A Special Kind of Euthanasia

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

meltzerboy

New member
I’ve heard that, for many, many years, nurses have quietly participated in facilitating the impending death of their terminal patients, with or without the doctor’s explicit consent or the family’s knowledge, by increasing their patient’s morphine drip so as to induce a comatose state and, hopefully, a peaceful death. My question to both Catholics and non-Catholics is, first of all, has anyone else heard about this apparently common practice, and secondly, how one reacts to it based on their religious faith or, if they do not have any particular faith, from their individual perspective?
 
I don’t know. As far as I know is that euthanasia is a sin as it’s killing regardless of the circumstances.
 
Have you any evidence that this is happening, other than hearsay?

And as I understand the law, nurses do not have the authority to change a patient’s medication without approval from a doctor … so any nurse caught doing what you describe would be in serious breach of professional ethics … not to mention risking a malpractice suit, which doctors and hospitals really do NOT like.
 
I think this is really sad 😦

No-one has the right to decide who dies, except God. They may seem dead to the world, but God could be working on their soul.
 
I practiced nursing for 20 years. I’m sad to report that happens fairly frequently. Medical professionals call it ‘snowing’. I’ve never known a medical professional (and I use that term very loosely) to do this without the consent of the patient and most often the patient’s family.

It works like this: Doctors write a prescription for injectable narcotics. Most of the time it’s morphine, but I have seen Demerol used. The prescription is written so that the patient can get the pain relief PRN. PRN is a medical term for “as needed”. Over time, the body gets toxic and they end up dying from the medication, not their disease. Some diseases are so painful that the patient requests medication constantly and if their disease is very advanced they can get the medication every two hours. The problem becomes that the patient is so drowsy from the medication, that they can’t actually ask for more pain medicine and if they don’t ask for PRN medication, technically a nurse can’t give it. So to get around the problem, the nurse just gives the medication anyway. This is normally agreed to ahead of time so it’s not like someone just decides to kill someone with it.

There are nurses who will not go along with this and I was one of them. I was called cruel and hard-hearted, but I wouldn’t knowingly give patients enough medicine to kill them.

It’s harder to do this now, than it was 15 years ago. Some hospitals have central pharmacies and they dispense medications in unit doses instead of multiple use vials or they put patients on PCA (patient controlled anesthesia) intravenously.

It’s a sin and there is no question about it in my mind.
 
ForeverGrace said:
I practiced nursing for 20 years. I’m sad to report that happens fairly frequently. Medical professionals call it ‘snowing’. I’ve never known a medical professional (and I use that term very loosely) to do this without the consent of the patient and most often the patient’s family.

It works like this: Doctors write a prescription for injectable narcotics. Most of the time it’s morphine, but I have seen Demerol used. The prescription is written so that the patient can get the pain relief PRN. PRN is a medical term for “as needed”. Over time, the body gets toxic and they end up dying from the medication, not their disease. Some diseases are so painful that the patient requests medication constantly and if their disease is very advanced they can get the medication every two hours. The problem becomes that the patient is so drowsy from the medication, that they can’t actually ask for more pain medicine and if they don’t ask for PRN medication, technically a nurse can’t give it. So to get around the problem, the nurse just gives the medication anyway. This is normally agreed to ahead of time so it’s not like someone just decides to kill someone with it.

There are nurses who will not go along with this and I was one of them. I was called cruel and hard-hearted, but I wouldn’t knowingly give patients enough medicine to kill them.

It’s harder to do this now, than it was 15 years ago. Some hospitals have central pharmacies and they dispense medications in unit doses instead of multiple use vials or they put patients on PCA (patient controlled anesthesia) intravenously.

It’s a sin and there is no question about it in my mind.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for this information. I think it is or was one of the best-kept hospital secrets. My reason for posting this topic is, in part, personal. My mother died several years ago from cancer and my family believes that her death was hastened by her nurses, and perhaps doctors, by means of the morphine drip. She was in the final stages of the disease but we do feel there was some intervention. We never made an issue of it because there was so much suffering on her part that we almost wished for a peaceful end, while at the same time praying for a miracle.
 
meltzerboy,

I don’t want to give you the idea that I ever saw this happen where the patient and the patient’s family didn’t know about it before it was done. But I must agree, that it might well happen.

It’s extremely hard to prove as well. We know scientifically what lethal doses of medication are. But what science can’t adequately measure is how people metabolize the medicine. Over time, people who take naracotics on a regular basis develop something called ‘tolerance’. You and I would be falling down in a drunken stupor if we took the amount of medication addicts do. Tolerance is something that throws the whole equation out of balance. The longer people take narcotics, the more they need to get the same analgesic effect. Then add the fact that pain is subjective and it makes for a difficult problem.

There are some tell-tale signs of overdose that you might be able to ascertain if you had your family member’s health records. But an overdose over-time is very hard to prove.

I’m sure you know that secular humanism thinks that any act that relieves human pain is the compassionate thing to do. It’s the arrogance of secular humanism to decide they know what is best while casting God out of the equation.

I use the word ‘addict’ here as a description of what happens to the human body when it regularly takes narcotics. I don’t mean to malign the character of an ill person who uses medication for legitimate purposes.

I’ll pray for you.
 
ForeverGrace said:
meltzerboy,

I don’t want to give you the idea that I ever saw this happen where the patient and the patient’s family didn’t know about it before it was done. But I must agree, that it might well happen.

It’s extremely hard to prove as well. We know scientifically what lethal doses of medication are. But what science can’t adequately measure is how people metabolize the medicine. Over time, people who take naracotics on a regular basis develop something called ‘tolerance’. You and I would be falling down in a drunken stupor if we took the amount of medication addicts do. Tolerance is something that throws the whole equation out of balance. The longer people take narcotics, the more they need to get the same analgesic effect. Then add the fact that pain is subjective and it makes for a difficult problem.

There are some tell-tale signs of overdose that you might be able to ascertain if you had your family member’s health records. But an overdose over-time is very hard to prove.

I’m sure you know that secular humanism thinks that any act that relieves human pain is the compassionate thing to do. It’s the arrogance of secular humanism to decide they know what is best while casting God out of the equation.

I use the word ‘addict’ here as a description of what happens to the human body when it regularly takes narcotics. I don’t mean to malign the character of an ill person who uses medication for legitimate purposes.

I’ll pray for you.
Click to expand...
Thanks again for the information and for your prayers. Your faith and good works are indeed interconnected.
 
meltzerboy said:
Thank you so much for this information. I think it is or was one of the best-kept hospital secrets. My reason for posting this topic is, in part, personal. My mother died several years ago from cancer and my family believes that her death was hastened by her nurses, and perhaps doctors, by means of the morphine drip. She was in the final stages of the disease but we do feel there was some intervention. We never made an issue of it because there was so much suffering on her part that we almost wished for a peaceful end, while at the same time praying for a miracle.
Click to expand...
Dear brother, the Catholic Church allows for the use of painkillers. The purpose of a painkiller is to relieve pain. If a certain dosage of painkiller does not relieve pain, increasing the dosage will make it work. The Catholic Church does not wish to impose suffering on anyone, and so supports the usage of painkillers even if the dosage seems very high. Here is the important difference: the intent of the administrator of the drug must have the intention of relieving pain, AND not killing the patient, rather than relieving the pain BY killing the patient. The Church recognizes that high doses may hasten death, but the intent is to relieve pain, not to kill

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm#I

May I ask why your family thinks what you do?

I would very much like to help you in any way. Peace
 
There is another angle to this. No medication or intervention is without side-effects. At lower dosages, these may be negligible, but the more you use, the more serious the side-effects become. The use of morphine to relieve pain also dilates the blood vessels, thus reducing the load on the heart, and it suppresses breathing, to the extent that you may “forget” to breath. It slows the movements of the bowels and can lead to a condition called impaction. Could your mother’s life have been intentionally shortened by the increase of her morphine dosage? Certainly, but there is a much greater likelihood that others factors came into play. Some of these would be predictable, such as suppression of breathing, but others, such as ForeverGrace mentioned, are unpredictable and may be so acute that reacting to them is nearly impossible.
 
This is rather scary. I had no idea the practice was so widespread. I speculate that in a hospital where nurses/doctors routinely hasten the death of patients who ask for it, there’s a danger that they will cross the line and will also kill patients who didn’t ask for it. There was a case in New Orleans during the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina, where two healthcare workers killed several patients by overdosing them with painkillers. One of the patients, an elderly lady, was asking whether she was going to be OK, as she was anxiously waiting for her daughter to come in and visit her in the hospital. She clearly had no intention to die, and never asked to be killed. But they killed her anyway.
 
CT News has been covering the Elderly Nursing Homes the past week. Somehow we reached a period in time where the elderly are of little concern now and abuse and neglect are prevalent, simply cannot afford their treatment.

I’ve seen Hospitals over-medicate a close friend of mine and almost kill him. It wasn’t intentional, but it was certainly neglect. I have never heard of a morphine drip for pain combined with benzodiazepines given to someone who isn’t prescribed either and was in a car accident. Respiratory arrest almost killed him, had we not stopped to visit, I believe he would be gone. By routine room runs they would have had to find him. We had trouble getting a nurse/doctor in the room when he wasn’t breathing. Never mind routine room runs.

We have become little concerned with the sanctity of life today. America and the West are consumed with Vanity and Gluttony by excess. We are more worried the new iPod than whats going on with the elderly.

And this isn’t to say that there are not some very good people working in Heath Care. Or some very good facilitys. But the ones which are bad are just an abomination. Its like weeds growing in the garden. And no its not everyones personal issue. But as a whole somehow we are failing here. I say lets cut back on the vanity and excess and save lives. Not kill so we can perpetuate the evil.

Just some passing thoughts.

Blessings, Gary
 
My grandmother was a nurse during The Great Depression and told me it was very routine for doctors to give a signed death certificate that read “crib death” to parents who had delivered a severely deformed or retarded child when they went home knowing full well they would either smother the baby or overdose it with Paregoric. I know some doctors who stress how much a drug elderly, terminal patients, should NOT take rather than how much they should. I suspect that is meant to be a helpful hint to those that want to take control of their own deaths. Personally, I think the “sanctity” of life is a very manmade invention that lets many of us feel better about letting people we love suffer horribly.
 
Maybe I really don’t know what I am talking about because I am not in the medical field, but I know what it is like to hold my dearest beloved sister in my arms as she was dying of ovarian cancer.

Death, for a lot of people, is not quick nor easy nor painless. Your organs just don’t shut off all at the same time. It is ugly. Ugly even for the most faithful believer.

My sister was given the blessing of having family around her to make sure she did not linger in her suffering.

Not everyone has a family around them. Should they just suffer because of that? Maybe they just do not have family or maybe they were nasty people in life who drove family away. This should not matter!

Suffering, sickness, death and pain came into this world because of Lucifer. Why shoud we let him be gleeful when torment comes to the living who are on thier way into the next world?

Unless it has been stated clearly from the patient themselves, any and all medication should be given to override all the horror of death, when and if it comes to that. It overcomes not just the pain, but the natural anxiety and the natural panic of hunger, thirst, and not being able to breath.

Thank you dear Father in heaven, for giving us the wisdom to use medication to ease suffering, even when that may quicken death.

God knew before we were formed in the womb our exact moment and circumstance of our death… …
 
meltzerboy said:
I’ve heard that, for many, many years, nurses have quietly participated in facilitating the impending death of their terminal patients, with or without the doctor’s explicit consent or the family’s knowledge, by increasing their patient’s morphine drip so as to induce a comatose state and, hopefully, a peaceful death. My question to both Catholics and non-Catholics is, first of all, has anyone else heard about this apparently common practice, and secondly, how one reacts to it based on their religious faith or, if they do not have any particular faith, from their individual perspective?
Click to expand...
I can’t speak for other countries, but down here morphiene is carefully measured, must be signed out by two nurses, and the syringe driver is pre-set, checked by two nurses and then locked and can only be changed again, by two nurses. Any opioid and a quite a few other narcotics are checked and signed out by two nurses. You can’t just go to the safe and check out 100mg morphers.

Its not as easy as unclamping a line.

You ever see someone die without adequate pain releif? Especially something like bone cancer. Ain’t pleasant, people.

But it all boils down to intention, euthanasia, that is direct killing whether legal or otherwise is MURDER plain and simple, and a sin that will kick your backside to Hell should you die unconfessed and unrepentant, but to ensure good pain relief is not a sin and compassionate.

For civilians I could see how it looks like its a line we cross every day. Its not. Proper education and experience gives you the right balance. Caring for the dying patient.

There’s no such thing as death with dignity, only living with dignity whilst dying, and there is no dignity to be found writhing in pain when drugs can help. Its actually not very easy to snuff someone with the amounts of morphine we dole out.
 
Spirithound said:
Dear brother, the Catholic Church allows for the use of painkillers. The purpose of a painkiller is to relieve pain. If a certain dosage of painkiller does not relieve pain, increasing the dosage will make it work. The Catholic Church does not wish to impose suffering on anyone, and so supports the usage of painkillers even if the dosage seems very high. Here is the important difference: the intent of the administrator of the drug must have the intention of relieving pain, AND not killing the patient, rather than relieving the pain BY killing the patient. The Church recognizes that high doses may hasten death, but the intent is to relieve pain, not to kill

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm#I

May I ask why your family thinks what you do?

I would very much like to help you in any way. Peace
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for your compassion and prayers.
 
meltzerboy said:
I’ve heard that, for many, many years, nurses have quietly participated in facilitating the impending death of their terminal patients, with or without the doctor’s explicit consent or the family’s knowledge, by increasing their patient’s morphine drip so as to induce a comatose state and, hopefully, a peaceful death. My question to both Catholics and non-Catholics is, first of all, has anyone else heard about this apparently common practice, and secondly, how one reacts to it based on their religious faith or, if they do not have any particular faith, from their individual perspective?
Click to expand...
I had a Catholic aunt who’d been a palliative care nurse, caring for the dying. When the debate on euthanasia came up as it sometimes does, she told me of an event in her own nursing career.

A young boy was dying of cancer in her ward. He was very restive and obviously suffering. She debated whether to give him more morphine, knowing that it would probably kill him. She procrastinated for a while, but it was obvious he was in great pain.

So she gave him the exrta dose, and sure enough he died about half an hour or so later.

She was in a moral quandary, so she went to the talk to the Catholic priest who was on duty.

His question simply was “Did you give him the morphine with the intent to reduce his suffering, or to kill him?” She replied, “To reduce the suffering”. He pointed out that if this was her real motive, then she had no reason to feel guilty.

It boils down to intent. Deliberate euthanasia has the intent of kiling the patient. Oh, it might well reduce the suffering (on the other hand, if they haven’t made peace with God, the killer might well be increasing their suffering, going from a painful death bed to an even worse hell), but the intent is still to kill them.

But a nurse who gives extra morphine with the intention of reducing the suffering, while knowing it will quite possibly kill them, does not have the same motive.

And I think it goes on all the time.

It’s not what the euthanasia debate is about, but it is a factor which needs to be taken into account.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top