Thursday, March 12, 2009

Nightmare of mercy killing

Dr Davenport, an OB in California paints a horrifying picture in the following scenario of the not-too distant future when socialized health care removes a physician's ability to make ethical decisions.
This is already happening. My 82 year old aunt who is reasonably healthy though on dialysis for 3 years, was admitted to a Catholic hospital this week for complications related to gallstones. The doctor asked her children if they wanted to treat her, or let her die of her symptoms.
They were horrified. She was treated and is doing much better.
We are in the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley.

"You feel vaguely uncomfortable as you are placed in a darkened room in the Comfort Care wing of the hospital. In moments of lucidity, you wonder if you shouldn't have some oxygen, an IV or SOMETHING! But the appropriate therapy, kidney dialysis, is not on the approved list of treatments for patients over 65, having been deemed too expensive. The new regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services were presented just last month to your hospital's Futile Care Committee. It was decided at the highest levels that for those over 65 years of age, renal dialysis would not be a beneficial treatment, that the alternatives of a kidney transplant were too expensive, and that your quality of life on chronic dialysis would be too diminished.

Read the entire story on The American Thinker.

1 comment:

Benedicamus said...

We have faced the same problems, from CATHOLIC doctors, when trying to work through my in-laws' health problems. Once a person reaches a certain age, then they don't really want to even give them food, water, or antibiotics anymore.
Both ends of the lifespan are under real attack.