dk

Withdraw treatment? I wasn't aware non-American physicians withdrew treatment from the terminal patients.

penumbra

You still don't get it, do you? We are not talking about making choices for others, we are talking about making choices for ourselves, individually. The abortion issue is not relevant to this discussion, nor is enforced euthanasia. Read the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, please. If that procedure is not "right" for you, fine, don't do it. But quit trying to force others to abide by your wishes.

Dr Rick

...nevermind that the actual topic of this thread concerns withdrawing the care of an Australian patient provided by her non-American doctors...

From the first sentence of the article linked to the topic we are discussing:

"A court in Australia has been hearing evidence from doctors who believe the artificial feeding of a terminally-ill patient should be withdrawn." :banghead:

Please consider learning about a topic before preaching to us about it.

winstonjen

Your regression into pro-life rheteric reveals a pro suffering perspective. In an upside down world pro-choice means a right to force people to live on life support up to the age of 200. People get imprisoned for getting a terminal illness because it's against the culture of life. Painkillers are forbidden because they shorten life, etc etc. Is that really any better than what you accuse us of?

dk

Hey, I didn't bring up pro-choice. People in severe prolonged pain get depressed and suicidal. How can doctors best treat depressed suicidal patients in great pain...

a) put them to death.
b) educate themselves and the patient about pain managment
c) withdraw all treatment

dk

I'm afraid you are misinformed. Life support systems are considered extraordinary means, and required of noone. Food, water, clean bed/cloths and shelter are considered ordinary means, and required. Many terminally ill people go to hospices to die, where they are routinely given medicine to treat their pain, and I've never heard of a hospice being busted for pain medication. In fact Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a Catholic Nun, won a Nobel Peace Prize for care she gave the dying. She went around the streets of Calcutta with a carts hauling dying people out of the gutter. Picked the maggots out of their skin, dressed the wounds, treated their pain, and generally cared for the poorest of the poor with dignity and love.

keyser_soze

Okay....Doc, I think I can field this one...


Everyone, please do not feed the trolls anymore.


Back to you Dr. Rick, but I discourage further petting of the troll. I had to learn that very lesson today, so it's still painfully fresh. Otherwise, you might end up with a 25 page thread wherein the troll in question recycles the same circular reasoning every 10 pages or so.

Your call though, either way, your posts were precise and effective. A-1 job there(not that the point had not been hammered home twice already, but not nearly as efficiently).

I would suggest that all viewers be aware of the following:

The temporary irony meter standby order is hereby EXTENDED for the next three pages...please refrain from early activation, as it can be dangerous to those around you. And for those of you who have decided that having had a family member with cancer, and or knowing someone that is in the medical field...Please do not try to perform surgery at home. It is preferred that licensed health care workers do this, and we will accept no tapes or stories of your own "miracle" medical reasoning, but they will instead be immediately discarded. This concludes this episode of "jack-off".

Dr Rick

"Required" by whom? Even other pro-life fundies know better:

"There is no distinction between 'extraordinary care' and 'ordinary care' in the law," Wesley J. Smith, author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, told NRL News. "A feeding tube, which provides basic sustenance, is considered by law to be the same as an antibiotic, an aspirin, a ventilator, surgery, or chemotherapy."

In 1990, the US Supreme Court ruled in the case of Cruzan v Director, Missouri Department of Health, which involved disconnecting a feeding tube from a young woman in a persistent vegetative state, that the right to forgo life-sustaining treatment, which they found supported by the 14th Amendment includes refusal of feeding tubes. There is no serious debate among either legal scholars in the US or medical ethicists that a feeding tube artifically prolongs life just as a mechanical ventilator does and both have the same moral and legal implications. They are both intrusive, artificial, and they can both be refused in the US.

Hell, to my knowledge, "clean bed/cloths" can also be refused.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by dk
Is that the truth, cross your heart hope to die. In 5 years I don't think 150 patents in Oregon have been put to death under suicide laws. If this proves anything, its that people in Oregon have had little use for suicide laws. Putting a good person to death proves nothing to anybody, because dead people never argue.

1) There have never been all that many that would actually use that option. However, I do know someone who suicided for medical reasons--so stealthily that nobody, including the primary caregiver of the totally bedridden patient, realized it was suicide until later. I wonder how many others there are like that around.

2) The laws are restrictive. Those who can't take the drugs themselves can't use them. Those whose condition is bad but not terminal can't use them. (The person referred to in #1 would have flunked both of these tests.)

The notion of empowering doctors or hospitals to cure people by putting them to death is flawed. The first duty of a doctor is to the health of the patient, and the second is to do no harm.

Nobody is suggesting this be done by anything other than the patient's request, although some of us feel conditional requests should be permissible. (If X arises and you can't ask me about it, then I wish to die.)

Loren Pechtel

The problem is there's a lot of not-malpractice out there. The doctor treats somebody, something bad happens. They blame the doctor.