne, and Mary spend countless hours trying to correct misleading reporting about the circumstances of Terri’s death. This is just one more media attack in a long string of animus posing as “news” and comes just a few weeks after Fox’s The Family Guy made horrible fun of Terri and her disabled condition.

Now this.

Let’s be clear – the media and others with less than unbiased interest are hammering the Foundation for one reason and one reason only: Its existence reminds them that people with disabilities are worth less than the rest of us and are easily disposed of. They’d rather not be reminded of their part in shaping this view, now widely held across the country.

At another level, they understand that it takes only a split second for any of us to be in the same state as Terri.

And that they, too, could be legally executed.

The Schiavo Foundation reminds them of their own fragile mortality.

They’d rather not have to be reminded about it.

This Is What Government-Run Health Care Looks Like

2010-04-29T08:19:00.004-04:00

Those of us who see Obamacare as a distinct step backwards are often branded as alarmist and out of touch. When we point to the regular horrors of government run systems, especially the UK, we’re shouted down with healthy dollops of “it-can’t-happen-here-because-the president-said-it-won't.”

Read on.

But before you do, look at this photo from London’s MailOnline:

Not pretty.

It’s a photo taken in a UK (government run) hospital of 84-year-old Clara Stokes. The photo was taken by her outraged daughter who discovered that her mom was living a nightmare – starved, dehydrated, and lying in her own feces.

Apparently, the ward was very short-staffed, to the point that Clara's family members were not only forced helped her, but also other patients who were in similar circumstances.

Here's a partial list of horrors. If this isn't clear, cold abuse of a person with a severe medical disability, I don't know what is:

Maltreatment 1:

Doctors and nurses who misplaced health notes even thought Mrs Stokes was a man for the first two days, after she was admitted on December 16.

Maltreatment 2:

A temporary nurse misread Mrs Stokes' notes and forced uncrushed tablets down her throat, almost causing her to choke to death.

Maltreatment 3:

She [Clara's daughter] added: 'We finally walked in and my daughter said what is that under her arm? We lifted it up and she was covered in her own diarrhoea.

Maltreatment 4:

Helpless and confused after suffering a stroke, the 84-year-old was left dehydrated, hungry and lying in her own faeces in a hospital bed for six hours. . . . 'She was paralysed and couldn't call for help. This was after 3pm in the afternoon and the last time she had been checked was at 9am.'

Maltreatment 5:

Just 24 hours later the family found a stricken Mrs Stokes' foot trapped between bed posts caused by a faulty bed pump. It was not known how long she was trapped and had to be freed by the matron.

The hospital, of course, denies, denies, denies. Here’s part of the snippy statement issued by the hospital spokesperson:

'We regret that Mrs Stokes' family have felt the need to complain about her care while she was on ward 17 and ward 15 and the hospital has apologised for any distressing circumstances recognising how upsetting some aspects of personal care can be for relatives.

Stay tuned, because I’ll bet my last dollar that the pro-death crowd will spin the horrible photo above as a case of people dying “without dignity,” and use it as a propaganda tool, captioning Clara’s abuse with: This is not dying with dignity: Support legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Euthanizing Children in the US – Yes, it’s Here

2010-04-19T10:48:00.003-04:00

The latest edition of a prestigious medical journal, The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, has published a very disturbing piece of research. While the study is very small, the fact that it was done at all suggests that there might be a larger problem across the country: Euthanizing children right here in the US.

The study, of course, doesn’t talk about euthanasia. Here’s the title: “Considerations About Hastening Death Among Parents of Children Who Die of Cancer.”

I see. It’s not euthanasia, it’s hastening death. Sounds so much more, well, clinical, don’t you think?

Essentially, the researchers wanted to know, in terms of actual cases and presented possible scenarios, what parents’ attitudes were toward euthanasia when a child was terminally ill with cancer. No surprise, the more the actual case or scenario involved high levels of pain and suffering, the more likely parents were to consider euthanasia

Sorry, I meant “hastening death.”

Now, if the study only used contrived scenarios, the findings would be important, because they show, among other things, that parents are ignorant of palliative measures that can make terminally ill children comfortable in their final days.

However, among parents interviewed who literally had terminally ill children with cancer, there were several who actually discussed euthanasia for their child with their doctor, and, in three instances, where parents reported that the euthanasia was carried out.

Frightening, and even more so when you consider how small the study was.

And, it’s absolutely probable that if it‘s happening in the two hospitals covered by the study, it’s going on all over the country behind closed doors after whispered conversations.

Killing children because the are sick.

Here in these United States.

This is how things started in the Netherlands.

Let’s so all we can to make sure it doesn’t happen here.

The Martyrdom of Terri Schiavo

2010-03-30T20:08:00.004-04:00

Since 1990 in the state of Florida, persons condemned to death have a choice of how their death sentence will be carried out. The condemned have the option of electrocution or the less spectacular (and presumably less painful) lethal injection.

One thing is certain: People are executed by the state as punishment for heinous and reprehensible crimes. Nobody gets the death penalty for speeding or shoplifting. Or for being sick, for that matter.

Well, maybe for being sick. Read on.

There was one execution in Florida that transcended the electric chair or the fatal needle, and, equally, had the full weight of Florida law. That legal weight came from Florida Judge Greer, who declared from the bench that Terri Schiavo must die.

Judge Greer issued a death sentence just as effectively lethal as any handed down for murder. It was a legalized medical execution for the crime of being severely neurologically disabled.

But unlike condemned criminals in Florida, Terri was not permitted to choose her method of execution. Instead, Greer, with Terri’s husband and lawyers cheering from the sidelines, imposed execution by starvation and thirst.

I think one could make a compelling argument that the electric chair and lethal injection are less painful ways to die. They are certainly shorter than the 16 days it took Terri to lose her battle against a stacked deck.

As with Florida’s criminally condemned, Terri was surrounded by uniformed law enforcement officers, vigilant lest someone give her a sip of water. They were Greer’s proxies on the scene. They’re not called “law enforcement officers” for nothing.

Terri’s appeals were denied. The people who spoke for Terri were overwhelmed by the pro-deathers.

So, Terri is dead. Executed.

Terri’s dad, Bob Schindler, is dead. His collateral sentence was a broken heart.

Mary Schindler, Terri’s mom, presses on. How, I have no idea.

Bobby and Suzanne labor in the trenches at the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation. If you know them, as I am so very privileged to do, you know that they, too, are broken-hearted, their wounds bound by their love for Terri and their family, and the incredible commitment to never, ever, let Terri’s execution be forgotten.

They labor against things they shouldn’t have to.

Like prominent disability organizations who sanctimoniously gather their hurt feelings around their memberships, pouting about how they think they were treated when they went to the aid of a desperate family, yet still comment on everything Terri to bamboozle their membership that they were the good guys and the Schindlers nothing more than unsophisticated hicks – both then and now.

Like President Obama, who, on February 26^th, 2008, in a presidential candidate debate, had this to say about his time in the US Senate:

When I first arrived in the Senate that first year, we had a situation surrounding Terri Schiavo, and I remember how we adjourned with a unanimous agreement that eventually allowed Congress to interject itself into that decision-making process of the families. It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped. And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better.

So, Mr. President, you regret that you’re on record saying that executing Terri was wrong, but then tell us that it really wasn't wrong. Saying it was wrong was a mistake.

Thanks for nothing, Mr. President.

OK, at least we know you’re a pro-deather.

Still, here we are five years later.

Disability groups trash the Schindlers.

The President of the United States thinks intervening to help avoid Terri’s execution was a mistake.

Now what?

Here’s what:

Never, ever, let Terri’s memory and her martyrdom be forgotten.

Contact the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation and at the very least encourage Mary, Suzanne, and Bobby.

Better still, they need your financial and volunteer help – don’t wait to give it to them.

We can’t save Terri, but we sure as heck can save others in her situation, and there are thousands.

Bob, Mary, Bobby, Suzanne, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Without your love for Terri, without your very special roles as advocates for those with disabilities, the world would be a bleaker and more dangerous place for the disabled.

Terri’s is home. We are here.

We will always remember.

We will never forget.

We will fight on.

Media Brutality Still Hounds Terri Schiavo 5 Years After Her Death

2010-03-25T11:29:00.003-04:00

Terri Schiavo, legally deprived of nutrition and hydration, died five years ago March 31.

Whatever the causes of her collapse on that fateful night in 1990, Terri was instantaneously transformed from a vibrant young woman to a daughter, sibling, and wife with a significant medical disability. Over the years, and against the wishes of her parents and siblings, her rehabilitation was reduced and any possible chance of progress was lost.

In time, Terri became a burden to her husband. No doubt about it, Michael Schiavo wanted Terri dead. He didn’t quite put it that way, of course. Instead, Michael and his pro-death brethren talked about “rights,” “what Terri would have wanted,” and her “poor quality of life.”

Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri’s parents, just wanted to take her home and care for her. Instead, black-cloaked Judge Greer condemned Terri to death.

Her crime?

She needed to be cared for because she was severely brain damaged.

A legal sentence of death for having a disability.

Aside from the unspeakable personal tragedy of Greer’s decision for Terri’s family, a very clear message emerged from the media: If you are disabled, you don’t matter as much as people who are not disabled.

That message is stronger today than ever, because wherever we turn people with disabilities are demeaned, insulted, and hurt.

Case in point: A recent episode of Fox’s Family Guy opened with Terri Schiavo: The Musical. Aside from ludicrous fabrications (Terri hooked up to a battery of machines, including a ventilator) there are these little gems:

Michael Schiavo: She’s a vegetable!

Chorus: We hate vegetables! (Audience laughs).

Also in the musical’s ditties are references to pulling the plug, Terri’s mashed potato brains, and that she’s the most expensive plant you’ll ever see.

Yes, starving and dehydrating someone to death, very funny. Ha-ha.

Severe brain damage? Let’s throw in a cartoon depiction of pouring her mashed potato brains into a bowl. LOL . . .

And the more disabled they are, the funnier the cheap shots are meant to be.

Despicable, but not surprising.

And picking on Terri was no mistake. It was because she can’t fight back.

It’s the schlock humor of media cowards.

Why cowards? Because they don’t have the you-know-what to deride people who would most certainly fight back. You know, like those suffering with HIV/AIDS or breast cancer.

It’s OK to make fun of people with disabilities.

It's all in fun. Surely they won’t mind.

They’re disabled, after all.

A Swedish Poster Person for Euthanasia

2010-03-18T11:54:00.005-04:00

Those of us who can clearly see the slippery slope from human exceptionalism and the nurturing of life to assisted suicide and euthanasia on demand for any reason are often taken to task for being alarmist and illogical.

Don’t believe that for a minute.

As I have often written, the Netherlands pretty much led the way down the slippery slope beginning in the late 80s. Since then, we’ve seen assisted suicide legalized in several European countries and three US states.

I think it’s fair to say that the UK will likely follow sooner or later. In the UK, the poster person for the right to assisted suicide was Debbie Purdy, a woman with MS who has campaigned for several years to have her partner help her commit suicide without any legal penalty. Purdy’s persistence eventually resulted in an official clarification of UK penalties for those who aid and abet suicide. The clarification is quite vague, ambiguous, and potentially opens the door to all kinds of abuse.

Now Sweden’s own version of Purdy is asking that she be euthanized, and in her case, it will be euthanasia, because she is completely paralyzed and therefore cannot physically be assisted to kill herself by taking lethal meds, as is the case for assisted suicide.

From Sweden’s Radio International:

Swedish Woman Demands Euthanasia

A letter to the Swedish Social welfare board has rekindled the debate here on mercy killing – or euthanasia – at present banned by Swedish law.

The letter has come from a 31-year-old woman who has been tied to a respirator since the age of 6 – growing constantly worse from a neurological disease from birth.

Unable to take a single breath on her own or to move, she is asking to be put to sleep and that the machine be shut off so that she can end her life in what describes as in dignity.

She wants this to be done now – while she still has full mental capacities and before she gets worse.

Her Swedish doctor insists that her request must be respected – otherwise this is forced treatment against her will, and he is asking the association of doctors for a ruling.

The head of the association’s ethical committee says he agrees, that the social welfare authorities have in general agreed with the committee’s line, but now has make a clear decision lifting the ban on euthanasia to make it easier for the patient and the doctors to make their decisions.

Earlier Swedish headlines have been captured by some Swedish terminal patients travelling to euthanasia clinics in Switzerland and elsewhere – to get the help they are denied here in Sweden.

I predict months of handwringing, the pro-deathers loudly commandeering the media for their nihilistic propaganda, and the beatifying of this woman with significant medical disabilities.

I further predict that sooner rather than latter the Swedish legal system will be cowed into going along with euthanasia.

And along the way, trust me, we’ll be told repeatedly what a good, compassionate, and loving idea this is.

The Dutch Lead the Way to Barbarism Once Again

2010-03-12T12:19:00.002-05:00

The pro-death crowd is usually quick to discount the slippery slope argument when it’s applied to assisted suicide and euthanasia. They are quite good at finessing the slope argument by constantly assuring the gullible that assisted suicide and euthanasia are only for the very few, under extreme and horrible circumstances, and that killing is done humanely and under strict supervision that will almost always prevent abuse (yes, I am talking about killing humans here, not animals).

Too bad the Netherlands has always been the absolute exemplar of the slippery slope from the dignity of exceptionable human life to death on demand. Given recent news, it’s getting increasingly difficult for the pro-death lobby to deny that this slope doesn’t exist.

News reports this week have shown that not only are the Dutch on a slippery slope, but also that they may well have taken a leap of a cliff into the abyss of madness and nihilism.

Why? Glad you asked.

Because now the Dutch are pushing for legal killing of healthy people over 70 years of age.

Yes, you read correctly. If, as they say, you are 70 or over and feel that your life is "complete,” then, they argue, you should be able to go to a trained professional killer and kick the bucket.

From the UK Telegraph:

The influential Dutch "Right to Die" campaign, active since 1973, has launched new "vrijwillig levenseinde", or "of free will", demands to extend euthanasia beyond assisted suicide for terminally ill people.

The group has proposed training non-medical staff to administer a lethal injection to healthy people over the age of 70 who "consider their lives complete" and want to die.

Where’s the slippery slope?

Well, until about 20 years ago, assisted suicide/euthanasia were illegal in the Netherlands. Then they legalized assisted suicide/euthanasia for those who were terminally ill, with less than 6 months to live, and in unbearable or untreatable pain. Very soon this morphed into assisted suicide/euthanasia for people with chronic diseases or pain, then to those who had psychological but no physical pain, and on and on.

Where has this lead? Well, every year in the Netherlands several thousand people are now euthanized without their ever having asked for it.

I know what comes next: Death for anyone, anywhere, for whatever reason. That will include not only the elderly, but also those with disabilities, others the Dutch feel are expendable, and even those who may be judged to have a difficult life of suffering in the future.

I’d have more respect for the pro-death crowd if they just came out and said what they really mean:

Death for all, whenever, just because.

Futile Care – Who's for the Blood and Gore?

2010-02-23T15:21:00.005-05:00

Today the New York Times has a piece about the dilemmas of futile care.

What is futile care?

Glad you asked.

Futile care is essentially the idea that for many patients, there comes a point where medical treatment is useless, because it will not improve their condition. On its face, this seems reasonable, except for at least two points. One, we had better be careful about what we define as futile care. Why? Because, increasingly, feeding and hydration are being classified as medical treatments, ergo, they can be judged as medically futile and therefore withdrawn. Two, futile care arguments slip very easily into the realm of doing what’s cost effective. How so? Well, if there is an expensive medical intervention (and almost all medical interventions for these patients are expensive) wouldn’t the treatment be better utilized on someone who has a much better chance of getting better?

The NYT piece shows how biased the media has become when reporting on end-of-life issues, because it goes out of its way to tell us how awful and horrific end-of-life interventions can be.

The piece makes a stab at balance, noting that not all doctors think futile care is the way to go, and also acknowledges that sometimes it is more loved ones’ denial of the obvious, if painful reality. That’s fair enough – as far as it goes.

But read the opening sentence:

Aggressive treatment at the end of life — frantic CPR for a brain-dead accident victim, inserting a feeding tube in a dying Alzheimer’s patient — has become a staple of the health care debate. Critics argue that vast resources are squandered on care that is obviously futile.

No exactly nuanced, and it sets an unfortunate tone, especially entertaining the notion that it’s OK to starve Alzheimer’s people to death.

It goes downhill from there. Soon we are in the grimly grotesque world of a twenty-first century Frankenstein:

The subject of the first essay was a 2-year-old boy, severely brain-damaged from a birth defect. He was dead — his heart had stopped. His doctors and nurses knew that no matter how hard they might try to resuscitate him, they would never succeed. But they tried anyway; aggressively jamming large bore needles into his chest, pounding on him, applying paddles to shock his heart. One nurse was so upset she almost vomited.

Medically, this is accurate, I suppose. But you could couch open-heart surgery, drilling into a patient’s brain to relieve bleeding or even stitching up a gaping wound in exactly the same way – many medical interventions are gory, but that doesn't mean we don't do them. If we didn't, we'd never perform transplant surgery, amputations that save lives, or reattaching a severed limb, all interventions that are very often successful and for which patients are very grateful.

Later, in discussing CPR, the Times again prefers the gory option:

It’s a violent procedure, Dr. Helft said, “very invasive and disturbing.” Medical personnel press on a person’s chest with such force that they break ribs. They stab large bore needles into the chest to administer fluids and drugs. They shock the heart with bursts of electricity.

Well, not exactly. CPR does not necessarily mean ribs get broken. It's possible, and sometimes it happens, but suggesting that it's always the case is bunk. Emphasizing the gore betrays where the writer’s sentiments lie.

Here’s a further quote about that same little boy:

Dr. Helft explained why. “In a sense what it does is, it says that we are doing this procedure, using this procedure on the boy to benefit the family,” he said. “We are using this boy as a means to an end, an end unrelated to his own well-being. You will hear clinicians say this all the time: ‘Even though the patient is already gone, we are treating the family now.’ There are lots of other ways the family can be treated.”

OK, I see - the boy’s wellbeing was to be dead. That’s not a cynical observation. If you read much of the medical literature you can’t get away from the perception among many that death is a form of wellbeing over living and suffering.

Just like for your pet dog.

Let me be clear: There is clearly a time when reality means all medical efforts should cease. However, the trick is to know when to desist - and therein lies the judgment of the medicos, who are very far from perfect in what they can prognose.

The way they see it, however, Doctor Power should prevail.

Let’s look at the second reported case, DeeDee, an elderly woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease who was subjected to “aggressive” resuscitation efforts and survived:

DeeDee was saved. She’s still demented, of course, and cared for round the clock by dedicated attendants.

See? What a waste of time, effort, and money. We still have to care for this demented woman around the clock, such a waste of energy and money.

Money spent on a demented old lady could have been better spent on people who are in their right mind.

Frightening.

“Finishing Off” Children with Disabilities

2010-02-15T12:55:00.009-05:00

There’s a tabloid journalist in Russia making waves about lethal solutions for newborns (and others) with disabilities. Journalist Aleksandr Nikonov wrote an incendiary piece in a popular Russian tabloid, (caution, content may be offensive) Speed-Info, entitled Finish It Off, So It Doesn't Suffer.

As I say quite often here, I’m not sure why so many are surprised and outraged. Nikonov’s intent is no different than what the rest of the pro-death crowd say, just slightly more uncivilized.

Clearly, Russian tabloid journalism is short on subtlety, as is the 700,000-an-issue Speed-Info, with its copious photo layouts of scantily clad women and other lowbrow schlock. In this regard, we could simply ignore Nikonov’s message. However, tabloid sensationalism influences public opinion just as any other form of publication does – perhaps even more so.

Let’s begin with Nikonov’s own words of the title. Newborns with disabilities are suffering; therefore they should be finished off. Also, these newborns are its - not baby boys or girls, or even newborn humans, they are nonhuman. Harsh? Yes, but exactly the same sentiment that many Western countries are swallowing. (The Netherlands routinely kills disabled newborns as well as the elderly and the infirm. Scotland is talking about assisted suicide for children. Dignitas in Switzerland will help do you in for a fee. Canada’s medical community increasingly calls for the legalization of assisted suicide. The pro-death crowd in the US isn’t happy that only several states have already legalized assisted killing – they want more).

Nikonov hasn't learned the Western trick of making killing much more acceptable when it's prettified. The pro-death crowd would recoil in horror at the description of finishing people off. Instead, they talk about euthanasia, aid in dying, dying with dignity - making the ugly beautiful. Most people don’t like ugly, but they do like beautiful. It’s simply a matter of lying often enough that the lie becomes desirable truth.

However, the pretty-talking pro-death crowd is really down with Nikonov, because any way you slice it, finishing off is the intent of assisted suicide and euthanasia, warm fuzzy terminology notwithstanding.

Here’s what Nikonov said in a Radio Free Liberty interview:

Parents, in particular parents, should be free to decide the fate of their own offspring. If you want to bring up a child with Down syndrome, you can do it. But if you don’t, you can euthanize him. Why is prenatal abortion legal and post-natal abortion is not?

Well, he’s got a point: If we feel free to allow and legalize the abortion of unborn children with Down syndrome and other “defects,” as we have done, then why not allow and legalize killing after birth?

Logically, there should be no difference. At least Nikonov is consistent – kill - sorry, finish off children with disabilities wherever you find them, unborn and born.

Lest we ignore Nikonov, remember that he’s saying exactly what others in highly elevated university endowed chairs at prestigious universities are saying. For one, Peter Singer has noted that:

In any case, the position taken here does not imply that it would be better that no people born with severe disabilities should survive; it implies only that the parents of such infants should be able to make this decision. (Practical Ethics, 1999, p. 189).

I think post-natal abortion is way too pretty.

For the sake of honesty and transparency, I’m with Nikonov’s approach.

Call it what it is: Finishing off children with disabilities for their own and everyone else’s good.

Retard: Emanuel’s True Feelings About Those with Intellectual Challenges

2010-02-08T12:17:00.006-05:00

It’s been interesting watching the media coverage of Presidential advisor Rahm Emanuel’s recent rant that included referring to some members of his own party as “f------ retards.”

Of course, the moment this was made public, Emanuel swung into damage control mode by apologizing to the disability community and meeting with several disability leaders to now, suddenly, begin working to expunge all federal documents of what the media called the dreaded “R-word.”

Mmm. The R-word. It has a long history.

Way back when, people with intellectual disabilities were called morons, idiots, and imbeciles, depending on the severity of their disability. Over the years those terms became as distasteful then as, apparently, the R-word is now.

So, instead of imbeciles, morons, and idiots, we talked about the feebleminded. That also became a term of derision often used as an epithet to describe anyone that the name-caller thought was, well, stupid.

Then came another iteration – retarded, and in three categories no less: Educable Mentally Retarded (children with intellectual disabilities who would be capable of some academic schoolwork), the Trainable Mentally Retarded (those who were not capable of academic schoolwork but who could be “trained” in personal self-care and some other life tasks), and the Severely and Profoundly Retarded whose intellectual functioning was so low that they almost always survived only in institutional and group care settings.

You’ve guessed it – retarded eventually became a derogatory term meaning stupid, incompetent, brainless, and not-very-smart.

So we changed the label again. Its latest iteration is Intellectual Disability, or perhaps Intellectual Challenge.

What Emanuel meant of course, was that the people he was referring to were stupid. Behaving like retards.

He would have been better off saying stupid than retard, obviously. But that's what he meant - retard.

Seems like for this administration it’s OK to deride those who, through no fault of their own, are intellectually different.

The most disappointing part? That it’s apparently open season on those with intellectual disabilities, with the administration leading the way.

Oh yes, and let's remember that Emanuel’s in the good company of his boss, President Obama, who a while ago yukked it up by telling a national television audience that he “bowls like a retard.”

They’ve merrily reinforced the ignorance that if you are intellectually different, you’re worth a joke or epithet or two.

Just so everyone gets the message.

For Frances Inglis and Her Supporters, Murder is Merciful Love

2010-01-22T09:24:00.002-05:00

Frances Inglis, a UK mother who attempted to kill her severely medically disabled son, and then slipped past nurses a second time to finally dispatch him, has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The comments on my previous post about Inglis are overwhelmingly sympathetic to her actions. Frightening.

I think we are in very dangerous waters when the pro-death lobby has twisted public opinion to where cold-blooded murder is viewed by many as an act of love and motherly concern.

I am not kidding, wish I were.

Here’s one person’s take:

I am disgusted with these selfish people who insist that all life should be maintained, no matter the cost to the person who is actually living with the injury/disease.

Oh, I get it. There comes a point when you are severely disabled beyond which you should not live.

Here’s another:

If you were Thomas Inglis, and you were living this way, how long would you like to do that. One year, five years, 20 years?

Reminds me of the doctor’s line in a Nazi propaganda film pushing euthanasia: “Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?”

How about this justification:

Yes, she sounds a bit mad. As you or I might be too, given a year and a half of the horror she had lived through.

Poor Frances, so tormented that, why, of course, murder was the obvious solution – ends Thomas’ “suffering” from his nonresponsive state, and ends Frances’ suffering of having to put up with him.

Sounds like a deal to me.

And one more excerpt from the comments to my previous post, which, I think, is the epitome of upside down thinking:

She needs our compassion, not this ugly political posturing. What exactly are the tenets of a civilized society, does anyone remember?

Ah, I get it. Compassion for a murderer so intent on killing her offspring that when she at first did not succeed, she persisted until she did.

Better still: It’s actually “civilized” to kill the medically vulnerable and defenseless and uncivilized to care for them instead.

With this kind of thinking, and I’ll wager it’s very widely shared, we are at the bottom of the slippery slope and teetering on the brink of descending into a bestial depravity where when people are suffering, different, a bother, or perhaps even if they just upset us, that they need to die.

This time it was Thomas in an unresponsive state.

Next time. . . well, fill in the blank.

Frances Inglis Does Not Deserve to be on Trial for Murder. . . No, wait . . .

2010-01-12T09:51:00.009-05:00

The UK press has been all atwitter about a sensational murder trial now under way in London. I’m not sure why, given the general cheerleading done by the UK media for assisted suicide and euthanasia.

On trial at the Old Bailey is Frances Inglis:

In 2007, Inglis’ son, Thomas, had been involved in some kind of altercation and was being taken to hospital by ambulance. His injuries were apparently minor. However, Thomas jumped from the ambulance, hit his head on the road, and sustained severe brain damage. He’s been in a deep coma ever since, although medical consensus was that since the accident he had been making some improvements and could well have recovered some function.

Too bad his mother was Frances Inglis. She immediately became obsessed with ending his life, repeatedly making the case to anyone who would listen that she did not think any treatment was in her son's best interest. She visited her son almost constantly and was described by Thomas’ brother, Alexander, as “obsessive and negative.”

She took matters into her own hands – twice.

Only 10 days after the accident, Inglis decided that she had to “put her son out of his misery.” So she injected him with a lethal dose of morphine. While Thomas was successfully resuscitated, he had been without oxygen long enough that his brain damage was much worse.

Frances Inglis was not a happy camper.

Not because she was arrested for attempted murder, but because her son was still alive.

What’s a mother to do?

Why, try again, of course.

And she did.

Out on bail, a condition of which was that she go nowhere near Thomas, she disguised herself as Thomas' aunt, fooled the nurses, and injected Thomas with a fatal dose of heroin.

Horrific, I think we can all agree. However, I must say that I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Let’s be clear, shall we?

Frances Inglis and the pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide crowd are pretty much on the same page of the playbook:

They both see killing people as a way to put them out of their misery.

They would both agree that Thomas’ life was not worth living.

They would both think killing OK because there’s little or no quality of life for people in this condition.

They would both acknowledge that people in persistent nonresponsive states are as good as dead, so killing them is not a problem.

I think Frances Inglis is getting a bad rap.

If she had pulled a Debbie Purdy and fought passionately in the press to take Thomas to Dignitas in Switzerland for assisted suicide, just as the parents of Daniel James did, she’d be a free woman.

She’d also be a hero instead of a murderer.

Gotta Love the Dutch, Those Merciful Killers!

2010-01-04T20:22:00.006-05:00

Let’s open the New Year as we left the old year, shall we?

You know - that part about how we are now becoming quite accustomed to killing people because somebody has decided they are not worth keeping alive.

All in the decedents’ best interests, of course.

Media in the Netherlands reports that there was an increase in the number of people euthanized in 2009 – including people in the early stages of dementia. No surprise there, but I think it’s instructive to look at what is reported, and the subtle subtexts that are nevertheless coercive in slanting a favorable impression of medicalized killing.

Sidebar: I’m not suggesting that the reporter deliberately thought this through, but I think it’s obvious that things in the Netherlands are so pro-euthanasia that the article’s bias is assumed to be “balanced coverage,” which it’s not.

From a piece DutchNews entitled More Cases of Euthanasia in 2009.

First, the obvious is reported, that there were more 200 more cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands last year than 2008, where the killing total was 2,500.

Then:

It is not known how many cases of mercy killing there actually are in the Netherlands, but in 2007 experts said around 80% of instances are registered with the monitoring body.

Well, mercy for whom, exactly? What exactly is the nature of this “mercy?” How can we be assured that the “mercy’ is not for those left behind who found the patient too much of a burden? What about the survivors benefitting from such “mercy” as they inherit goodies from the person they coaxed to assume a duty to die? No way to tell, of course.

“Merciful” because people are in unbearable pain and suffering? Not exactly, because many people who are euthanized are not in pain, and because, in the Netherlands, you can request euthanasia for just about any reason at all, pain or no pain.

Also, after all the fanfare in the Netherlands about making euthanasia legal so that it could be officially controlled, what do we find? Well, it’s not controllable.

Remember, too, that the registering “monitoring body” (sounds so nice, certain, and transparent) is a review panel that examines the circumstances of the killing AFTER it has occurred.

Now, here's the next snippet that contradicts the whole pain-and-suffering angle:

There were also six registered cases of euthanasia on elderly patients with senile dementia, all of whom were in the early stages and able to make their wishes known.

Ah, I see. Where to begin? Dementia, though tragic and unfortunate, is not physically painful (originally, at the top of the slippery slope, euthanasia was ONLY for untreatable physical pain among the terminally ill). Psychologically painful? Clearly, for persons who are aware that their faculties are diminishing, but how do other people make this determination? (Those with dementia don’t euthanize themselves, after all). Where is the bright clear line between someone with early dementia who requests euthanasia (in their right mind, so to speak) and someone who’s condition is more far advanced and is judged not competent to request euthanasia?

Don’t worry, the Dutch doctors have a solution for this latter group – they kill them too. The explanation? Had these people been in their right mind, they would have requested euthanasia anyway.

On we go:

The law states a number of criteria, which must be met before euthanasia can be administered. For example, the patient must be suffering unbearable pain and the doctor must be convinced the patient is making an informed choice. The opinion of a second doctor is also required.

More shooting fish in barrels here: Where’s the “unbearable pain” in dementia? How can a doctor ever possibly be sure that, knowing a diagnosis of dementia has already been made, calibrate that the dementia is not affecting the request for euthanasia?

Short answer, I’m afraid: All the contortions of logic and single-mindedness betray, with increasing smugness, that in many places we have decided who should live and who should die.

First those who are terminally ill and in untreatable pain. Then people who are not terminally ill but who might have physical or psychological pain. Then people who are judged to never be able to have a better quality of life. First adults. Then children.

Who’s next?

Montana Joins the Culture of Death

2009-12-31T20:26:00.003-05:00

It’s not unexpected, but unfortunate nevertheless.

Just announced, the Supreme Court of Montana has decided that assisted suicide is legal in Montana. That makes Montana the third state in the US to so rule.

ISDB filed an amicus brief opposing assisted suicide in Montana, along with many other groups. I watched the arguments before the Montana Supreme Court in early September, and was not hopeful that our side would succeed.

So there we have it. Creeping culture of death, now legal.

That, plus the pernicious pro-death provisions of the healthcare bill that may well be passed, means we are entering a new era of disposable humanity.

My greatest frustration? That many people with disabilities apparently cannot see how they will soon be in the sights of the pro-death lobby.

In my more perverse moments, I can’t wait to say, “I told you so.”

More rationally, if more people with disabilities don’t stand up along with those of us who are trying to get the word out, then the future is very dark indeed.

Happy New Year.

You Shouldn’t Have to be Euthanized Because You're Different

2009-12-17T09:28:00.011-05:00

Blogging about the culture of death doesn’t make for cheery reading, especially around Christmastime.

Perhaps telling you about Faith will provide a different perspective.

Faith was born without two limbs, and was immediately rejected and abused by her mother. Faith was unable to fight back. Her early weeks were a nightmare. There was nobody to help.

Everything about Faith meant that she, from the beginning, had a poor quality of life.

Rejected by her mother.

Abused by her mother.

Two limbs gone, a double whammy.

She’d never get those limbs back. Her future meant looking very different than others, unable to do things that others took for granted, and she would need to be cared for differently than those with all their limbs.

If the pro-death crowd has their way, euthanasia would be the easy answer for cases like Faith, especially if the radicals succeed in getting us to believe that we should euthanize those who might suffer in their future.

But that’s not the end of the story, because Faith was rescued by someone who believed that while she couldn’t be fixed, she most definitely could be helped.

Fast forward several years:

While Faith never got her limbs back, she has a great life. Faith is loved and clearly an inspiration to all her meet her. She astounds people with how she has adapted to a life without limbs. Her family can’t imagine life without her.

All this would have not happened if she had been euthanized just in case she might suffer because of her limbless condition.

I’m so glad Faith is with us to inspire all those who meet her.

Faith is a dog with no front legs.

She’s also a minor celebrity because she walks upright - just like humans do. She’s been on Montel and Oprah, and gone on tour with Ozzy Osbourne. When she’s not being a media star, she brings joy to many, especially in cheering our injured war vets who have lost limbs - just like her.

A legless dog with a powerful lesson for the pro-death lobby:

Being different doesn’t mean you should die.

Killing Children Now in Case They Might Suffer in the Future

2009-12-09T11:38:00.017-05:00

Fairly often I’m taken to task by some of my friends for suggesting that state-sanctioned eugenics is alive and well in the 21^st century. I have a question to ask them:

Explain to me that what I’m about to report is not eugenics in its purest, simplest, and ugliest form.

First, a standard definition of eugenics:

the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics).

The Nazis took eugenics a step further to take care of all those pesky people with medical and other disabilities who were inconveniently alive, believing that they were so debilitated that they had no acceptable quality of life.

The Dutch are now doing the same. (Google translate will give you a close English version).

Read on.

On Monday, a Dutch medical researcher, Hilde Buiting, called for another step down the slippery slope to pure insanity by calling for the government and the medical profession to change the rules on euthanizing newborn infants.

NOTE: I said change the rules, not devise the rules, because euthanizing newborns in the Netherlands has been officially allowed for quite a while, via the so-called Groningen Protocol of 2006.

In 2006 the argument was the same as what I’ll share below: Killing newborns was already happening in Dutch hospitals, but it was unregulated and therefore uncontrolled.

PRESTO!! Develop a medical set of rules that lay out when doctors may kill newborns. The Groningen Protocol makes killing newborn infants OK!! (An act of love and mercy, you understand).

I really wish I were making this up.

So now, in 2009, the Dutch are again pushing toward expanding euthanasia beyond the Groningen Protocol.

Sidebar: The Dutch already have precedent in killing adults to rely on for how they are now trying to justify killing more newborns. Initially, adult assisted suicide and euthanasia was officially only allowed for the terminally ill in unbearable and uncontrollable suffering. Now, years later, adult assisted suicide and euthanasia have morphed to where medical killing can be carried out for a host of other reasons, even if people are not terminally ill and even if they have no physical illness.

With me so far?

Here’s the new proposal from Ms. Buiting:

The current guidelines state that there must be actual grave suffering on the part of the newborn,. . . In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave suffering foreseen in the future. This reality should be included in the considerations in adapting the guidelines. . . . Given that we in the Netherlands find it important to exercise social control over the active killing of newborns, the guidelines should therefore be adjusted.

See the change? Now they want to kill newborns because of what they might suffer in the murky future.

Oh, and don’t forget about the “social control” part either.

That’s a chilling step past killing newborns that are already suffering, and like the Nazis, this is, as Ms. Buiting so cavalierly noted, a medical and government-sanctioned form of exercising social control.

Again, I ask, how is this not state- and medically sanctioned eugenics?

Prove me wrong, I beg of you, so that I can stop thinking that the unthinkable is now not only thinkable but doable; that we now want to judge newborn infants as so medically disabled that they should be killed by the white-coated, stethoscope-carrying grisly necromancers divining future suffering in order to kill infants now.

Useless Eaters . . No, Wait, “Complete Lives”

2009-12-07T12:05:00.005-05:00

As jackbooted healthcare legislators attempt to force on us a bill that most people don’t want and that we can’t possibly pay for, we had better understand what this will likely mean.

First: The government will become your doctor.

Here’s how it will work:

You go to your doctor with symptoms a, b, and c.

After tests, your doctor or a specialist makes a diagnosis which determines what medical treatments are necessary.

The government is paying for your treatment, so the government decides which treatment you should get - if any at all.

The treatment the government decides you should get may well be based on a proposed treatment allocation idea called the Complete Lives System and devised, among others, by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, President Obama’s Special Advisor for Health Policy.

The policy is laid out on a recent article in the Lancet. This from pages 428-429:

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated . . . the complete lives system justifies preference to younger people . . . Additionally, the complete lives system assumes that, although life-years are equally valuable to all, justice requires the fair distribution of them.

Here’s what this means in plain language:

1. The Complete Lives System will divide Americans into those who are more worthy of treatment and those who are less worthy of treatment. Top priority will go to those between 15 and 40 (because they have the best potential for longer, healthier, and more productive lives, that is, “complete lives”).

2. The youngest and oldest will have less chance of a shot at medical treatment because, statistically, the chances of them attaining "complete lives" are much lower than among 15-40 year- olds.

3. Oh, yes, and even those lucky 15-40 year-olds who make the privileged cut might not get what they need, because “complete lives” will have to be distributed “justly” across the population.

There it is:

Living, or have great potential for a “complete” life? Between 15 and 40? The Government will likely OK necessary medical treatment (unless, of course, what should have been coming to you needs to be “justly" given to someone else).

Living, but don’t have such a great potential to get to a “complete” life? Younger than 15? Older than 40?

You are judged incomplete. You are damaged. You have little potential for attaining completeness.

Complete, you live.

Incomplete, you die.

The Burned Women: The Deliberate Manufacture of Disability

2009-11-30T13:13:00.004-05:00

There are almost 700 million people in the world who have some form of disability. Disability comes in many forms and with a host of causes. Some causes are genetic; some are a result of disease or accident.

That should be enough.

But it isn’t, because in many parts of the world disability is actively and deliberately created.

Recently, a 2008 New York Times story about attacks on Pakistani women has resurfaced in several other contexts (warning: graphic images of disfigured women).

Some women are attacked because they have had the temerity to divorce their husbands (warning, graphic images of disfigured women); girls are attacked because they transgressed male-dominated notions that they should not get educated. Others are assaulted for no reason at all except that they are female.

As I reread the story, I wondered why we are so silent about the hundreds of thousands of women who are horribly disfigured by their husbands or other males with a cultural weapon of choice: acid.

Yes, acid.

The question of course, is why acid? Why is it almost always flung in women’s faces?

Three reasons, at least.

One, in many cultures, men matter way more than women, and the male sense of entitlement, including the entitlement to punish women, is reinforced by the rest of the society. Men are rarely held accountable for these horrific actions and generally they feel justified in committing these atrocities.

Two, disfiguring women’s faces is particularly cruel because in many cultures, people with disabilities are shunned, especially those who have very visible “defects.” What could be more vicious than deliberately creating visible defects like grotesquely maimed faces destroyed by acid? Missing ears. Gaping holes where noses or eyes used to be. Mottled skin literally melted into contorted masks of horror.

Three, in these same societies, women so destroyed are not only shunned because of their disfigurement, but their disabilities mean they will likely not be able to work to feed themselves and their families.

Their lives are shattered. They are deliberately manufactured outcasts.

Some are speaking out in some small way.

Many more of us need to do the same.

If You’re Not Conscious, You’re Dead

2009-11-24T20:09:00.003-05:00

Over the last few days the media have been marveling at the story of Belgian Rom Houben. In 1983, at age 20, Rom was severely injured in a car accident. He was diagnosed as being in a persistent non-responsive state (derogatorily often referred to as a persistent vegetative state).

Doctors using the standard diagnostic protocols reconfirmed Rom’s diagnosis several times over the years. Medical opinion was that he was severely brain damaged and permanently unconscious.

Doctors urged that his nutrition and hydration be removed so that he could die.

Thankfully, Rom’s mom refused.

For 23 years.

Then, enter Dr. Steven Laureys, who used state-of-the art diagnostic technology (unavailable until very recently) to examine Rom’s brain function.

Surprise, surprise.

Rom’s brain function was almost normal.

Bigger surprise: Rom was conscious.

He had been conscious for every one of those for those 23 long years, but was physically completely unable to move to tell anyone (he can’t even cry).

Using a fairly low-tech communication board and the tiniest movement of one finger, he’s now connected to his loved ones and the world.

Much of the media, and many bioethicists, are falling over themselves to spin this as the rarest of events.

Nope – there are hundreds of similar cases reported and validated worldwide.

Here’s the chilling part (after you get over trying to imagine what it’s like to be able to hear everything going on around you for 23 years but can’t let anyone know):

Bioethics is well on the way to redefining what death is. If some get their way, Rom would have most decidedly been pronounced ”dead” after his initial diagnosis years ago because others would have decided that (a) Rom had no quality of life and (b) because keeping people like Rom alive is futile, his organs could have been harvested for transplantation.

Making lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.

Imagine the unspeakable horror of being conscious and being starved and dehydrated to death, or euthanized for your organs.

No doubt in my mind that it’s already happened – repeatedly.

I’m also left with an even more heartrending question:

What might have been if Terri's husband had allowed Dr. Laureys to examine Terri Schiavo?

First They Came for the Mammograms….

2009-11-20T11:32:00.008-05:00

There’s been a great deal of consternation over the last few days about the US Preventive Services Task Force recommending new guidelines for breast cancer screening and evaluation. Essentially, the task force recommends that routine screening begin at age 50 and is probably statistically useless after 75 or so. They further suggested that breast self-examination is so unreliable that women shouldn’t bother.

The history of when to begin screening women for breast cancer has a long history, as noted by ABC News. The guidelines have shifted over the years depending on what the latest studies showed.

It’s also important to understand that conflicting findings are very common in all forms of research and often leave the public confused or increasingly unwilling to believe in the accuracy of any research findings at all.

The task force’s report, however, concerns me for two other reasons.

First, the recommendations are based on statistical significance. All that means is that across all women, the most likely age for getting breast cancer is around 50 or older. Also, across all women, screening after 75 is not recommended because, statistically, they are near the end of their lives anyway.

See the shift? Breast cancer intervention based on probability, not individual medical needs.

Second, the recommendations will inevitably lead insurance companies to adopt the guidelines, which are obviously in their favor, because they can justify not paying for mammograms for women younger than 50 or older than 75. And if insurance companies know anything at all, it’s about probability and statistics.

Which brings us to rationing. The US Senate will debate its healthcare monstrosity tomorrow. Aside from all the other spending-into-oblivion by the current administration, the money to be spent in this bill will inevitably result in needed medical care far, far outstripping the resources to pay for it.

Decisions will have to be made. Some will get breast cancer screening, others will not. Guess what this will mean for your 76 year-old mother?

But the Obama administration didn’t wait for the prestigious semi-independent US Preventive Service Task Force. They have already set up an official government mechanism for using research to justify rationing: The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership.

A whole new bureaucracy to tell us what care we may or may not get by telling us that the “research” has made it so.

The government giveth, the government taketh away.

Death by Following Orders

2009-10-05T14:46:00.003-04:00

Law enforcement types are well aware of the phenomenon called “Death by Cop.” Death by Cop is a way for some disturbed people to commit suicide without having to do the deed themselves. Do something threatening and dangerous in front of officers with their weapons drawn, and off you go.

I think we need a new term: Death by Following Orders.

Read on.

Two years ago, 26 year-old Kerrie Wooltorton killed herself by drinking auto antifreeze mixed with soda. By most accounts Kerrie had severe psychological problems of depression and suicidal ideation. As best anyone can piece together, it was mostly related to a medical condition that meant she could not have children. She had tried to commit suicide before but had always been revived by hospitals and doctors who got to her in time.

But Kerrie was determined to die – if only she could stop herself from getting saved. So Kerrie figured out how to do Death by Following Orders.

Here’s how she did it:

Kerrie knew that for the last several years the UK has been immersed in the assisted suicide and euthanasia debate. She surely watched as the pro-death lobby chipped away at the age-old social taboo of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Kerrie also knew that in 2005 the UK’s Mental Capacity Act had introduced living wills (advanced directives) whereby those with terminal illnesses, as long as they were of right mind, could legally decline any or all future medical treatment. She also knew that if the directive was valid, its conditions had to be respected by all medical personnel under penalty of civil prosecution or even criminal charges.

Kerrie, in her psychological and emotional turmoil, got desperately and horribly creative. She was determined to kill herself but she didn’t want to suffer and she didn’t want to die alone.

So, three days before her death, she wrote out her advance directive that should she be admitted to a hospital for any reason, she would (legally) refuse all treatment.

The die was cast.

On September 18^th, 2007, Kerrie drank the antifreeze and then called an ambulance. At the hospital she presented her advance directive to the staff. As the Telegraph noted:

The will said that if she called for an ambulance it was not because she wanted life-saving treatment but because she did not want to die in her flat alone or in pain.

She died the following day.

Last week an inquest ruled that the doctors and hospital had acted exactly as the law intended in not treating Kerrie because had they done so, they would have been committing an illegal act. Here’s Coroner William Armstrong’s cold observation:

She had capacity to consent to treatment which, it is more likely than not, would have prevented her death. She refused such treatment in full knowledge of the consequences and died as a result.

Kerrie followed the rules.

The hospital followed the rules.

The doctors followed the rules.

The law ordered that Kerrie should die.

Kerrie knew that.

The hospital knew that.

The doctors knew that.

Tragically, Kerrie got everything she wanted.

She died.

She didn’t die alone.

She didn’t die in pain.

Death by Following Orders, indeed.

Death Panels: Can we Please be More Civil?

2009-09-21T10:49:00.009-04:00

Sarah Palin’s coining of the term “death panels” stirred heated reactions from promulgators of the President’s healthcare proposals. However, what’s important about Palin’s term is not so much the actual wording, but the concept, something completely lost on the pro-Obamacare folks.

And the concept is very real.

Here’s why: We have finite medical resources so we have to make decisions about how those resources should be allocated. We either provide those resources to all people who need them, meaning that we’ll run out of resources before we’ve helped everyone, or we will need to decide who gets the resources and who doesn’t.

So, the question becomes: Who will make the decision? For ObamaCare, there’s absolutely no doubt that it will be a government entity if healthcare, or big chunks of it, becomes a government enterprise. Increasingly, doctors will be told what treatments they will be able to prescribe because the government will control all or most healthcare resources.

And what doctors will be told will be according to cold statistics. Some people will be worth the resources, others will not, plain and simple. The government will decide whether you are worth the treatment or whether others would benefit from the treatment more than you.

If others would benefit more than you (younger, healthier, more years of life than fewer), you lose.

Think this is far-fetched? It’s already in place, signed into law last February. The entity, grandly and chillingly Orwellian, is the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership.

What will this fine entity do? I quote from the official Obama Administration website.

What the Government says:

Authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the new Council will help coordinate research and guide investments in comparative effectiveness research funded by the Recovery Act.

What the Government means: The government will determine, via “research” what is effective and what is not. Guess what? It’s not very effective to provide a hip replacement for a 100-year old woman, as the President has already admitted.

What the Government says:

Comparative effectiveness research can improve care for all Americans and is an important element of President Obama’s health reform plan,” said HHS Spokeswoman Jenny Backus.

What the Government means: “Improving care” will also include things already defined as medical “care,” like withdrawing food and water from severely disabled patients. See, in this twisted world, starving and dehydrating people to death is consider “care.”

What the Government says:

Comparative effectiveness research provides information on the relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions. Such research will give clinicians and patient’s valid information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system.

What the Government means: A medical intervention will be strong when given to someone who will get healthier and who has potential for many years of productive life. That same medical intervention will be considered weak for people who may not get healthier and who perhaps don’t have many years of their life still to live.

Long story short (see Ezekiel Emanuel, who’s a member of this Government entity), the lion’s share of treatment will go to those between mid-late adolescence and 40 year-olds, because these are the people most likely to be able to have “a good quality if life” after treatment.

So, in the interests of Government propaganda, I’ll reinvent the term “death panels” which seems to be so offensive to the pro-Obamacare crowd.

Instead of “death panels” let’s call them Research-Based Investments for Healthier Living.

That way, the Government will send many to their deaths without the pro-ObamaCare apparatchiks getting too offended.

President Obama’s Pro-Death Propaganda Machine: I’m Not Impressed

2009-09-08T20:53:00.003-04:00

Several weeks ago, when a White House website overtly called for turning people in if they had “fishy” ideas about what the President was proposing about healthcare (read: your disagreement will be noted, officially, by the government) I spent a lot of energy restraining myself from blogging here to say something like this:

Mr. President: Given that Disability Matters is all over the web, one of your sycophants may well have turned me in for my “fishy” ideas.

If not, I’m here to tell you that I admit, confess, and am willing to sign a public confession (to be released to state media, of course, and where I will stipulate that I was not coerced) that I have “fishy” ideas about your healthcare proposals. Ahead of the signed confession, I have publically so confessed, and I consider it a badge of honor that as of this notification, I am on your government “Fishy List.”

Knocks on the door in the dead of night are half expected.

Bring it on.

Here’s why, Mr. President. I grew up as a privileged white person in apartheid South Africa. I was raised as an English-speaking minority within the white minority. I was raised in the understanding that apartheid was evil, but that there really wasn’t much that could be done, on an individual level, to change it.

As a college student, I disagreed.

I spoke up.

It cost me.

The apartheid regime’s security police followed me for years. They rode by and took my photo. They opened my mail. Thugs all. Somewhere in the dusty vaults of the previous South African regime there is a fat folder with this label: “Mostert, Mark P., Fishy Ideas.”

So, Mr. President, I understand propaganda and state coercion. I believe we have seen it in the healthcare debate.

We’ve seen it in the just-reported coercion of the National Endowment for the Arts commandeered to strong-arm the arts for your healthcare agenda.

And, Mr. President, be aware that there are many of us, the Fishy Family, who understand that in the House bill, H.R. 3200 the forces of death, aka the former Hemlock Society, and (no aka) some members of Congress who never saw an assisted suicide they didn’t like, are preening and chattering about how they helped write the parts of the bill endorsing killing, and, dare I say (gasp) death panels.

I understand in this new season of change and hope that the change is a shadowy pro-death process whose authors cannot contain their glee at what they might accomplish.

And that hope, Mr. President, leans precariously toward the chilling idea that our most vulnerable, our elderly, sick, veterans, and disabled, will be disposed of because, after all, (as the former Hemlock Society, and members of your party in Congress would say) they don’t have a good quality of life.

The Government giveth. The Government taketh away.

Terri Schiavo’s Father – In Memoriam

2009-08-29T20:37:00.004-04:00

I only met Bob Schindler Sr. twice. He could not have been nicer.

The first time was at a conference where I turned up determined to help out against the unspeakable evil of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

I was there because, like many of us, I had watched Bob’s beloved daughter, Terri, starved and dehydrated to death at the behest of a black-robed executioner, Florida’s Judge Greer.

After checking in, I walked around the hotel to see if there was anyone I knew. Of course, I recognized Bob Sr. as he left the building for a few minutes of quiet outside. I was compelled to follow him, and, in some small, very innocuous way, to express my condolences.

His face was weary, lined, tired. His shoulders slouched.

A heartbroken man.

I offered my deep condolences, and the reassurance that Terri didn’t die in vain.

He was most gracious and appreciative.

As I left him, I could not help but wonder whether my empathy was a curse or blessing.

Terri was murdered. Legally.

What else is there to say??

The next time I saw Bob was at another convention. As these things go, he, along with Mary, his devoted wife, was minding a table in memory of Terri.

As before, I expressed my feelings. Again, a warm graciousness, appreciation, and caring.

I’ve since come to know Bobby and Suzanne, two of the most ardent defenders of humanity that you will ever find.

I am blessed with two beautiful children, and three grandchildren. Often as I play with them, laugh at their wonderment in the world, and shake my head indulgently at childhood, I can’t but help think of Terri and the dreams destroyed.

Mr. Schindler, thank you for defending your family to the last moment.

Never, ever, think you were ineffective.

While the hooded black capes crumble to dust, your Terri, and your fatherly love for her, will not crumble.

Indeed, they will go from strength to strength, because, in the end, earthly death has no sting, paltry earthly graves no victory.

Life Not Worth Living? The Obama Administration Thinks So – at Least for Veterans

2009-08-24T14:59:00.005-04:00

We have a rule in our family: Whenever we see members of the US military, we stop, shake their hand, and thank them for their service. As a naturalized citizen, I add my own piece: The United States has offered me immense opportunity that even as a (then) privileged white South African, I could never have had, and that it is the service of our military that has kept me safe and free to pursue the American Dream.

However, it’s getting difficult to keep thinking that our government actually appreciates our veterans just like my family does, after reading the Veteran’s Administration’s (VA) end-of-life booklet, “Your life, Your Choices.”

The document, written by the Clinton Administration, was later withdrawn by the Bush Administration, but it’s been in play since being reintroduced by the Obama Administration this past February.

With some parts of the media beginning to sniff around the document, the Obama Administration, trying to head off another PR disaster, today hastily added a note to the booklet’s webpage (the page has since disappeared altogether):

The document is currently undergoing revision for release in VA. The revised version will be available soon.

Nonsense. The administration got caught on the wrong foot, when somebody noticed what it really thinks of the value of Vet’s lives - as policy, in black and white, for everyone to see.

It’s a disturbing document, because woven among many paragraphs that are informative and clear, is the rather ominous notion: Veteran’s lives might, at some point, no be worth living.

Yes, you read that correctly.

A powerful branch of the Obama Administration, the VA, is now clearly in the business of helping citizens decide whether they should live or die.

Lest I be accused of “fishy thinking,” let’s go to the actual document, p. 21, where your government asks our sick veterans:

What makes your life worth living?

Think I’m stretching things? Read on.

After asking this question, What makes your life worth living?, the document tries to “help” Vets answer it. To do this, the VA thoughtfully provides a series of sub questions to be answered on a scale from

Difficult, but acceptable, to

Worth Living, just barely, to

Not worth living.

Here’s a sample of the sub questions to be answered through the scale above:

d. I am in severe pain most of the time.

p. My situation causes severe emotional burden for my family (such as feeling worried or stressed all the time).

q. I am a severe financial burden on my family.

I am not making this up.

Go just two pages later to the section entitled “Hope of Recovery” (p. 23). Here the quality of life issue is raised again in terms of chances for recovery from a serious illness.

(Sidebar: It doesn’t say a terminal illness, just that you won’t get back to where you were before your turn for the worse):

Imagine that you are seriously ill. The doctors are recommending treatment for your illness, but the treatments have very severe side effects, such as severe pain, nausea, vomiting, or weakness that could last for 2-3 months.
I would be willing to endure severe side effects if the chance that I would regain my current health was:

high (over 80%) [Yes, Not sure, No]

moderate (50%) [Yes, Not sure, No]

low (20%) [Yes, Not sure, No]

very low (less than 2%) [Yes, Not sure, No]

There's plenty more of the same in its 54 pages.

It's not unreasonable, based on the document, to observe at least some of the Obama Administration's thinking:

1. Life is not always worth living.

2. We can help you decide if life is not worth living.

3. Your life might not be worth living because your being alive may be a burden to others.

4. Your life might not be worth living because some treatments are painful, have side effects, and might only provide a small chance of “getting healthier.”

There have been other governments who have defined groups of their citizenry as having lives not worth living.

Is the current administration populated by a bunch of Nazis? No, the only people who were Nazis were the Nazis.

However, there’s no question that our government, at least as far as its war heroes go, officially acknowledges that under a whole bunch of circumstances, some citizens’ lives might not be worthy of living.

I wonder which group will be next?

Because, for governments unchecked, there’ll always be a next group, trust me.

Caution: House Healthcare Bill 3200 Means What It Says

2009-08-18T14:10:00.005-04:00

President Obama, ever-present in every form of media imaginable, continues to struggle mightily to articulate what exactly he means by healthcare reform.

I’m not impressed, because I don’t think the President knows what he means - the messages are just too garbled.

Ditto his cabinet and top party officials, who routinely issue statements that are quite contradictory, both to each other, and to the President, and are then followed by the usual retractions, clarifications, or by attacking the messenger.

This message mess is understandable, because the President has delegated what his reform means to the lawmakers who have drafted several sets of legislation both in the US Senate and the House.

The proposal drawing the most interest has been H.R. 3200, which aims to:

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Unlike my President and many lawmakers, I’ve read the bill. It’s not that difficult to understand, and no, you really don’t need to be a lawyer to understand it. It’s boring reading, but hardly incomprehensible.

Many of us don’t like what we see.

But proponents keep insisting that what the bill actually says is, well, not what it says, and that many of us who know exactly what it says (and implies) are perpetuating “myths” or “misinformation.”

Really? Let’s look at just one example:

Proponents of H. R. 3200 insist that the now-notorious Section 1228 of the bill, beginning on p. 424, describing ‘advance care planning consultation,’ is not mandatory. It’s simply, so they say, that the bill provides for people to discuss their end-of-life preferences with their doctor, and that this consult will now be paid for by the government.

I searched the bill. The word “voluntary” appears 7 times.

Now, that leads me to think that the word “voluntary” is written those 7 times because the bill means for those particular parts of the bill to be, well, not mandatory. Ergo, voluntary.

However, there’s absolutely no “voluntary” mention in the section related to ‘advance care planning consultation.’

In fact, at the very least, even if we can explain away the rest of the “voluntary’ canard in the bill, read this, from page 428 (italics mine):

(B) An advance care planning consultation with respect to an individual may be conducted more frequently than provided under paragraph (1) if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual, including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury, or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility (as defined by the Secretary), or a hospice program.

See any mention of ‘voluntary’ in Section B?

Yes, folks, even if you can somehow dodge the end-of-life consultation while you’re at home, once you’re admitted to a medical facility that is reimbursed by Medicare, you’re going to get it whether you like it or not.

Is it really too much of a stretch to think that if something, in proposed legislation, is meant to be voluntary, that the legislation so stipulates, and that where something is not voluntary, that the word “voluntary” (or the clear implication of voluntariness) is absent?

If you think it is, indeed too much of a stretch, go read the bill.

Show me where it stipulates, in black and white, that the ‘advance care planning consultation’ is voluntary.

Palin’s "Death Panels" Are Already Here

2009-08-10T13:14:00.004-04:00

Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin made some comments on Friday that seem to have gotten the pro-death healthcare reform side in a bit of a dither.

Here’s what Palin said:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Apparently the pro-healthcare reform lobby took exception to Palin’s assertion of a “death panel.”

Now, I’m not sure what else you call proposals for government apparatchiks to monitor and control the treatments doctors hand out, and who may well refuse to allow doctors to use some treatments, thereby resulting in the death of some of their patients.

But, as much as I think Palin’s comments are right on the money, let’s remember that we already have such death panels operating in hospitals all over the country.

And we’ve had them for quite a while.

Exhibit A: Texas.

When former President George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, he signed into law the Texas Advance Directives Act of 1999, the provisions of which allow exactly what Palin suggested – a panel that decides if some patients should die.

Here’s what the law allows: Any hospital can, legally, give notice that it is stopping all patient treatment 10 days after the decision has been conveyed to the patient’s loved ones.

The reason for stopping treatment? The hospital has decided that any more care is considered futile. That is, any more care is essentially useless and wasteful, because the patient will never get better.

This decision is made exclusively by the hospital panel. Loved ones have no say in how this is decided.

Not a word.

This decision can be made even if the family is able and willing to pay for all care themselves, and the law overrides any advance directives the patient may have had, saying, for example, that all treatment should be continued until death.

Utilitarian? As Palin might say, you betcha!!

The logic’s pretty simple, actually:

You’re not getting healthier; it’s a waste of money to spend any more treatment on you. We will use those expensive treatments on people who will have a better chance of getting better.

In other words, hurry up and die.

That’s what happened in the fight to keep treatment going to poor Emilio Gonzales in 2007, and to many others like him across the country.

In the interests of fairness, of course, loved ones, once informed of the hospital’s decision, may then “appeal.” That means hiring lawyers to get a court injunction to delay the end of treatment.

Yes, folks, in Texas you will need to hire a lawyer to prevent the hospital from killing your loved one.

If this isn’t a version of a “death panel,” I don’t know what is.

President Obama’s Medicare Welcomes the Grim Reaper, Part II

2009-08-04T10:53:00.005-04:00

The healthcare debate is gathering momentum because people are beginning to understand what the government is intending.

What the government is intending, of course, is controlling who lives and who dies, who gets treatment and who doesn’t.

I’ve already addressed this intention via the President’s repeated public statements, and how certain phrases are repeated, mantra-like, so that they will become embedded in the public mind.

That’s why the President is constantly in media-blitz mode, repeating the same themes time after time. He does that because he wants you to believe certain things and not believe other things. He’s intent on bending public opinion to his will.

My favorite propaganda theme? Well, the President has a way of explaining things about healthcare in terms of “making people healthier.” Over and over again, in print, all over television, town hall meetings, and YouTube chats, the drumbeat is healthier is the administration's goal.

However, as far as I can tell, nobody has ever challenged the President with this question, so let me try:

President Obama, you repeatedly emphasize how your heathcare proposals will “make people healthier.” What does that mean for people who have no hope of becoming healthier? What of people with chronic conditions, disabilities, and the elderly?

I’m not holding my breath for an answer.

So, we need to look for clues. Let’s say among people on Medicare (the elderly, people with disabilities, and those with chronic health conditions).

Let’s go to HR 3200, the 1,017 behemoth healthcare bill that many of our public representatives arrogantly admit to not reading.

Despite what some of our representatives say, the language of the bill is quite plain. The clues are there, but you must read carefully not only for what is said, but for what is not said.

Exhibit 1: Advocates insist that the bill says absolutely nothing about end-of-life counseling being “mandatory.” Well, the bill first describes what this ‘advance care planning consultation’ will look like, and then says this:

the term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) [doctor, nurse, or nurse practitioner] regarding advance care planning, if . . . the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years . . . An advance care planning consultation with respect to an individual may be conducted more frequently . . . if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual, including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury, or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility (as defined by the Secretary), hospice program.

So, if you’re “healthy,” such a consultation will be every 5 years. If you get less healthy, you might have more consultations as your state of health declines.

Here’s the deception that the pro-death lobby doesn’t want you to understand: If this bill becomes law, there is no way that it will not be a mandatory requirement.

Why??

Because nowhere in the bill does it say that the “consultation” is OPTIONAL.

Now, if a law says something is not optional, then there’s only one other way to interpret its legal intent: Yes, mandatory.

Wouldn’t surprise me at some point, if this becomes law, and people finally wake up, they might hear the administration say the following:

Well, we never said it would be mandatory, I think we can all agree on that. We just made sure that it wasn’t optional.

Gotcha!!!

Doublespeak is not new, but it’s still chilling.

President Obama’s Medicare Welcomes the Grim Reaper

2009-07-21T20:35:00.011-04:00

The healthcare debate is raging.

It should.

But it’s not raging enough, if you ask me.

Think about it: Politicians voting on bills they admit they haven’t read (healthcare will be no different), and a President pushing a healthcare bill that, by his own admission, has provisions that he’s “not familiar with”

No matter.

For President Obama, it’s all urgent, urgent, urgent. The time for talk is over. The time to act is now.

I suggest part of the urgency is a sleight of hand to enshrine the culture of death in law.

Why? Because bureaucratized death stalks the droning sea of its thousand-odd pages.

I’m referring, of course, to H.R. 3200, the “healthcare” bill, euphemistically described as a bill “To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.”

George Orwell, wherever he is, must be very proud.

Like my President and many of our representatives, I haven’t read the entire 1,017 pages of the bill, but I did find a chilling section that we’d better talk about.

Now.

If we don’t, and this bill becomes law, people will die at the behest of the administration’s apparatchiks, the new foot soldiers of death by paperwork, decided in dingy government offices.

Cold, remote-controlled death. 8 to 5. In your best interests, of course.

Buried on pages 424-434 of the bill, in a section headed “Advance Care Planning Consultation” the first target are those covered by Medicare.

Pop quiz: Who are the people covered by Medicare in the US?

Answer: People over 65, people with disabilities, and specifically (more in Part II) patients with end-stage kidney disease and those with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

Among the usual, pious explanations about advance care directives (living wills) and health proxies (someone to decide on your behalf if you are unable to do so) is the true intent: Killing off people who cost too much.

Now it’s not written that bluntly, but it’s there, nevertheless.

Side bar: Remember that the President is on record explicitly saying that decisions are going to be made about who gets care and who doesn’t, and that the elderly and disabled will just have to suck it up when they’re on the losing (sorry, cost-effective) end.

I’ll say more in Part II, but here’s a taste:

Citizens receiving Medicare (elderly, disabled, etc.) will be required to have a mandatory “Advance Care Planning Consultation” every 5 years. That’s if you are healthy but over 65. If your medical condition deteriorates, then these consultations will become more frequent.

These “consultations” will include advice on “the continuum of end-of-life services.”

Stay tuned – “end of life services,” as defined in the bill, will include withdrawal of “artificial” nourishment and hydration.

Just saying: Let’s assume you’re in a coma. Some desk jockey reads your file. (That is, when they’re not on their union-sanctioned lunch and other breaks). You can’t eat, you can’t drink. You are on “artificial” nourishment and hydration.

This costs money. Your quality of life is poor. Others, who have a better chance at a “quality of life,” will benefit more. Rules must be followed. The law must be obeyed. The checklist must be diligently filled out. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Gotta watch the clock. Five o’clock traffic is bad.

A final thought: There’s nothing explicit about assisted suicide being on the continuum of “end-of-life-services.”

BUT: Don’t forget, in Oregon and Washington, and, for now in Montana, assisted suicide is most certainly a state-sanctioned legal “end-of-life-service.” Ask Barbara Wagner, who was denied expensive meds to comfort her terminally ill condition, but whose state commissars offered to pay for a much cheaper alternative: The drugs that would help her to commit (legal) assisted suicide.

Stay tuned for Part II, especially if you have, or will have at some point in your life, involvement with Medicare.

UK: Might You Die Because You are Unable to Say You Want to Live?

2009-07-15T10:04:00.001-04:00

There is no doubt that Baroness Campbell of Surbiton made the difference in a very important debate in the UK House of Lords last week.

Speaking in opposition to an amendment proposed by Lord Falconer, which sought to decriminalize the actions of people who help others commit suicide, the good Baroness delivered a compelling speech that was the main reason the amendment was defeated.

Baroness Campbell, born with a degenerative muscular condition, understood the implications of the amendment, which was generated by the intense reporting over the last few years of many UK citizens, who, accompanied by others, had travelled to Switzerland for assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic (here, here, here, here).

Ahead of the debate, Baroness Campbell penned a persuasive public letter laying out her position. ISDB, along with a number of other US and UK disability advocacy organizations, was a signatory to the letter.

Last Sunday, Baroness Campbell detailed her struggles and her ultimate conviction that her life was worth living.

She also noted that in one hospital emergency, where she was unable to speak for herself, she was lucky to have had her husband Roger there to speak for her, because it was clear that the doctors were going to let her die, and had already agreed on a “do not resuscitate” order, ostensibly because of her poor quality if life.

I was horrified to learn that it was only after Roger showed the doctors a photograph of Baroness Campbell getting an honorary doctorate in law from Bristol University that they were persuaded that she did, indeed, have a good “quality of life.”

That’s what we’ve come to: Having to prove to our doctors that our lives are worth living, and therefore worth saving.

Is there still anyone who thinks that, had Roger not been at his wife’s side, that she would be giving an interview in her sunny garden last Sunday?

Is there still anyone who doesn’t think that among the many thousands of people with medical and other disabilities that turn up alone in UK hospitals in similar circumstances, that many are allowed or encouraged to die even if they want to live?

ISDB Signatory to Baroness Campbell’s Letter Opposing Proposed UK Pro-Assisted Suicide Amendments

2009-07-09T09:12:00.003-04:00

Last week, in London, a motion was introduced in the House of Lords to strike down legislation that allowed for the prosecution of anyone helping another commit suicide. The motion was introduced by Lord Falconer to protect those who travel with another person seeking assisted suicide in foreign countries, and who then risked prosecution when they returned to the UK.

The motion was defeated, in part, because disability advocates and organizations in the US and the UK, including ISDB, joined as signatories to an opposing letter written by Baroness Campbell, a member of the House of Lords who has a disability.

Open Letter from Leaders of Disabled People’s Movement in UK and USA

Dear Sir,

As leaders of the disabled people’s movement in the UK and the USA, we are extremely concerned about how the proposed amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill will impact on the lives of disabled people.

If Lord Falconer’s amendment succeeds in the House of Lords on Tuesday 7 July then those who assist ‘terminally ill’ people to go abroad to end their lives in ‘suicide clinics’ would be immune from prosecution.

The phrase ‘terminally ill’ is not defined in the amendment, and could apply to people with a very wide range of chronic progressive illnesses some with life expectancy stretching to decades. Disabled people who experience progressive conditions understand far more than non-disabled people about what it is live with these pressures. We know what is acceptable as disease or disability progresses, and for the huge number of us who say no to assisted suicide, it is because we fear the changing culture such an amendment would bring. People without experience of disability, including our friends and families cannot predict what each stage of our personal journey will mean. Furthermore, financial and emotional conflicts of interest will always present an added burden to the situation. A law decriminalising assisted suicide would undoubtedly place disabled people under pressure to end their lives early to relieve the burden on relatives, carers or the state.

These concerns are not side issues that only affect disabled people. We are like society’s ‘canaries in the coalmine’ who can often see the dangers of potentially discriminatory legislation before others, as it impacts on us even before the deed is done. We are scared now; we will be terrified if assisted suicide becomes state-sanctioned.

The existing law, with the penalties it holds in reserve, causes potential assisters and those wishing to die, to think very carefully before acting. The discretion within the current law enables judges to exercise compassion in hard cases. What is not broken does not need fixing.

Disabled people have been largely silent in this debate which has been carried out in the media by clerics, non-disabled commentators and a small handful of individuals with terminal conditions who are supported by Dignity in Dying. Until people like us are present to engage in this highly complex and ethical debate, we must strongly oppose any device such as Lord Falconer’s amendment to get assisted dying in through the back door.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Crossbench Peer

Liz Sayce, CEO, RADAR

Julie Newman, Chair, United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council (UKDPC)

David Morris, Chair of Independent Living Alternatives

Haqeeq Bostan, Director of New Disability Policy Forum

Diane Coleman, President, Not Dead Yet

Rachel Hurst, Disability Awareness in Action

Mike Smith, Chair, National Centre for Independent Living

Colin Revell, CEO, NeuroDiversity International (NDI)

Marilyn Golden, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)

Alison Davis, National Coordinator, No Less Human
Dr. Mark Mostert, Director, Institute for the Study of Disabilities & Bioethics (ISDB)
Alice Maynard, Director, Future Inclusion

Linda Burnip, Executive Health and Safety Officer for Warwickshire and Coventry CDP

Liz Crow, Roaring Girl Productions

Stephen Drake, Research Analyst, Not Dead Yet

Adrian Whyatt, Chair, NeuroDiversity International (NDI)

Keith Armstrong, Historian, writer, musician and video maker

Dawn Willis, Activist/Trainer affiliated to RETHINK

Professor Colin Barnes, Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds

Louise Clifford, Daughter of Max Clifford

Leonard Zandrow, General Counsel, National Spinal Cord Injury Association

Ann Macfarlane OBE, Kingston CIL

Andrew Bruce, East Sussex CIL Development Worker

Tara Flood, Director, Alliance for Inclusive Education

Andrew Little, Director, Ahead Disability Equipment & Consultancy LLP

Alison Cater, Director, Ahead Disability Equipment & Consultancy LLP

Janice Ollerton, Disabilities Studies Researcher/Activist (Australia)

Joseph M. Camilleri, CHAIR, Kummissjoni Nazzjonali Persuni b'Dizabilità (Malta)

Julie McNamara, Activist / Director Crossings Theatre

Kate Nash, Not Dead Yet

Roxanne Homayoun, Direct Action Network

Dr Ju Gosling, Chair, Regard

John W. Smith, Coordinator Disabled Peoples Alliance, Northamptonshire

Kelly Buckland, Executive Director, National Council on Independent Living

Tolerance Ends, Animus Arises Where Disability Begins

2009-07-08T09:34:00.004-04:00

Cyberspace has been alive with discussions of a hit piece written by the Huffington Post’s Erik Sean Nelson. Nelson used the now well-worn epithets of being retarded in commenting on Sarah Palin’s resignation as Alaska Governor last week.

The piece was pulled almost immediately, but not before several media watchdog groups had downloaded screen captures. Nelson swiftly offered an apology for what he wrote, but not for the way he thinks about people with disabilities.

I’ve decided to share the piece in it’s entirety because it reveals the palpable animus toward people with disabilities that’s alive and well in the US.

Penned as a “humorous” piece (it’s not), had this been written about almost any other group of people (take your pick: minorities, women, on and on) there would have been nothing less than a media firestorm that would have had the potential to wipe the Michael Jackson coverage from our TV screens.

However, Nelson is in good company. It wasn’t too long ago that Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) repeatedly said, on the record, that Sarah Palin was retarded. And don’t let’s forget President Obama cheerfully noted that he bowls like a retard.

Just so that it’s clear: Palin is targeted in this way because Trig has Down Syndrome.

Funny, I don’t recall anything like this ever being said about a person in the Kennedy family who had mental retardation.

Here’s Nelson’s vitriol:

Palin Will Run in '12 on More Retardation Platform

In Sarah Palin's resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the "world needs more Trigs, not fewer." That's a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it's kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.

Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.

She will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40's just to mix up some chromosomes.

She now is in favor of abortion only in case of diploid birth.

Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter.

This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job.

Look, she says she's resigning as governor because people are making attacks on her and Trig. If she ever did become president, all Osama bin Laden would have to do to defeat the United States is Photoshop a picture of Trig and she'd surrender the country that night. As she said, "That's not politics as usual." It isn't. Politicians don't usually quit for so stupid of reasons.

I’m sure you’re all laughing your heads off.

A final thought: A raft of disability advocacy groups have been stunningly silent on this issue. They get their alerts, they read the blogs every day, and are lightning quick to defend against the kind of bigotry that Nelson showed.

They’ve been AWOL here.

Why? Do they believe that for Sarah Palin and her son Trig this kind of nastiness is OK?

President Obama: Potential for Getting Healthy? You Win!!

2009-06-29T10:09:00.004-04:00

Let’s be clear: President Obama’s push for healthcare reform will significantly change the way people with serious medical conditions, especially among the elderly, those with disabilities, and the terminally ill, will be treated.

Well, not treated, actually.

There’s no doubt that the President’s message, hammered relentlessly at every turn, is made in starkly economic terms – that medical care is very expensive, costs need to be controlled, and resources have to be allocated in new ways.

That’s half the pitch.

Here’s the other half: Because of this problem, it’s important to see which groups of people disproportionately consume the lion’s share of medical care dollars.

We already know: People with disabilities, people with serious chronic illnesses, the terminally ill, and the elderly.

The president hasn’t gotten around to making his economic case about people with disabilities yet, but he has in terms of the elderly and the terminally ill. My take is that among the targeted groups, it’s the disability community that will raise stiff opposition. The elderly and the terminally ill are more vulnerable, and are less likely to protest.

Let me put the president’s strategy more bluntly:

"Medical care is expensive. Some people get a lot of care, others very little. Many people who get a lot of expensive care are the elderly, those with disabilities, and those who are probably not going to ever be as healthy as they used to be. We don’t have the money to pay for every expensive procedure for everyone, so we need to decide who gets the care that’ll give us most bang for the buck."

The President doesn’t say it this way, instead he uses a euphemism it’s hard not to like: Health. We must give medical care to make people healthier.

Note what’s not said: If you have no prospect of getting healthy, then the government needs to step in and decide whether or not you are worth getting the treatment.

President Obama drive this point home in his interview to the New York Times in April (all italics are mine):

And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. And certainly that’s true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control. And right now we’re footing the bill for a lot of things that don’t make people healthier.

The president drummed the “Health” theme again in his ABC News Health Care Forum at the White House last week:

But here's the problem that we have in our current health care system, is that there is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier.

And later:

And in terms of how doctors are reimbursed, it's going to be the same system that we have now, except we can start making some changes so that, for example, we're rewarding quality of outcomes rather than the number of procedures that are done. And this is true not just for doctors, it's also true for hospitals. One of the things that we could say to hospitals is, reduce your readmission rate, which is also often a sign that health outcomes have not been so good.

Now, we've put forward some specific ways of paying for the health reform that we talked about. About two-thirds of the cost would be covered by re-allocating dollars that are already in the health care system, taxpayers are already paying for it, but it's not going to stuff that's making you healthier.

Prediction: If the President has his way, expensive medical care will be redirected to the winners in this money game, those who have the potential to be healthier.

If you have a disability, if you’re elderly and in poor health, or if you have a severe chronic or terminal condition, you lose.

Charlie & Jessica: A Story the Pro-Death Folks Don’t Want You to Read

2009-06-15T08:59:00.005-04:00

For those of us doing our best to counter the spin, propaganda, and outright lies that the pro-assisted suicide and euthanasia folks regularly crank out, it’s understandable that we sometimes miss stories that make our points quite elegantly.

Don’t miss this UK story, written by Charlie Uttley, a TV presenter, about his relationship with his mother, Jessica, who is terminally ill with cancer.

Here is a story of love, care, and warmth. It’s even got some very dark humor. Charlie’s piece opens with a description of a song he wrote for his mother:

Not long ago, I wrote a song with an ex-Cambridge Footlight friend of mine called Smother Mother. The opening verse includes the lines: 'Why should comfort be dependent on a pharmacy of pills, when one well-disposed descendent and a pillow cures all ills? Smother, smother, smother, smother mother.'

The loudest laughter came from Jessica.

What’s most remarkable about the story is it counters just about all the points the other side uses to frighten and mislead people. Charlie shows that while caring for Jessica is no picnic, it’s not the horrible torture and hell that the pro-death side says most of us will face as our lives come to an end.

Here, along with some suffering, to be sure, is true dignity, true joy, and a palpable sense of love.

Love and dignity are not helium-filled plastic bags. They are not cold, calculated killings in a dingy apartment in Switzerland.

No, the exemplars of love and dignity are Charlie and Jessica.

Pro-Death Propaganda Steals the Show in the UK

2009-06-01T14:22:00.005-04:00

I’m human, just like everyone else, and so when I make a prediction that turns out to be correct, I have been known to say, “I told you so.”

Last January 12th I wrote of assisted suicides at Dignitas in Switzerland, which are hardly gentle and loving:

Here’s the kicker: This nightmare will hardly engender much shock or outrage, I’m afraid.Why? Because the spin and pressure will be to pass laws to make places where people kill themselves nice and comfy, clean, and warm.

Well, I told you so.

A while back, I wrote that the UK was now ground zero for the pro-death movement, currently focusing on the thin end of the wedge, assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is a wedge because the ultimate aim of the pro-death movement is not only legalization of assisted suicide, but also the eventual legal availability of euthanasia for anyone, at any time, for any reason.

I have also written quite a bit about the Swiss killing group, Dignitas (here, here, here, here), who are happy to help kill people – for a price.

Dignitas has become infamous lately because of the many people from the UK who have flocked to their killing facility (read: grubby apartment, strange looking people) in Switzerland. Many of these cases have been widely reported in the media. Dan James. Craig Ewert. The list goes on and on.

I predicted that instead of revealing the lie that assisted suicide is a heinously selfish and soulless act, the pro-death spin would be that the UK laws would be made to be the culprit – that’s it’s not fair or kind to ship people off to unfamiliar places in Europe to commit assisted suicide. They should be allowed to do it at home in familiar surroundings.

Ergo, it’s the LAW that’s the problem, not helping killing people.

Today I’m saddened, but not surprised, that the UK pro-death spin was exactly what I said it would be.

Read on.

The pressure is building inexorably in the UK to overturn the laws that make assisted suicide illegal on at least two fronts.

The first is the persistent Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis. She has already made the decision to got to Dignitas to be killed, and wants her husband to be there. She has petitioned all of Britain’s lower courts to clarify whether he will be prosecuted for aiding and abetting her suicide when he returns to the UK. They have all refused to do so. Tomorrow, Purdy takes her case to the highest court in the land, the House of Lords.

It’s important to note that others who have done this have not been prosecuted, but Purdy wants more: She wants the law to say unequivocally that there will be no legal action.

Second, a major piece in today’s edition of London’s Mail reported that there are currently almost 800 people lined up to be killed in Switzerland. 34 have been cleared by their doctors for assisted suicide because they are terminally ill and supposedly competent to make the decision. Others have already set their dates with death.

This is all bad enough, but, again, let’s look at the media propaganda:

The number of Britons thinking of travelling to the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland has almost reached 800. The figure is ten times the level of seven years ago.

Spin 1: The numbers are increasing, we must do something, this is a growing problem! There is a demand for assisted suicide by the British people!

Well, to me, we might want to ask why there is such a demand. Could it be the pro-death mission of fear, especially playing on peoples’ fear of abandonment, is meant to make more people want to die by assisted suicide?

There is massive public support for a change in the law to allow assisted dying, with polls regularly showing more than 80 per cent of the public want it made legal.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns to allow assisted suicide, said: 'There is clearly a growing demand for a well regulated, legal right for people with terminal illness who are mentally competent to end their life if they choose to.'

Spin 2: If the majority want it, it must be right. Laws should be changed if 8 out of 10 people think they should be changed. That’s how we’ll make it safe and legal for you to have someone help you kill yourself.

Really? Let’s remember that history is full of examples where some very nasty things happened based on popular opinion. Sterilization comes to mind. I’m willing to bet that most of the 80% are significantly misinformed – no, lied to – and that they are responding to pro-death propaganda.

Let’s continue:

The 1961 Suicide Act criminalises anyone who aids, abets, counsels or procures someone else's suicide, and some relatives have been questioned by police.

Oh my gosh!!! The police questioned some relatives related to their possibly breaking the law? What’s next? Public executions? (Pardon the sarcasm).

I repeat: In all these very high-profile cases, what the UK authorities have actually done is turn a blind eye to these goings-on. Seems to me that if they had followed the letter of the law diligently, a lot of relatives who helped kill people at Dignitas would already be charged, found guilty, and be in jail.

But it’s the spin, you see - implying that those big bad Bobbies are hauling off vanloads of poor grieving relatives to languish in the basements of Her Majesty’s Prisons.

Ergo:

Baroness Jay said: 'It's a tragic anomaly that people who are giving a last loving assistance to a loved one find themselves under the threat of imprisonment.'

So, you know what comes as the climax of the piece, don’t you?

Read on:

Lesley Close, who went to Dignitas in 2003 with her brother John, a sufferer from motor neurone disease sufferer, said: 'More and more British people will be travelling to Switzerland to die because more people are aware of the compassionate and peaceful death you can achieve there . . . The interest in Dignitas underlines the case for reform of the law. We need the same facility here.'

Big bad law. Big bad Bobbies. So uncaring of those saints who are helping kill people.

Nice gentle, compassionate Dignitas, where all is dappled light and calm.

However, the truth will out, in my opinion, because there’s no future in assisted suicide.

Is Obama the First Pro-Euthanasia President?

2009-05-12T10:13:00.003-04:00

There’s been very little attention paid to an interview President Obama did with the New York Times the day of his major speech at Georgetown University on April 14. I was especially interested in the section of the interview dealing with health care, and to learn of the President’s perceptions of end-of-life issues. It’s not pretty. Read on.

For starters, President Obama opined:

I have always said, though, that we should not overstate the degree to which consumers rather than doctors are going to be driving treatment, because . . . when it comes to medical care; I know how to ask good questions of my doctor. But ultimately, he’s the guy with the medical degree. So, if he tells me, You know what, you’ve got such-and-such and you need to take such-and-such, I don’t go around arguing with him or go online to see if I can find a better opinion than his.

Well, yes and no.

But the President’s slant is immediately concerning, because there’s a fine line between medical expertise and Doctor Power. What if the doctor says, “Well, you’ve got two weeks to live, and your quality of life is very poor, and all the expensive care we can give you will not help a bit, but assisted suicide is legal, quick, and very inexpensive?’ Should I then accept this pronouncement because he’s “the guy with the medical degree?”

If you think I’m stretching things a bit, it’s because of what came next from the President:

And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options. And certainly that’s true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, where the taxpayers are footing the bill and we have an obligation to get those costs under control. And right now we’re footing the bill for a lot of things that don’t make people healthier.

Not too hard to see the spin here. Now we’ll get the government saying, “OK, seeing that we pay for your medical care, we’re going to decide what care you get and what care you can’t have.”

And, more darkly, the specter of futile care emerges, because what the President was saying was, “If we’re paying for stuff that doesn’t make you healthier, we need to reconsider whether we want to pay for this treatment.”

Note the phrase is “to make you healthier” - not to alleviate your symptoms, or provide you with comfort care because you’re never going to get healthier.

Simple: If treatment makes you healthy again, you get it. If it can’t, you can’t have it, because we need it for people who can get healthy again.

Pure, unadulterated futile care.

Here’s what will happen, trust me:

The government already knows that medical care in the last weeks of life is where most medical dollars get spent. Same goes for money spent on people with significant, although not necessarily terminal disabilities. Marry that to the President’s commitment to cut health care costs, a society that increasingly thinks helping people die is just dandy, and a medical profession that is increasingly utilitarian, and you have the perfect plan to make people with severe medical problems, including those with disabilities, into Useless Eaters.

It got worse.

The President:

So when . . . I talk about the importance of using comparative-effectiveness studies as a way of reining in costs [which] . . . is an attempt to say to patients, you know what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that the blue pill, which costs half as much as the red pill, is just as effective, and you might want to go ahead and get the blue one. And if a provider is pushing the red one on you, then you should at least ask some important questions.

Ah, “comparative-effectiveness,” “objective studies.”

Science in the service of deciding who lives and who dies. Seems like we’ve heard this somewhere before.

Allow me to paraphrase my President:

Doctor to patient: “You know, what, we’ve looked at some objective studies out here, people who know about this stuff, concluding that there’s no point in treating you any further. We’ve concluded that the blue pill, which will keep you comfortable until you die, is very expensive. The red pill, that costs a tiny fraction of the blue pill, can end your suffering quietly, effectively, and with dignity.”

Don’t believe me? See what happened to Barbara Wagner in Oregon, where the state refused an expensive treatment to help her live our her days, but offered to pay the pennies it would cost for her to commit assisted suicide.

But the President went even further, using a personal example when asked about end of life care:

. . . my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip . . .So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible. And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart . . .

OK, a very difficult situation, with difficult, but very common health decisions that needed to be made. BUT, then the President went on, back to setting us up for official pro-death thinking:

Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

See? Old, lying in misery in an expensive hospital bed, with a broken hip.

Pretty upsetting. Expensive, too.

What’s a grandson to do?

The President:

Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Just so you know: Pro-death is going to be more than law. Here's the plan:

Have “conversations” with the public under the guise of measured reasonable argument. Subtly (and not so subtly) use doctors, scientists and ethicists who are pro-death to lead the way. Shape public opinion to utilitarianism, futile care, people as pure economic entities, and then the resistance to assisted suicide, and, eventually, euthanasia, will crumble.

Is Obama our first pro-death President?

I see no evidence that he’s not.

Mostert Live on the Andy Caldwell Show Tuesday, 6.05 pm Eastern

2009-05-04T14:08:00.018-04:00

I'll be back live on the Andy Caldwell Show at 6.05 pm eastern time today, Tuesday, May 5. We'll discuss ISDB's announcement last week that it had filed a friend of the court brief in Montana, appealing a Montana Judge's declaration from the bench that physician-assisted suicide was legal in Montana.

Please join the conversation!

ISDB Files Amicus Brief Opposing Legalized Physician-Assisted Suicide in Montana

2009-04-30T11:07:00.001-04:00

The Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics yesterday joined with the Bioethics Defense Fund, and the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund, in filing a friend of the court brief appealing the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Montana.

Hard on the heels of last November’s ballot initiative legalizing assisted suicide in Washington State, a Montana trial court judge ruled that Montanans had both a right to die and a right to physician-assisted suicide. The judge made it clear that she understood that Montana had no safeguards in place for physician-assisted suicide, and no legal definitions of the crucial terms competent or terminally-ill, conditions legally specified in both Oregon and Washington. Further, the court indicated that the decision for physician-assisted suicide should be the sole responsibility of physicians, despite there being no legal guidelines specifying how doctors might establish whether a person requesting physician-assisted suicide was competent to do so or not.

Read the filed brief here.

ISDB & Disability Matters Co-sponsor Second International Symposium on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide

2009-04-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

The Institute for the Study of Disability & Bioethics, the home of this blog, is pleased to announce our co-sponsorship of the Second-International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide on May 29^th and 30^th in Washington, DC. The Symposium will be held at the National Conference Center, near Dulles airport.

I will be a keynote speaker, along with Diane Coleman (Not Dead Yet), Dr. Peter Saunders (Care Not Killing, UK), Rita Marker (International Task Force on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide), Wesley J. Smith (Discovery Institute), Alison Davis (No Less Human, UK), Alex Schadenberg (Euthanasia Prevention Coalition-International), and Margaret Dore, (Seattle elder law attorney).

As readers of this blog know, the gathering storm of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia continue unabated.

Speaking at a conference in Canada this past weekend, it was clear that the general public have very little information about what’s happening right under their noses, in communities large and small.

A piece about my keynote in the Guelph Mercury laid out very accurately what I see to be our current challenges.

Details for the conference are here.

We’d love you to join us!

When Infants Die

2009-04-17T09:41:00.000-04:00

Doc over at Mind, Soul, and Body has a thoughtful piece on some of the most difficult circumstances I can imagine – being faced with the prospect of a dying infant.

Dying infants break our hearts for all kinds of reasons, and parents and loved ones face a titanic struggle between what they face and what they believe.

You see, we carry around in our very beings a plethora of expectations around life, especially around the lives of a newborn:

Nobody should die young.

Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children.

We don’t care if it’s a boy or girl; we just want our child to be healthy.

But that is not what we find in the pediatric ICU. We find very, very sick babies. We find absolutely no prospect of recovery.

There will be no happy photos of first days at kindergarten, school, or college. There will be no endless, badly filmed video that will be played over and over again across the years, with chuckles all the while.

No first love, no getting married in clothes that years later will look so terribly dated.

All gone.

But not yet gone. Before us, a frail form clinging to what could have been.

Doc explains just how disabled and medically vulnerable these children are. His descriptions don’t make for easy reading, but they’re accurate.

He struggles, as do we all, with where to find the compromise between comfort care and the unrelenting reality that sooner, rather than later, every effort will fail.

But, in the end, it’s really not that complicated, because there are essentially two choices.

We can go the route of Peter Singer, who insists we should euthanize these infants, or, in Baroness Warnock’s harsh world, that they should be “put down.” Or we can take note of what happens routinely in the Netherlands, where dying babies are routinely euthanized because they have no hope of a “good quality of life.”

What hideously casual utilitarian decisions!

But, as Doc suggests, there is another, better choice: Supporting the family, gently explaining every option. Using every medical and palliative tool to provide comfort and ease pain. Being patient as families grieve.

All this, because we are dealing with a human life, an exceptional life, no matter how brief.

A life worth just as much as anyone more perfect.

Loving and gentle medical care so that whatever time is left can be spent making the memories, brief as they will be, to warm and console hearts after that Long Slow Goodbye.

Dignitas’ Assisted Suicide for Healthy People

2009-04-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

I’m often more than a little bemused when naiveté inevitably results in shock and disbelief.

Why? Because there are two groups of people who generate shock among those who listen to them:

First, there are those who deliberately seek to shock our sensibilities for the sheer delight of seeing the reaction produced. Like grown ups who tell potty jokes at polite dinner parties.

Second, a much more dangerous group: people who say things that are not necessarily meant to shock, but are simply said because they are true. These people mean what they say, and say what they mean.

And then act on what they have told us they would do.

Saying what they believe is not the biggest problem, though – it’s that people react by thinking they cannot possibly mean what they are saying, and so either ignore it, or are disproportionally incredulous.

Incredulous is exactly how the UK press have been acting over statements made by Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli.

You do remember Dignitas, don’t you? In case you missed previous posts about this outfit, see here, here, here, here, and here.

I’m shocked that the UK press is shocked. Minelli is just saying what he believes, how he intends to proceed, and what his actions will mean. Minelli wants to stretch the envelope of whom he helps kill.

He's as serious as a heart attack (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Minelli’s comments are also a rare glimpse past the pro-death spin and propaganda of “dignity,” “autonomy,” and “compassion” into the horrific abyss of twisted pro-death values and deceit.

The Times of London fretted that Minelli ". . . now wants to kill people that are perfectly healthy."

(Sidebar: That’s the ultimate goal of all this pro-death stuff – death on demand anywhere, any time, for anyone).

Let’s look at what Minnelli actually, and accurately, said:

Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities.

Just to make sure you see the spin: Suicide is not nihilistic, selfish, and probably avoidable. It’s a wonderful act that people should embrace. Oh yes, and by the way, we don’t need to be selfish about it – why should only terminally ill people or those with severe disabilities have access to this “marvelous opportunity?”

See how magnanimous? Marvellous opportunities should be available to all, otherwise it’s discriminatory, don’t you know.

On we go:

Mr. Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.

Breathtaking.

If you have “mental capacity,” suicide’s the thing for you. Note, the mental capacity term is not an accident: Even newborn infants have “mental capacity.” Ergo, assisted suicide for all!!!

If what Minelli means is that assisted suicide should be available for people in their right mind, that’s only a stepping stone to killing people who aren’t in their right mind (e.g., Alzheimer’s patients) when others decide that, were they in their right mind, they would want to commit suicide.

The last part is not a joke – it’s how they justify euthanizing people with impaired “mental capacity” in the Netherlands.

But here’s the coup de grace: Killing people saves the state (the British National Health Service) money.

There.

No more pretence.

No more backtracking (as many pro-death people do) that saving money is never the intent, although sometimes an unintended consequence, of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Does anyone really think that the bean counters in any health organization won’t see this as a very tempting idea? Can we say Useless Eaters, anyone?

But, now, finally, to the reason for the fuss (see, nobody these days is too upset about someone spinning assisted suicide & euthanasia as a “marvellous opportunity” or that killing people will save money – that’s old hat).

Everyone got their knickers in a tangle because Minelli was "revealing plans to help a healthy woman to die alongside her terminally ill husband."

Minelli explained:

“The husband is ill, his partner is not ill, but she told us here in my living room that, ‘If my husband goes, I would go at the same time with him’,” he said.

So, Mr. I'll-kill-you-for-any-reason-as-long-as-you-ask is going to do what any champion of a worthy cause would do: He’s going to challenge the Swiss law that bars assisted suicide for healthy people.

Now there’s a really brave, kind man.

Coming soon to a place near you.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I Bowl Like a Retard

2009-03-23T11:03:00.000-04:00

In last year’s presidential campaign, large chunks of the electorate and many disability advocacy groups were apoplectic that Sarah Palin made clear her advocacy for children with disabilities. She did so from a position of strength: She had a newborn with Down syndrome and a nephew with autism.

As I noted at the time, this was the first time any of the presidential candidates had specifically spotlighted advocacy for people with disabilities. Until Palin’s remarks, the national disability community had been seething over how they had been pointedly ignored.

After Palin’s remarks, they seethed all over again, just for different reasons.

Unfortunately, Palin’s use of the bully pulpit quickly got derailed from a laudable opportunity to advocate for people with disabilities to the gutter of partisan politics. Those politically opposed to Palin, including many disability organizations and researchers, pounced.

They were outraged that she had the temerity to mention disability. Essentially, their rather pitiful arguments were (a) how dare a Republican try to hi-jack disability issues, when the Democrats owned that territory (going back to the Kennedys’ advocacy for people with disabilities in the early 60s)? and (b) Palin was being politically opportunistic, the disability issue a convenient vote-grabbing prop.

There was no quarter given that Palin was genuinely prepared, if elected vice-president, to make this her vice presidential issue.

Perhaps the most vicious responses came from many in academia: the special education researchers and university faculty who, from their lofty perches, gleefully declared Palin’s remarks the confused babble of some Neanderthal hick with an IQ lower than the people she was advocating for.

It gave me a whole new perspective on my profession, who usually go to great lengths to remind us all how impartial they are, and how they know what’s best for people with disabilities.

A colleague at another university even took the time to pass on a hit-piece to a prestigious special education listserv I subscribe to. In that piece, the writer said that in Alaska, there were many others like Palin - “knuckle-dragging” epithet and all.

Fast-forward to last Thursday, and President Obama’s Jay Leno Show derision of people with disabilities, describing his poor bowling skills as something that would be seen at the Special Olympics.

Here’s what the President meant: “I bowl like a retard.”

Criticism of the President has been measured, at best. The listserv I’m on that so viciously went after Palin has been completely silent about President Obama's insult.

Not a word.

And certainly no words taking the President to task.

Here’s the sad truth: President Obama said what he thinks:

People with disabilities are less worthy than the rest of us. They can’t even bowl properly. Or run properly, or think properly, or see properly.

Go to the Special Olympics; see them unable to do things that others do well.

Have a good laugh.

Be thankful you’re not them.

Way to go, Mr. President.

Pain Management in the UK: Good for Sir Liam and a Propaganda Prediction

2009-03-16T20:34:00.000-04:00

As I’ve repeatedly noted on this blog, the UK seems to be ground zero in the international push for legalizing assisted suicide.

The eagle-eyed pro-death crowd is expert in looking for spin and angles that will bolster their case, even from circumstances that would suggest the opposite.

For example, many Britons have gone to Dignitas in Switzerland over the past few years to legally commit assisted suicide. Rather than focus on the macabre Swiss and their dark practices (for a price, of course), the pro-death lobby turns the argument this way:

"Assisted suicide is dignified death. Those progressive Swiss understand this, as do the intelligent Dutch, and the ever-so urbane Belgians, so they have made assisted suicide legal. Assisted suicide in the UK is illegal. How unsophisticated we Brits seem to be!! We must work to change these Neanderthal notions in the UK!! Our poor fellow Brits have to die in a strange country, bereft of their familiar surroundings, family, and friends. They should be allowed to die with dignity at home, in the UK, surrounded by their loved ones, their friends, and Spot, their loyal dog, preferably on a sunny warm day with a nice breeze……"

Oh, sorry, I’m getting a little carried away with the propaganda…..

You get the picture.

A related issue surfaced in the UK’s Guardian last Saturday, when the issue of pain management at the end of life took center stage on the news that the UK’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, was about to release his annual state of the health system report blasting the lack of pain management experts and care.

A part of the story caught my eye, the issue of severe pain at the end of life:

Asked whether better pain relief could, as some anti-euthanasia supporters argue, reduce the demand for doctor-assisted suicide from people with terminal conditions, Donaldson said: "I think this concept of a good death is very bound up with the lack of pain and the sort of serene quality that people enter when they are free of pain, so I guess all of the feelings that surround that are bound up to a large extent with pain.

Good for you, mate.

You see, the pro-death crowd play on peoples’ fears – like the fear that in your last days nobody will be able to control your pain and you’ll go screaming in unspeakable agony into the world beyond.

They don’t want you to know that almost all pain, in almost every case, can be very, very effectively controlled. Medically, there is no reason for people to suffer excruciating pain at the end of their lives. It can be managed. Period.

That’s what the good doctor was saying.

But. BUT: That’s not the way the assisted suicide and euthanasia extremists will twist it.

Prediction:

The pro-assisted suicide and euthanasia bloodlust will not call for better education in pain management, or for reducing the ignorance that pain can’t be managed.

They’ll spin it by saying, Look, there is no need to suffer such terrible pain at the end of your life. Horrible pain is, well, very painful, and undignified! We can help!!! Wouldn’t you like to put your mind at rest, knowing that before your pain gets too bad, we have a solution that you control!! Don’t worry, you don’t have to use it, but won’t it be great to have that option if you ever need it? The health system doesn’t have the wherwithall to help you with your pain – we can!!!

And that’s the real agenda, folks.

Making you dead by first making you frightened.

The Final Exit Network Gets Busted Part 2: SPIN MODE!!

2009-03-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

Last week’s arrest of four FEN members in a federal sting in Georgia has cranked up the pro-death extremists’ propaganda machine. They’re in full spin mode.

You know there’s something going on when Dr. Death Jack Kevorkian is bleating about FEN being a bunch of whackos whose methods he doesn’t agree with.

From the story:

A lawyer for retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian, who participated in dozens of assisted suicides, said his client does not condone the methods of a national assisted-suicide ring with Michigan ties at the center of a multistate investigation.

Rich.

Don’t miss the spin: It’s only that he doesn’t condone THE METHOD. He’d much prefer, I think, that FEN use the methods he did, especially in his televised killing of Thomas Youk in 1998.

So, an ersatz distancing, if you will.

Then there’s the ubiquitous Derek Humphry.

He of the Hemlock Society (now spun as “Compassion & Choices”).

He of the book “Final Exit.” (Gee, you’d think the Finale Exit Network could have been a bit more creative here).

He of deserting his second wife when she turned out to have terminal cancer.

ANWAY, Humphry went into full spin mode:

“We shall keep going — we will fight this case,” said Derek Humphry . . .This [Georgia] is a test case. We didn’t look for this. They handed us a case. The public is enormously interested.”

Don’t miss the spin: There we were, going about our kind business, and we have been unfairly targeted. We shall fight! We will not be silenced! You mess with us, we’ll take our case to the masses!!!

Ho-hum.

Except that good citizens reading these quotes less than carefully are likely to mistake killers for caregivers

Which is exactly what they want.

The Final Exit Network Gets Busted Part I

2009-03-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

Well, things have gotten hot for the Final Exit Network.

They should.

Should get much hotter, if you ask me.

The reports were thick and fast late last week that an undercover federal investigation in Georgia resulted in the arrest of four FEN members on charges of assisted suicide, which is illegal in the state.

It seems that the feds began putting together pieces of the death puzzle after FEN was exposed in Arizona last year for allegedly helping kill a 58 year-old woman, who had no terminal illness at all, but who apparently had psychological problems.

So much for the pro-assisted suicide argument that assisted suicide should only be available for people with terminal illnesses. . .

Then last June, in Georgia, 58 year-old John Celmer checked out. Celmer’s wife became suspicious that he hadn’t died in his sleep, as it first appeared when he was found. Going through her husband’s things after his death, she came across evidence that Celmer had corresponded with FEN members. She also found receipts for the purchase of two tanks of helium.

FEN recommends victims inhale helium through a mask placed over their head. The helium replaces oxygen, thereby suffocating the victim. It’s also almost impossible to trace at autopsy. It’s a FEN standard operating procedure, as is their removing of all evidence of the assisted suicide after the death. That’s why Celmer’s wife thought he died in his sleep.

As if that wasn’t enough to raise red flags, Celmer’s doctor, completely surprised at his patient's death, weighed in. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

According to an affidavit, Celmer’s physician, Dr. Brant Carlson, told investigators Celmer had head and neck surgeries that left him cancer-free but Celmer was “concerned about his public appearance” because the surgeries disfigured him. “John Celmer was making a remarkable recovery” from two surgeries, according to the affidavit.

Celmer also suffered from arthritis in his hip, according to the affidavit, and his pain “could have been greatly reduced if he had taken his pain medication properly and stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.”

So, I’m asking all you gung-ho assisted suicide extremists, for the rest of your lives, please don’t tell us that assisted suicide is only for people who are suffering excruciating pain and who have less than 6 months to live.

Just go ahead and say what many of us already know: That what you really want is death on demand, anytime, anywhere for anyone – and for any reason.

Oh, and that you want it legalized, all for our good.

Death is good.

Legalized death is even better!!!!

Love and Respect x 2: The Propaganda that More Killing is Better

2009-02-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

John West has been all over the media in the last week or so, peddling his book about how he helped his parents kill themselves. He’s trying mightily to convince us that he’s a good and loving son because he didn’t have enough backbone to refuse to be an accessory to willful death - twice.

Or, as he puts it, he helped them kick the bucket because, as he says, “I loved and respected my parents.”

Ergo, helping parents die is what good, loving children do. Especially if they respect their parents. Doing it again is love and respect x 2.

These, and other dangerous pro-death party lines were evident in West’s extensive on-line chat with the Washington Post.

Chilling. Not only in what West said, but in the perceptions of the chatters with whom he engaged. Let me just say that most people in the chat seemed dimly uninformed.

Here’s a chatter on the old stereotype that animals and humans are basically the same:

Anywhere, USA: My poor mother had to be off life support for 10 days before she passed, my dog had to endure a few moments before she was able to go to the big dog park in the sky. I believe I will go to my Vet if I get sick, my dog got better treatment and it was with dignity.

Baroness Warnock would be proud.

Others conjured up the usual (and almost entirely ignorant) nightmares of machines and pain.

And of course, West himself raised the pro-death favorite euphemism comparing people to plants:

My mother . . . had no interest in turning into a vegetable, and so she chose to end her life sooner rather than later.

And, just in case you don’t think the underlying motive in this unspeakable squalor isn’t about reducing people to a cold dollar amount, read this little interchange from the chat:

Springfield, Va.: Your point about medical science keeping us "dying longer" is interesting. . . . I have also heard many times if there was a meter running showing the cost incurred keeping someone alive who is going to die anyway, people would make the decision to suspend medical care much faster. Do you think this is true?

John West: I think it might be true. A "meter" is an objective way to show people the truth of what's going on.

But I digress.

John West can write all the books about killing he wants. Good luck to him as he smarmily enjoys his 15 minutes of fame.

But, let me raise two points:

First, I’d encourage the California Bar to tell us what needs to be done with a lawyer who openly admits to committing crimes.

Second, lawyer West’s feigned ignorance about the LAW in Oregon and Washington, and the death machine that is now most of Europe, is not ignorance at all – it’s holding forth in an authoritative way (he’s a lawyer and author, don’t you know? Must be right, right?) to mislead you.

Here are two examples of West’s outrageous and willful disinformation:

The John West Spin I:

There's a LOT of legal oversight in Oregon and now Washington State, as in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, where it's currently allowed.

Really? Then how come every year thousands of hospital patients in the Netherlands are euthanized without them ever having requested it, talked about it, or anything else?

The John West Spin II:

The laws in Oregon (and now Washington State) require 2 physician (sic) to agree that you're facing death from a terminal illness within 6 months, and you're in extreme pain, and that you're mentally competent to make the decision to take life-ending drugs.

Yes, and …… ????

That’s only half the story.

Here’s the other half: Once the lethal drugs are prescribed, that’s the end of any oversight at all.

West implies that physicians are there at the end: making it all oh-so-proper and transparent, you see!

Uh-huh.

Nope, assisted suicides in Oregon and Washington can happen anywhere, anytime, away from everyone, assisted by somebody else – anyone else.

Even if that somebody else is after your stuff. Even if that somebody "helps" you take the fatal dose without your asking. Even if that somebody is really tired of taking care of you.

Get the picture?

Makes me wonder, although we’ll never know:

West admits that he was there when his parents died.

How can we know, seeing that there was no oversight, what the circumstances were with Loving John and his parents shuttered away behind closed doors?

Twice.

The Real Agenda: Propagandizing Death for All

2009-02-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

Well, the Propaganda of the Deed around assisted suicide begins to rear its ugly head in the US.

The latest is a loving son who’s written a book about how he loved his parents to death. He’s doing the talk show circuit.

Help kill my parents. Write a book. Gush (in a solemn kind of way) about how my dead parents are in heaven saying “What a good boy you were, to kill us off.”

More of John West early next week.

First, a primer on what’s really going on here in the assisted suicide assault on our culture: The Propaganda of the Deed.

The Propaganda of the Deed, you’ll recall, is a radical activist tool used to persuade people to accept something that is currently completely unacceptable to the larger society.

Here’s how it works:

Believe zealously in something that most other people (and the law) think is unacceptable.
Adopt in-your-face, shocking, and nasty tactics to confront people with the unacceptable idea, belief, or action.
Command the language of the ensuing debate to define the unacceptable or illegal issue in soft, positive terms.
Work hard at making the radical issue seem perfectly reasonable, and those who oppose it as completely unreasonable and intolerant.
Continually attack your opponents by whatever means necessary to keep them permanently on the defensive so that the debate is always to your advantage.
Make your opponents out to be oppressors, villains, and hysterically insane.
Introduce even more extreme issues, thereby making your original outlandish idea seem more reasonable.

The end result is that as the debate rages, people get familiar and more comfortable with the unacceptable issue. Many become confused about whether the issue is really unacceptable or illegal. At the very least, many think the unacceptable or illegal issue should at least be "discussed." Many join the activist side.

While the radical activists might not immediately win, the Propaganda of the Deed shifts the center of public perception, inevitably, in their favor.

Thas is what the televising of Craig Ewert’s death at Dignitas was all about.

That is what Jack Kevorkian’s CBS-televised murder of Thomas Youk was all about.

That’s what calling for assisted suicide for children in Scotland is all about.

Make the unthinkable thinkable.

Make the thinkable possible.

Make bad good, and good bad.

Make what's illegal legal.

Make killing a beautiful gift.

Make death more attractive than life.

We had better get our act together, before they kill us all.