[quote name='Milton Roe' date='Sun 19th June 2011, 6:46pm' post='277236']
[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
Pain is often not apparent on the face. I have know many people who were in a lot of pain, including a few cancer patients, and, in many cases, you couldn't tell just from looking at their face... although sometimes there was something in the eyes. I've been in a lot of pain myself, and people didn't have any idea from looking at my face. Hell, probably saved my life once when I played possum and let some madman think he had beaten me to unconsciousness.
I can do better. I've lived in a desert. I've been dehydrated. I've been hungry. Not enough to die, but enough to know that it isn't fun.
And then there's the horror stories you hear of people who have drunk seawater, which apparently results in a sort of accelerated dehydration.
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None of it the same thing as happens in hospice. Through most of THAT process, you can ask many hospice patients (of course not all) if they're uncomfortable, and they will tell you "no." After that, they are unconscious. What-- are you saying we are not going to believe them? At this point, if nothing will convince you, we don't have much to talk about, do we?
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Not all hospices are equal. Some hospices are incompetent.
There are even law firms that specialize in helping people sue the particularly egregious ones.
http://www.preventelderabuse.com/hospice-care.html[quote]
[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
I suppose if you drug the patient with sufficient morphine, probably enough to render the patient unconscious, you might be able to nullify the painful effects of the dehydration. No guarantees on that. Of course, at that point, you may as well keep the patient hydrated and kill the patient with the morphine, which would probably be a lot more humane. (Further research required.) Even so, it's still MURDER without the patient's consent.
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Sure, but why talk about two separate issues? When I want to talk about dehydration, you want to talk about murder due to lack of consent. When I want to talk about consent, you want to talk about death by dehydration vs. active drug overdose. Perhaps you'd do better with two threads?
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To clarify:
* I don't really have much problem with voluntary euthanasia, although I do think laws about waiting periods are reasonable enough, to make sure someone doesn't go off an get euthanized just because a bad psychoactive drug made them temporarily suicidal... or other transitory circumstances.
* I have even less problem with active voluntary euthanasia than I do with passive voluntary euthanasia, as active euthanasia is often more humane.
* I do have a huge problem with involuntary euthanasia, which I think is just a euphemism for murder.
* I think somewhere in the whole "right to die" argument, "duty to die" got latched on and a lot of people forgot about "right to live".
* I think false claims about certain methods of euthanasia -- in particular, dehydration and starvation -- being painless really amount to apologism for involuntary euthanasia, or murder. I also think anyone considering voluntary euthanasia should be accurately informed of their options and the potential painfulness of their chosen method.
* I think doctors should stick to their jobs as doctors and not try to impose their religions and philosophies on other people or tell other people whether or not their lives are worth living. While how to save someone's life or how to kill them might be questions for medicine, whether or not it is actually desirable to do so are questions for religion and philosophy... the patient's religion or philosophy, not the doctor's.
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
What I've seen of hospital personnel is they don't read advance directives, or even medical bracelets.
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Then what you've seen is against the law, and you should report it the local department of adult protective survices in your state. I guarantee you'll get a response.
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[quote]The police seemed to be under the impression that the hospital was not within their jurisdiction, sort of like an embassy.[/quote]
If your main gripe is that hospitals don't follow the law, and when you call the cops they won't come, then I can only say you don't live in the same country I do, and are communicating from an alternatate universe.
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Have you ever actually talked to the police about this sort of thing? If they see someone bleeding enough, they think it's the paramedics' god-given right to kidnap the person.
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[quote name='Anna' post='277207' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 8:32pm']
Hell, even if the patient is awake and shouting (well, as loudly as one can when one is having trouble breathing) that the patient wants to live and breathe, they continue to hold the patient hostage against the will of both the patient and any representative of the patient.
Thus subjecting the patient to painful lungache and oxygen deprivation headache. One would hope that the hospital is question is an exception rather than the rule... but given the reluctance of the police and the AMA to do anything to punish the hospital in question, I have my doubts. [/quote]
"Oxygen deprivation headache"?? Lungache? Not from oxygen lack (chest discomfort may happen in asthma and other respiratory conditions, but we do not euthanize people for asthma). I have spent enough time in rebreather diver training, and seeing people with low pulse oximetry, to know better. Don't give me nonsense about oxygen deprivation and how it causes many symptoms. The problem in diving is that it does NOT. Dying people may have respiratory discomfort and dyspnea, but not from lack of oxygen. In hospice, the answer to this is morphine.
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First dehydration and starvation, and now oxygen deprivation? Yes, oxygen deprivation does indeed cause pain:
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5544673_headache...ack-oxygen.htmlThere may be some loopholes -- I don't know. Maybe something to do with pressure changes. Consider drowning near the surface after having tired and lost the ability to keep afloat. Or, for that matter, falling in the bath and being unable to get up.
Here's a first hand account of a near-drowning experience. No, not a deep-sea diver.
"...When the cramp hit me, I sank to the bottom of the lake 12 feet down, in a doubled-up position. Compounding the wracking pain in my trunk was a mounting choking sensation. (Try holding your mouth and nose after taking a deep breath. Hold your breath until it becomes unbearable; then try holding it a few seconds past the unbearable point. It's a horrible sensation and would give you a dim idea of just one aspect of how it feels to drown.) The pressure of the water caused a stabbing pain in my eyes and ears... try to keep your head when water begins to seep into your already tortured lungs and your body is a mass of pain and you know you are dying... I remember that I screamed down there against a solid wall of water. I remember that I threshed and bobbed, but only succeeded in burrowing my head into the slime of the lake floor...."
http://www.lib.niu.edu/1992/ip920721.htmlDo you really think millions of years of evolution neglected to provide us with motivation to breathe, drink, and eat?
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I really have no idea what you're talking about above. You seem to move on from issue to issue without a pause. A patient is awake and shouting that they are having trouble breathing, and the hospital refuses to do WHAT? Intubate them? So that they can no longer shout or talk due to being on a ventilator? People who can't breathe don't do much shouting. And how does this relate to euthanasia or consent? We seem to be on a different topic altogether, now. Nor do people die of oxygen deprivation while shouting to be put on a ventilator.
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No, that example had little in common with the other examples, except that it was a case of the hospital ignoring the wishes of someone who wanted to live, and was very clear on the point. The air of the hospital itself was the asthma trigger: the hospital staff refused to let the patient leave and seek clean, asthma-friendly air. (Fortunately, the asthmatic did manage to escape.)
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[quote name='Anna' post='277207' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 8:32pm']
That is what I'm complaining about. Doctors taking drastic measures like euthanasia without even asking the patient, and in many cases, against the explicit wishes of the patient and/or his family.
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Well, that's illegal everywhere, including the Netherlands. And if you have any cases of it being done against the explicit wishes of the patient, you should call the police. In fact, you should post the name of the patient and when and where they died, and why you think they were euthanized against their wishes, and I'll call the police FOR you. Stop balthering on about iit here. You're being a troll, showing up and reporting a crimewave and wanting us to do something about it.
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It's legal in the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4721061.stm[quote]
[quote name='Anna' post='277207' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 8:32pm']
People who genuinely want to die painful deaths are a different matter. The statistics in the Netherlands are particularly horrible.
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Cite? Not the Huffington post or your right-to-life website. Something with statistics and not an axe to grind.
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This more recent article gives an estimate closer to 1 in 6 involuntary. Human nature doesn't really change much over such a short time period.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/l...10/jun/10061607Dehydration would seem to account for a significant portion of the euthanasias.
"Schadenberg points out that figures from 2007 indicate approximately 10% of all deaths in the Netherlands were connected to the practice of terminal sedation.
'Many of those deaths were caused by dehydration, by the physician sedating the patient and then withholding hydration until death occurs, which usually takes 10 - 14 days,' he said."
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[quote name='Anna' post='277207' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 8:32pm']
Advance directives won't do you any good if the doctors are dead set on doing what they think is best, your wishes be d***ed. Although, the advance directive might help your family sue for wrongful death, so they are good to fill out for that, so you can at least dream of being avenged.
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Again you're changing topics. Are you talking about active or passive euthanasia (passive being withdrawal of care when somebody didn't want it withdrawn). The last can happen, but it's usually because the family was in denial and wasn't paying for futile and expensive care, anyway.
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No, the above was more about the consent issue generically. Further from euthanasia and closer to active reckless endangerment.
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
In that case, I was probably wrong about morphine being painless. Suffocation may be fast, if it is abrupt enough, but it doesn't feel fast when you are panicking that much. If breathing were abruptly terminated, it might take five minutes for you to go unconscious, but it doesn't feel like five minutes. In my experience, if feels more like an hour. Of course, even if it really was an hour rather than just a particularly slow five minutes, that's still a lot faster than the dehydration patients die. It's possible the morphine would knock you unconscious first. And suffocation isn't always fast. Consider carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Which is why, before they take you off the ventilator, they give you a big dose of morphine in your IV BEFORE they do it.
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Morphine could probably help a lot. Of course, some patients are opposed to painkillers, so consent is still a crucial issue.
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
On the contrary, it's hard to find information on the internet to explain what I've seen. Not everyone gets dialysis, and toxins building up in your body can be rather painful.
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Well, it's easy to get on the internet and get information for what I've seen, which is that generally it's not painful. Okay? Once again, you're reporting your private experience which isn't generally the case. And you want us to get all incensed about it. One begins to get the message about why the makers of Wikipedia are so gung-ho about keeping their mantry about what is verifiable with sources (common, published experience) and not what you personally think is true.
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Aha! Found one!
http://ndtplus.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/2/111.full[quote]
[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
This U.S. woman was wide awake and capable of telling her doctors that she did not want to remain in the hospital, and did so, yet they held her hostage anyone. Legally, I think all they can do is offer her a form stating that she is leaving against medical advice, but what good are laws if no one enforces them? Religious fanatics generally make bad doctors. So do anti-religious fanatics, for that matter.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appe...e_b_434497.html[/quote]
This is an article about a pregnant woman who was confined to a hospital on a judge's orders for the health of her unborn children. It has nothing to do with euthanasia or failure to follow laws! Moreover, the ACLU is suing over it! (N.B. for those reading along, the ACLU is run by people who believe that a fetus does not become a person until it leaves its parents' NYC appartment after finding a job, or graduates medical school, whichever comes first).
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But it is relevant to the topic of consent. She was confined against her will. If she was wide awake and telling them she didn't want to be there, what use would a living will be?
She wasn't trying to have an abortion. Sometimes pregnancies fail naturally.
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
In the case of the Netherlands, with loads of people afraid to go to the hospital for fear of being killed, and filling out paperwork stating that they do not want to be helped to die.
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You got that off a fearmongering website, and the date was the late 1990's. So now you're arguing with me on the basis of outdated hearsay about the anxieities of foreigners which may or many not have been justified by facts. Lovely.[/quote]
Would you prefer the Telegraph?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthne...asia-cards.htmlWhat do you have against people fighting for their lives, anyway?
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
If you don't care about children in Africa, do you care about elderly and disabled Dutch? A hospital in Canada declares any representative of the patient (read: VICTIM) who refused to consent to murdering the patient (read: VICTIM) by starvation to be incompetent of making decisions for the patient (read: VICTIM), and you don't see a problem.
The last link in my first post.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2574608/postsThe guy was a priest -- not the sort of person likely to consent to such a thing.
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Apparently you didn't read the thing carefully. The person had left no advanced directives and was brain damaged from a failed resuscitation. The family refused to "let the person fall into the hands of the public guardian" and instead signed him up for palliative care including removing of his feeding tube. Then they were unhappy the hospital removed the feeding tube. They said they were forced to choose this option but they clearly had another choice. The public guardian wasn't going to order euthanasia!
It's another nonsense scare story. Yes, in Canada, if you're brain-damaged on a ventilator with no advanced directives, the state might not keep you that way forever. Thus, if you live in Canada, you'd better fill out your paperwork.
Again, you're arguing with me about hospitals ignoring the law and paperwork, and using cases where they followed the law and had no paperwork, as your evidence.
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"His family, who live in Sri Lanka, and his supporters here have rejected these suggestions. [...] The court first rejected Joshua's sister, Mallika Arumugan, as his (SDM) because they did not consider her capable of making medical decisions for Joshua, but she also did not agree to the demands of the hospital.
After the court rejected Joshua's sister as his SDM, a friend for 25 years became the next option. We were told that this friend would only be accepted as the SDM if he agreed to the preconditions – palliative care with the removal of all medications, IV hydration and nutrition."
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[quote name='Anna' post='277198' date='Sat 18th June 2011, 6:05pm']
Still, if someone is going to consent to be killed, or if you are just going to murder someone in cold blood because you don't think their life is worth anything, there are less painful, or at least quicker, ways of doing it. The only argument for dehydration and starvation is that they're passive and thus makes physicians feel less like murderers. Ridiculous reasoning, really. Why should the patient have to suffer more just to ease the physician's conscience so he can say to himself, "I didn't really kill him. I just didn't prevent him from dying."
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You're preaching to the converted, there, with me. That is the Dutch argument, in fact. The chronic US argument is that acceptance of this leads to a slippery slope, and that voluntary euthanasia of those who really, really want it, and are articulate about it, is a "gateway law" (just like marijuana is a gateway drug!) to people doing anything they want. Soon there will be euthanasia on the streets!
So it's really people like you complaining about active euthanasia in the Netherlands, that has led to passive euthanasia with lots of morphine and dehydration, in the US. Aren't you proud of yourself?
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Without consent, it's still murder even if they use a more merciful method.