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Jimi

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Food for Thought
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Jimi

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
One Article 2 posts

Part 1
The Most Horrible Medical Case I Ever Read
Imagine you are a 74-year-old lady. When you were younger (67) and healthy, you wrote and signed a letter given to your family requesting euthanasia if your health condition deteriorated to the point where you would need to be admitted to a nursing home.

Then one day, the actual moment comes and you have changed your mind. But the doctor is coming—moo-ha-ha-ha—he’s going to take your life, but now you don’t want to die, after all. The bravura of 5 years ago means nothing.

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You are agitated to the point of screaming with dread, pushing the doctor away, but he keeps coming on. He doesn’t seem to understand that you don’t choose to die just now. Forget the letter I wrote, I want to live. I've changed my mind.

But you cannot revoke the letter. Nobody is allowed to change their mind, apparently. You’re “demented” so you don’t have a mind to change (that’s a massive and erroneous assumption, we’ll come to that later). The nursing home where you came for comfort has become a death camp, Nazi-style. Instead of reconsidering, the doctor sedates you, so you cannot protest.

Worse yet: your family, your loved ones, hold you down while the doctor performs his lethal injection and kills you. You’re gone. Lights out. Tough titty.

It’s horrible beyond belief, if you put yourself in that woman’s tragic position.

I wrote an article some years ago about what they are pleased to call “euthanasia” (good sleep). It’s becoming legal in more and more states. This was Holland, where euthanasia is quite legal, they say. BUT NOT WITH THE PATIENT PROTESTING “I DON’T WANT TO DIE,” SURELY? That’s not euthanasia; that’s killing, not kindness.

As I’ve said before, doctors should not be getting involved in taking lives, either judicial executions or euthanasia. It’s a betrayal of the basic calling of a physician: which is to fix things and heal, not kill people.

Thing is, when the physician discussed euthanasia with the patient, she disavowed the letter, and vehemently insisted she did not want to die. Her physician consulted with the family and decided to proceed with the written request for euthanasia.

So are there other dimensions to this story: like she has assets and her family want to get at them and start spending? I don’t know.

The doctor in this awful case—who is actually a woman doctor, now retired (I used a bit of artistic license above, to emphasize the Gothic horror!)—was eventually prosecuted. She was charged with not acting with due care, as required by the law. The prosecutors said she should have cleared any doubt about the patient’s wish to die before going ahead with the procedure.

When the victim in this case (I can’t bring myself to use the word “patient”), appeared to have changed her mind, giving “mixed signals,” about her intentions, the doctor should have held off. Mixed signals? She was screaming NO NO NO and fighting for her life. This is another pathetic case of doctors being unable to comprehend that:

  1. people can change their mind and that
  2. a lot of people written off as mentally dead are quite functional. They argued she was in a state of deep dementia but she knew they were coming to kill her and what that meant! She was that awake and alert.
I’ve published over and over, evidence that people supposedly “brain dead”, “out of touch” and in a “vegetative state” are still fully conscious. They can’t communicate, because the brain is out of action. BUT WE ARE NOT A BRAIN. The brain is just the cellphone we use to talk to the world!

There were no brutes in this story. The prosecutors had pushed for a guilty verdict, but they also made it clear that they had brought the criminal case to try to resolve ambiguities of the euthanasia law, rather than to punish the doctor, whose motives they said were blameless (no money).

Anyway, a court in The Hague (in Holland) eventually ruled that the doctor did not have to re-establish the wishes of her patient at the time of administering euthanasia. She was acquitted of unlawful euthanasia for administering a lethal injection to a patient with dementia, a case that raised questions about the clarity of the country’s law, rather than about the doctor’s integrity.

Neither the patient nor the doctor have been identified, quite rightly (can you imagine the gutter press crawling all over this sad story?)

But there was a review (2018) in the London-based Journal of Medical Ethics which said the case demonstrated the “myriad ethical concerns” raised by advance euthanasia directives.

“The patient was heavily demented and deemed completely mentally incompetent,” the court said in an online statement. Medical records, heard during the proceedings, said the patient could not recognize her own reflection.

But she was compos mentis (clear of mind) enough to know they were coming for her and that it meant death. She did not want to die and expressed herself volubly and articulately, even just by screams, that she did not want to go through with the action.

I think it’s hideously sad that she was dismissed as incompetent. As someone who has seen demented patients wake up and become lucid, I cannot stomach the argument that she was gone, “over the hill” and would never be human again.
 
Jimi

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Part 2

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The International Court of Justice (United Nations), which has its seat in The Hague, as well as the European Court of Human Rights

Franz Zonneveld, a spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service of The Hague, said afterwards that the aim of the case had been to resolve the limits of the law.

“The court has given a clear ruling but on one point they have a very different view,” he said by phone, referring to the prosecutors’ belief that the doctor should have made greater efforts to confirm that the patient still wished to proceed with euthanasia. BUT…

“Even though she was suffering from dementia, you should check that as the physician, with the patient, and you should be 100 percent sure,” Mr. Zonneveld said. A patient screaming No No No cannot be taken without reservations to mean a YES.

In 2017, after reports of an increase in euthanasia among dementia patients in the Netherlands, and of a growth in the practice of administering sedatives before lethal injections, a group of more than 200 doctors signed a letter urging against euthanasia based on advance directives from patients. These doctors argued that they would be reluctant to end the life of people who could not confirm that they still wanted to die.

The Dutch law on euthanasia contains strict rules, known as due care criteria, that must be met in every case.

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service said in a statement that the patient’s advance directive in this case was clear but that a conversation should have continued about the patient’s wishes.

“As long as that conversation gave cause for doubt,” the prosecution service said, “the nursing home doctor should have refrained from euthanasia.”

But I’m afraid it’s coming. Here in the USA consideration is being to making euthanasia legal in many states. Since it’s worth a few quick and easy dollars, I repeat my prediction made a few years back, that there will be increasing numbers of people put to death for profit.

And before you write to me, I’m not saying people don’t have the right to die, if they are suffering unbearably. I’m saying doctors cannot be free to put to death patients screaming 'No!'

I go with an anonymous Doc’s comment on the MEDPAGETODAY revelation of this story:

“If a patient needs to be restrained to end their life despite pleas for mercy, you might as well assassinate the patient while they sleep. If that sounds outrageous to you then I suggest you consider the actual implications of euthanizing a person at all.”

- Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby

The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE:
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 12, 2019, Section A, Page 12 of the New York Times with the headline: Doctor Acquitted in Euthanasia of Patient Who May Have Changed Her Mind.
 
Rhianne

Rhianne

Diamond Contributor
Member For 2 Years
ECF Refugee
Jimi said:
Part 2

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The International Court of Justice (United Nations), which has its seat in The Hague, as well as the European Court of Human Rights

Franz Zonneveld, a spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service of The Hague, said afterwards that the aim of the case had been to resolve the limits of the law.

“The court has given a clear ruling but on one point they have a very different view,” he said by phone, referring to the prosecutors’ belief that the doctor should have made greater efforts to confirm that the patient still wished to proceed with euthanasia. BUT…

“Even though she was suffering from dementia, you should check that as the physician, with the patient, and you should be 100 percent sure,” Mr. Zonneveld said. A patient screaming No No No cannot be taken without reservations to mean a YES.

In 2017, after reports of an increase in euthanasia among dementia patients in the Netherlands, and of a growth in the practice of administering sedatives before lethal injections, a group of more than 200 doctors signed a letter urging against euthanasia based on advance directives from patients. These doctors argued that they would be reluctant to end the life of people who could not confirm that they still wanted to die.

The Dutch law on euthanasia contains strict rules, known as due care criteria, that must be met in every case.

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service said in a statement that the patient’s advance directive in this case was clear but that a conversation should have continued about the patient’s wishes.

“As long as that conversation gave cause for doubt,” the prosecution service said, “the nursing home doctor should have refrained from euthanasia.”

But I’m afraid it’s coming. Here in the USA consideration is being to making euthanasia legal in many states. Since it’s worth a few quick and easy dollars, I repeat my prediction made a few years back, that there will be increasing numbers of people put to death for profit.

And before you write to me, I’m not saying people don’t have the right to die, if they are suffering unbearably. I’m saying doctors cannot be free to put to death patients screaming 'No!'

I go with an anonymous Doc’s comment on the MEDPAGETODAY revelation of this story:

“If a patient needs to be restrained to end their life despite pleas for mercy, you might as well assassinate the patient while they sleep. If that sounds outrageous to you then I suggest you consider the actual implications of euthanizing a person at all.”

- Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby

The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE:
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 12, 2019, Section A, Page 12 of the New York Times with the headline: Doctor Acquitted in Euthanasia of Patient Who May Have Changed Her Mind.
Click to expand...

The Nazis killed thousands of mentally ill people. This is really scary. Thanks, Jimi.
 
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