Patients Put Down (in NO Hospital)

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I have worked with a nurse that previously worked in this sort of home hospice and who left that job because it bothered her. I questioned a few other nurses who all backed up what this nurse had told me. This is apparently not uncommon practice here. What the criterion for doing such a thing is, I’m not sure—many of these children are considered terminal and possibly in pain. However, many of these terminally ill profoundly disabled children also outlive their pronogsis by many many years.

I have been a nurse for 11 years, and I never heard of such a thing until I moved to the midwest. Perhaps it went on in the South, but I never heard of it. Whether it is considered legal or not, I do not know–but I don’t see how it could be considered legal since euthanasia is not legal in the state in which I live.

Considering the fact that most ob-gyn’s perform abortions routinely for women whose babies are suspected of having Down’s, Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, dwarfism and a whole host of other problems, one might consider the kind of euthanasia I described as a sort of very late term abortion.

It is horrific, to say the least, but it is a logical consequence of abortion for fetal anomalies.

Getting back to titrating morphine infusions to cover cancer pain—sometimes the biggest euthanasia pushers were family members of a patient. On several occasions, I was asked by family members to bump up the morphine to a much faster rate of infusion than ordered. I was not Catholic at the time and considered myself pro-choice and pro-euthanasia in some circumstances. I never complied with these requests more out of a fear of losing my license. Now I’m glad I didn’t for the right reasons. That was one less mortal sin to bring to my first confession.
 
Of the 2 specific stories of death by morphine that I was told about–one was an ancephalic baby and the other had trisonomy 13.
 
Thanks for your insight Kim. I’m a nursing student, so this kind of stuff really concerns me. I really fear what I will encounter on the job when the time comes. My biggest question is how much of the nursing community actually approves of this? Are we in a minority?
 
Doggy,

Like I said–I didn’t encounter this until I moved here and began working with this specific population–pediatric profoundly disabled.

But there are so many other areas besides euthanasia that can be daunting to a nurse who wishes to be true to her Catholic faith. Chemical contraception is considered wrong by the Church and can sometimes cause early abortions. The IUD is always abortifacient. Surgical contraception is also wrong. I suppose if you weren’t actually participating in the surgical procedure, just post-op nursing-- that might be ok. But can you hand out the birth control pills? What if an abortion pill is ordered?

Many vaccinations today come from a stem cell line that began with an aborted fetus. Can you give such an injection in good conscience?

Fortunately I’m sheltered from making those decisions now that I work in a residence for profoundly disabled children. Because I mostly work nights, I haven’t been faced with the dilemma of refusing to give certain vaccinations.

. The world of medicine is so very ethically complicated these days!!

My suggestion would be to work in a Catholic hospital (which is not an assurance that everything that happens there will be approved by the Church) and if you are faced with a situation or procedure that you feel you cannot be involved in, you will likely receive a little more support for your beliefs than you would in a secular or Protestant hospital.

Good luck!

kim
 
What a terrible thing to do. Did you read about the dead nursing home patients they found? Most in their beds or wheelchairs, drowned. I just got a CNN alert that the owners of that nursing home are being charged with 34 counts of homicide. The name of the home was St. Rita’s.
 
The right thing would have been to stay with the dying rather than be evacuated themselves…laying down one’s life for another, and yes, risking being raped by the hoodlums. Instead, they saved their own lives - and their consciences - by killing the weak before abandoning them.
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Has anyone here read the book Last Man Down by Richard Picciotto? He led a team of firefighters who evacuated one of the Twin Towers Sept 11.

They came upon a room of people who were disabled and every disabled person had an assigned person with them and every able-bodied person had stayed behind when they could have evacuated.

Those doctors in NO who killed their patients are now likely to become actively involved in trying to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in an effort to justify their actions to themselves and others.
 
Those doctors in NO who killed their patients are now likely to become actively involved in trying to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in an effort to justify their actions to themselves and others.

Yes–I agree they will be at great risk of forever trying to justify what they did. It was a terrible, terrible situation and my heart goes out to those doctors as well as those patients. Let us pray that they repent.

For many years I tried to justify my own abortion history by hiding behind pro-choice banners. Thank God I was blessed with the grace to truly look back at what I had done honestly and seek forgiveness. You are right on the money when you say that may become actively involved in defending euthanasia to justify their actions.
 
kim wilson:
Yes–I agree they will be at great risk of forever trying to justify what they did. It was a terrible, terrible situation and my heart goes out to those doctors as well as those patients. Let us pray that they repent.

For many years I tried to justify my own abortion history by hiding behind pro-choice banners. Thank God I was blessed with the grace to truly look back at what I had done honestly and seek forgiveness. You are right on the money when you say that may become actively involved in defending euthanasia to justify their actions.
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You know, I think you make a strong point there. I think when people don’t question their behaviour and then repent, they tend to try and justify it, sometimes with vehemence. I think it’s a defence mechanism. Good point!
 
A good friend who lived in Oregon was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer a couple of years ago. Self-euthanasia is legal there; doctors can prescribe lethal amounts of meds to bring this about. Upon diagnosis, my friend’s doctor didn’t offer any type of pain management, hospice recommendations, and the like. All that he offered her were prescriptions so she could end her life. There she was, terminally ill, and she and her family had to find another doctor. My friend died four months later at home with her family nearby.
 
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Courtneyjo:
A good friend who lived in Oregon was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer a couple of years ago. Self-euthanasia is legal there; doctors can prescribe lethal amounts of meds to bring this about. Upon diagnosis, my friend’s doctor didn’t offer any type of pain management, hospice recommendations, and the like. All that he offered her were prescriptions so she could end her life. There she was, terminally ill, and she and her family had to find another doctor. My friend died four months later at home with her family nearby.
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Yes—the sad thing is that many people will feel pressured by the medical community or by family/friends to end their lives. It will almost seem dishonorable to stick around and suffer a while. I wonder how many of this doctor’s patients actually take his advice to go ahead and end it while having personal reservations against the idea. Many of these patients are already depressed about their diagnosis and are therefore far more emotionally vulnerable.

If you are not familiar with the Not Dead Yet organization, you might want to check out their website.

I’m sure many Protestants( though not all) will hop on the euthanasia band wagon just as many have already jumped on the abortion band wagon. Thank God for the Church who forms our consciences and who guides us in her teachings on faith and morals. There are so many specific questions that the Bible alone cannot answer. My own S. Baptist parents believe Terri Schiavo was rightly allowed to die and that abortion is ok in cases of rape or incest. They are devout and read their Bible daily, but they don’t have the benefit of a Church that teaches the specifics on these matters.
 
Dying with real dignity by Joseph Campbell
Principle of double effect
The solution lies with a moral norm known as the principle of double effect. This principle recognizes that moral decisions often have a tragic dimension: the good effects we desire from our actions may be inseparably linked to evil effects we deplore. Consequently, to obtain the intended good, we may have no choice but to tolerate the unintended evil. Despite the ambiguity of such actions, we may morally undertake them if there are no reasonable alternatives and the benefits we seek are proportional to the harm we foresee.

The principle of double effect justifies the administration of potentially lethal doses of narcotics, but not of potassium chloride, to the terminally ill. As noted, potassium chloride has a single effect, death. Consequently, to administer it is to intentionally kill the patient. Potassium chloride, in other words, does not relieve suffering. It brings on death, which causes the suffering to end. Its use in this context is a classic case of employing an evil means, killing, to obtain a good end, relief of suffering. This we cannot morally do. The end does not justify the means.
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catholicinsight.com/online/political/euthanasia/article_319.shtml

My sister died at 45yrs. of age of cancer and while she was in palliative care there was a power outage which meant the air-conditioning which helped to keep her comfortable was cut as the hospital was using minimum backup power. The crisis was exacerbated by the administrative decision to disallow all visitors. Compared to what happened in NO this was only a glimpse into what was a horrific tragedy. Those short twelve hours almost had my sister in a panic and I will never forget her voice on the telephone.

While I do believe the death culture is rampant I can’t believe the physicians involved intentionally killed anyone primarily because of the principle of double effect. Secondly, under such duress -with no alternative means of evacuation - one can hardly argue that this was an act of free consent. Furthermore, God is the only one who can scrutinize hearts and judge their true motivation.

I simply pray that the health care professionals will seek consolation in the mercy of God and will carefully prepare themselves with a lifetime of virtue, study and prayer which will enable them to act courageously and with wisdom in times of crisis. Heroes aren’t made in the last minute. They come forward, in the public eye, during such pivotal times because they have made a lifestyle choice to daily practice self-discipline and self-sacrifice. Fundamentally, they are people of character.
 
kim wilson:
This is what I love about having a Catholic conscience. You absolutely know where the boundaries are and you don’t make decisions like these according to your feelings at the moment. If the physician had had a well-formed Catholic conscience things might have turned out differently. Patients may have suffered and died still—but on God’s time and not ours and certainly not by human hands.
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:amen:

I really don’t understand all the justifications and appeals not to judge. I personally will try not to judge the people who committed these acts, as they may not have a fully formed conscience, BUT that doesn’t mean we can’t judge these acts.
They are despicable, I’m sorry, there’s just no two ways around it.
 
Sorry Rosalinda but I can’t agree with you. This situation has nothing whatsoever to do with double effect. The intention of the doctors here was quite focussed; the deliberate killing of patients. Even though they (the doctors) claim that they had no choice, even that is not a viable statement.

Let’s go back to my earlier post and remind ourselves of what Holy Mother Church has to teach us about this type of situation.
From CCC # 2277:
An act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his creator. The error of judgement into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.
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If you cause death in order to eliminate suffering the church states, quite baldly, that you commit murder. Even if you do this because you make an error of judgement and you carry out that judgement in good faith - murder is murder.

In this particular case the intention is the key and, from everything which I have read about it, the interview of the doctor involved, she was Instructed/directed to administer doses of IV drugs which she knew, from her training and experience, to be lethal.The intention was to kill. She says this herself.

Let us look at CCC # 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 suffering 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.
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So, it is OK to administer painkillers to alleviate suffering knowing that the use of morphine in large and frequent quantities will hasten death. But it is not OK to administer painkillers if the person doing the administration has as an end the speeding of death. If death is willed as the mean or the end of administering the drugs, then this would be wilful and intentional murder.

Yes Jennifer123, I am with you 100% I have been quite upset by the level of support and efforts to take these doctors ‘off the hook’ and justify what they did. by people posting on here.
 
This whole story has made me think about Masada—a Jewish town which was about to be beseiged by Romans who were surely going to rape, pillage, torture, murder and enslave. If memory serves me correctly, certain members of the town murdered the other members and then committed suicide themselves, and it was all systematically planned by the Jewish hierarchy of that community.

It makes me wonder what the orthodox Jewish approach to all of this is (not that it would supercede the Church’s approach!!)–just curious.

It also makes me wonder what would have been my moral responsibility if I had been a nurse in that hospital. To stay with those patients and die with them should looters and gang members have showed up (very likely since it would have been like a free candy drug store). Or abandon the patients and get home to my children and take care of them. I know I could not, as a Catholic, have participated in their murders.

Judge the acts, Clive and be thankful for your Catholic conscience. Others are not so fortunate as to have Holy Mother Church to guide them. And pray for the souls of the deceased as well as for those who took their lives.
 
Cockney Clive, I understand your reaction to the disturbing events in New Orleans and it certainly was my initial response too. Likewise, it is paramount for Catholics and Christians alike to seriously pray, reflect and study so that they may be prepared to confront these moral dilemmas. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is an excellent resource. That said we are discussing here the choices individuals made in exceptional circumstances. Circumstances so extreme one could equate with a living hell. A scant interview with an exhausted, distressed doctor who is wondering herself if she did right and praying to God to have mercy on her soul is not enough information for anyone to draw firm conclusions from. While the actions may have been objectively evil nonetheless this doctor may not be guilty.
Error and ignorance in regard to the object or circumstances of the act to be placed, affect the judgment of the intellect and consequently the morality and imputability of the act. Invincible ignorance excuses entirely from sin. Vincible ignorance does not, although it renders the act less free. The passions, while they disturb the judgment of the intellect, more directly affect the will. Antecedent passion increases the intensity of the act, the object is more intensely desired, although less freely, and the disturbance caused by the passions may be so great as to render a free judgment impossible, the agent being for the moment beside himself. Consequent passion, which arises from a command of the will, does not lessen liberty, but is rather a sign of an intense act of volition. Fear, violence, heredity, temperament and pathological states, in so far as they affect free volition, affect the malice and imputability of sin… it is clear that for an actual personal sin a knowledge of the law and a personal voluntary act, free from coercion and necessity, are required. No mortal sin is committed in a state of invincible ignorance or in a half-conscious state.
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newadvent.org/cathen/14004b.htm

There are mitigating circumstances here and the health-care workers after days and nights of handling this emergency without outside assistance and resources were probably “half-conscious” and almost out of their minds with fear, frustration, worry, discomfort and lack of sleep.
 
There are mitigating circumstances here and the health-care workers after days and nights of handling this emergency without outside assistance and resources were probably “half-conscious” and almost out of their minds with fear, frustration, worry, discomfort and lack of sleep.

Exactly, Rosalinda. I’ve certainly made poor judgment calls at the end of a very stressful 16 hour hospital shift. Many times I have walked out the door swearing I would never go back. After 11 years, I left the hospital scenario for good, and I now have a lower stress, lower paying job in a residence for profoundly disabled children.

I can’t imagine what it might have been like for these guys. May God have mercy on them.
 
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HelpingHands:
Hi Kim,
This is an interesting discussion. What do you think of the whole pain management obsession that we currently have in nursing? I wonder if it’s contributing to this problem. We are taught that death with dignity is a pain free death. In fact, the doc in the article used that term. It’s considered undignified to suffer pain in our current medical culture. In fact our whole society considers any type of suffering to be without value, it seems.

I believe this attitude goes against the Catholic model of the value of suffering and overall view of life. What do you think? Is this attitude towards suffering contributing to euthanasia becoming more and more acceptable by people?
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When my mom was dying in hospice, my father demanded that all pain meds cease because her pain would “help her in Purgetory (sp?)” Hospice called family members and we reinstated the morphine protocol. Granted, my father was deep in grief. But I never understood how physical suffering is “good” for one’s soul. Perhaps I’m biased. As a 14 yr old accident victim with 3 broken limbs, my father took my pain meds once I returned home and told me to offer my pain to Christ. I hope Jesus enjoyed bone pain. My father fought my mom and my doctors for 2 long days until they managed to get me a pain shot. It was hell for me. Pure @#$#$ hell.

Is it me or is this fetishizing other people’s pain for a “religious” reason sick? And how can any decent person, a Catholic, think Jesus loves pain?
 
originally posted by MikeinSD As a 14 yr old accident victim with 3 broken limbs, my father took my pain meds once I returned home and told me to offer my pain to Christ. I hope Jesus enjoyed bone pain.
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I’m sorry your father was so cruel to both you and your mother but he has an egregiously distorted perspective which has nothing to do with Catholic teaching on suffering. When my sister was dying I told her to take as much pain medication as needed to alleviate her pain as there was plenty of suffering left over ‘to offer up’ such as the mental anguish of a single mother leaving her two young daughters behind.

Your father needs prayer as his brand of faith is without love. Jesus said even the wicked know how to do good to those they love. If a son asks for a loaf of bread would he hand him a stone instead He asked.

Jesus spent His life relieving and even weeping for the sorrow of others. If He loved pain would He have performed so many miracles? He became sin for our sake and took on all the pain that was our due for our sins because He loved us so much. His passion and death is the measure of his love.

Mike, if you want to know how much your heavenly Father loves you look at a crucifix. He sacrificed his only begotten Son for you.
 
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