euthanizing the elderly?

[lucifers angel]

Since you use the word "solicitor" instead of "attorney," you're obviously not an American, so I can't say how it would work in your country. Over here, it's very difficult to enforce a DNR. You almost need to check the attitude of the hospitals that serve your neighborhood before you buy a house there. And you could still become ill at work and be taken to a different hospital.I don't know how old you are. We're all hoping that the Baby Boomers will force a reform of the right-to-die issue, just as they've dictated the evolution of every other aspect of American culture since the hula hoop and rock'n'roll. Our members under forty might well grow old in an era when their own end-of-life wishes will be respected.

At this time, if you're in an institution for the elderly and infirm, and your health deteriorates to the point of irreversible suffering and indignity, and you have a living will and a partner or family member to enforce it, they will eventually succeed in letting you die in peace, but it probably won't happen as quickly as either of you hoped and expected.

The problem is for younger people, say my age in their 60s, who don't want to be resuscitated from a heart attack or accident trauma. Our country just doesn't have the procedures in place for the first responders to be informed of your wishes, and their focus is on saving your life rather than searching your body for tags or tattoos or listening to your wife scream, "No no, he doesn't want that!" By the time they rush you to a hospital and a doctor has revived you and you're awake but a quadriplegic or something like that, nobody is going to take the rather extreme measures necessary to force you to die, retroactively as it were.That's my point. In a retirement home where you've gone downhill slowly, it's one thing. But it's quite different in an emergency situation.

And no, it would not "be ok" with me. I've known a few people who had heart attacks in their 60s and were "saved." They all wished they were dead. Being 65 can be all right if you're in really good health, which means you've got a lot of aches and pains and a few body parts that don't quite work right and some of the adventures you put off a little too long are already out of reach, but still you can get something out of life. But to be 65 and have a body that went through the trauma of a heart attack means you're suddenly somewhere between being a creaky old geezer who can just barely get around, and being a genuine invalid. No thanks.

And perhaps worst of all, heart attacks used to be an almost merciful way to die. You were alive and then bingo you were gone. Now they're saving us from that so we get to have wretched, painful (and expensive!) prolonged deaths from horrible things like cancer. No thanks!

Oregon, anyone? Or Holland?

i'm 37yrs old,

 

[John99]

orleander,

he did a nice job on that post, Asguard is a good creative writer.

one interesting thing is the use of 'ect.'

i have seen this done often here and wonder if they mean etc. because it seems like deliberately using 'ect.'

example:

ect, ect, ect

 

[mikenostic]

This is a universal problem and it is badly handled in our civilization. We are so over-crowded here on this little planet that we are stripping it of its resources and building up stress and hunger. Yet, the old idological systems that provide some unity and bonding to us are so old and decrepit that they keep us from even aborting unwanted fetuses and from executing child torturers and murderers. On top of that, we keep old and suffering people

Exactly. Surviving and populating the planet was a bigger issue way back in the day when there wasn't 6.5 billion people on the planet.
As bad as this sounds, life, human life isn't THAT precious. I equate preciousness with rarity, and humans on this planet are anything but.
By preventing aborting unwanted fetuses and keeping the old and suffering, we are preventing natural selection from allowing us to get out of control (which we are).

All this reflects badly on the way our society functions and shows how much we need to replace the whole ideological system. We need to get rid of the old-religion-secular ideological mishmass that governs public opinion. We need a new world view as the wave of the future to bring us to where we can deal with such ominous problems.

True, but how do we go about implementing that? Something like that would be a very slippery slope. As someone mentioned, you'd have unscrupulous doctors/advisors that would coerce people into euthanasia and what not.

FR, I'm with you. Once I start getting old and immobile and losing my mind, I do not want to live anymore.

Just crush some random pills in her prune juice, that outta punch her ticket.

Feed her some sleeping pills, put her in the passenger seat of the car, drive into the garage, leave the engine running, close the door, roll the window down and leave her there.
Or if you don't have a garage, do like quite a few residents of Hong Kong have done...a small charcoal grill lit in a small, closed off, non ventilated room; same principle as the garage.

CO poisoning is the quickest, most painless way to off yourself.

 

[Orleander]

...Asguard is a good creative writer. ...

I agree. Very creative.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

orleander and shorty: this is not an atack on you its ment to correct a mestake made by FR. . . .Please stop saying that. I NEVER said that AT ALL. You have been compleatly miss representing what i said and i have pointed it out to you MULTIPLE times and still you continue to use it. What i SAID was VERY specific.

Azzy, I apologize if I misquoted you. But my statement about medical professionals and DNR orders is true in the USA. Our country has been hijacked by Christians and they believe it's their god's will for people to suffer in their old age and make their children grieve over their pain and indignity. Some poor lady in Florida died several years ago in an irreversible coma, but her Christian parents forced her doctors to keep her body alive so her husband could never say goodbye to her and move on with his life.

I have plenty of first-hand information about end-of-life issues in my own country. My father had a quintuple bypass operation when he was 84 and spent the next two years in misery, waiting to die. My mother had a stroke when she was 87 and lay on the floor of her home hoping to die quickly, but her neighbors called the cops and they schlepped her to the hospital. She ended up living two more years in pain and indignity as her brain failed her. My mother-in-law is 92 and just went into a nursing home with a healthy brain but a completely decrepit body and she screams at everyone to just leave her alone and let her die.

 

[Asguard]

FR is this was missquoted then i apologise but its quoted twice by 2 seperate people

Originally Posted by Fraggle Rocker
DNR orders are worthless. As Asguard noted a couple of years ago, no doctor, nurse, EMT or other medical professional has ever been successfully sued for failing to honor a DNR. But they get sued all the time for honoring them.

This quote apears in both shorty's post 37 and orleander's post 40

orleander's post specifically was the reason for my objection because she assumes that i was talking about how things are here which is just WRONG. People WILL be procuted for delibratly ignoring the directives made by a pt

now i rember the post your refering to and if im right what i actually said was that there are a rank as to how much weight an ambo (for an example) is required by law to place onto directives. This rank goes:

#Directives made in schedual 3 of the concent act are APSOLUTE and CAN NOT be ignored once proof in the form of the signed document is produced. This document is limited in its scope however to 2 situations those being the terminal phase of a terminal illness and persistant vegitive state

(i may get the next two the wrong way around but i belive the concent act comes first)

# Medical power of attorney given under the concent act schedual 2. This person can ONLY be ignored if the person is preventing a treatment which is highly likly to return a person to a position where they can make the decision themselve AND if they are NOT in the terminal phase of a terminal illness. The default is that there directions WILL be respected unless challenged in the surpreem court and that ability to challange is limited. Emergency workers (and doctors in ED's) have some scope for action but must PROVE that the action was vital to be done before the courts could be consulted and cant be morally based. They HAVE to be based on the pts wishes and suspected foul play by the medical agent

#enduring power of guardianship (both as granted by the person or the guardianship board itself), as above but the court is the guardianship board


All these above carry not just civil liability but CRIMINAL charges including assult.

DNR and wishes of non legally empowered family (including the persons partner, spouse, children), are NOT binding because they are not legal, they can be concidered but in these cases the decision belongs to the ambo's as to wether to treat or not. The defult in this case IS to treat unless all parties (and prefereably the family, but not essentual) agree

 

[Asguard]

FR on you edited post i would ask you a VERY cynical question (and yes it may well come out of political bias but *shrug*)'

Would you agree that a "pay for service" free market for health care which not only puts profits before care but also has a legislated frame work which alows a forced treatment is the cause of these situations rather than christan bias?

I want to explore the example you proposed of the women who was kept alive so her husband could say good bye and i will give two general (not specific) examples

for the first take a 65 (to randomly pick a number which is on the boarder) year old man who has had a heart atack. The ambos atend and find that his heart has stoped beating and so perform CPR. They then learn that he has had 5 heart atacks in the last few months and realise that this is futile because he will more than likly die with in the day even if he comes back

Now they have a choice to make right here, they can chose to stop or they can chose to keep going. Now standed opertating procidure is to keep going if ANY of the ambo's (including any students atending i might add so this is a situation i am quite likly to find myself in with in a few months) disagree with stoping treatment. So the ambos agree that treatment is futile what do you do about his family?

you KEEP GOING and one ambo takes the family aside and they discuss the issue until the family agree as well. Yes the ambos could just stop legally and ethically but the prority is the family.

Now say knowing that he will die with in a day anyway his wife says "i know he will still die but i want you to revive him so that his daughter has a chance to say goodbye" the ambo's (and the hospital) PROBABLY would if he did respond to treatment and if there was no documentation preventing it. What is so wrong about that?

Second example is an 18 year old boy who has just been involved in a car acident. He is on a ventalator because of his injuries but isnt showing any clinical signs of life (there is a whole set of tests needed to conferm this but im not going to go through them). The police are on there way to inform his parents. Now there is another issue to be concidered his and thats organ donation but right for this moment ignore that. Should the hospital keep him on life surport till the parents arive or not?

My personal feelings are in both cases the answer is YES, I can say that because i know there is ONLY the family being concidered in that decision and there own welfare. I will never be in a sitatuation where the head of the hosptial either says "he doesnt have insurance so let the fucker die" or "he has more insurance i can milk so do everything under the sun to keep this guy alive". The advice the family gets wont be biased for finantial gain. Thats not to say that the doctors wont have there own morals or emotions interfear in there advice but thats impossable to get away from but the organsations will be working in the best interests of the pt and\or there family and thats my main concern.

So my feelings are that your issues may be more related to the system you live under than anything else

 

[Orleander]

...orleander's post specifically was the reason for my objection because she assumes that i was talking about how things are here which is just WRONG. People WILL be procuted for delibratly ignoring the directives made by a pt....

and again, I don't believe that is always the case.

 

[Asguard]

sure, not everyone who steals a car is ever procuted either, doesnt mean that the DPP WONT take the case. They just need evidence, the law is there to protect the wishes of the pt it will be inforced if nessary but i doubt it is often used because there is little or no finantial gain in NOT following the law here because the hospitals which tend to get these cases arnt companies and nursing homes are strictly controled by the federal goverment

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Would you agree that a "pay for service" free market for health care which not only puts profits before care but also has a legislated frame work which alows a forced treatment is the cause of these situations rather than christan bias?

Even an unrealistic young socialist from the People's Republic of Down Under can be right occasionally. I already made that point myself, if not on this thread then on one of the others that periodically pop up on this subject. In a big American city where wages are high and land is expensive, even a mediocre rest home charges $100 a day. Every day they can postpone the execution of a DNR order is another $100 to them. Dragging their feet until the outraged children finally show up with an attorney might be an extra thousand bucks on their books.

Nonetheless our profit-oriented society is generally comfortable with the compromises it makes. But lately the government has been leaning too heavily toward the Christian side of every issue, so caregivers have virtually nothing to lose by stonewalling a DNR. The courts are far too busy busting sympathetic nurses who put hopeless patients out of their misery, to bother with moneygrubbing corporations who prolong that misery.

. . . . and i will give two general (not specific) examples. . . .

Your examples are both complex and complexity always makes decision-making hard. I don't envy a paramedic who has to make a quick decision in the aftermath of an emergency. And I certainly sympathize with people who have devoted their careers to learning how to save lives, and can't easily go against their training to help or allow someone to die. But I won't feel that sympathy when it's my turn.

So my feelings are that your issues may be more related to the system you live under than anything else

Our system is broken. What more is there to say about a government that subsidizes the corporate owners of tobacco plantations, and at the same time pays its media staff to launch an anti-smoking advertising campaign?

 

[Asguard]

i admit the examples are complex, unfortunatly its really hard to give a simple example when talking end of life. The first example i gave you was the one we were taught at uni on how to deal with end of life and diognosing death and futility. there was oviously more to that lecture going through things like what to do when someone is decapitated, what to do when you get asystolie or ventricular fribulation and pulseless tacicardia when they wont respond to treatment like turn the monitor off BEFORE letting the family back in but it was the futile situations we are talking about. One situation which comes up alot is what do you when the documents are correctly filed with the pts GP but there spouse\partner cant find the pt copy and what not and the younger the pt the harder end of life is but that doesnt mean its by ANY means easy when you are talking about the elderly

 

[charles brough]

I once read about an African tribe who, in the 20th century, were still a Mesolithic people: nomadic hunter-gatherers. When one of them got too old, he'd start to have trouble keeping up with the rest of the clan. As long as he made it to camp by nightfall, they let it go. But when he couldn't quite get there in time and somebody had to go looking for him, the next morning they held a ceremony. They gave him an ostrich egg full of water (that's a hell of a lot of water), sat him comfortably under a tree with a little food, and then they all said their goodbyes and walked off on their next day's journey.

Ever since, we've had this little pact. "When I'm ready, give my my ostrich egg."

Very good! We need something like that. I see the suffering of the aged as do you. I see the immense expense their medical care burden is on society, also. I see young working people who cannot afford medical care. I see what it is like depending upon the emergency hospital for it.

Also, I find that the builders of the first great pyramids in Egypt were well taken care of medically, according to archeologists. They volunteered to do the work because they sincerely worshiped their ruler. They wanted to do it for him. Can't our own society provide for its workers? Must it, instead, lavish it on the aged to keep them alive a little longer?

I don't say this because I am myself young. I am not young!

charles
http://atheistic-science.com

 

[charles brough]

One situation which comes up alot is what do you when the documents are correctly filed with the pts GP but there spouse\partner cant find the pt copy and what not and the younger the pt the harder end of life is but that doesnt mean its by ANY means easy when you are talking about the elderly

Please elaborate here. I faced a similar situation two days ago. The guardian signed a document and was told a copy of it was in the other papers, but we found out later it was not. The signature was at the emergency ward and was about releasing the patient without keeping her there and undergoing heroic life saving measures.

(she seems to be recoving with the emergency hospital prescription at home).

charles

 

[Asguard]

in order to inact a medical agent under schedual 2 of the concent act the person involved AND the medical agent need to sign at least 2 copies of the form invorpirated into the act. This also needs to be signed by an independent witness. The act stipulates that one copy needs to be placed into the pts medical records, another should be given to the medical agent so that they have it when they need it. The pt tends to keep a third copy so that they they can produce it to give to things like hospitals or what not.

 

[charles brough]

Thanks!

 

[Asguard]

ops that should have said incorporated (my partner was bitching to get the computer and so i was rushed)