Repackaging Death as Life – The Third Path to Imposed Death

[etspiri2sanctus]

I came across the following article regarding how the definition of palliative care has changed in the training of members of the medical profession. I have given only a few paragraphs of the article, but it would be well worth everyone’s while to go to the website and read the whole article. It is a long read, but worth your time and effort.

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9483

Repackaging Death as Life – The Third Path to Imposed Death
by Elizabeth D. Wickham, Ph.D.

Today bioethics is embedded in formal governmental regulations, state and federal laws, and medical ethics guidelines around the world. Bioethics is a subfield of ethics that was “created” in 1978 by the Belmont Commission and it quickly became internationally accepted. From its philosophic base has come the utilitarian (and futilitarian) culture that now threatens to permanently change the culture and practice of medicine
Earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI discussed a fundamental problem with bioethics in his address to the Pontifical Academy for Life. He said, ”some ethicists warn that modern bioethics is in fact a new normative system of ethics that, based on principles of utilitarianism, can never be compatible with Natural Law principles.

…(much more info. here. Too much to copy)

Strategy and Program Design
Have you noticed that people in this more nuanced wing of the euthanasia movement seem to be working from the same set of talking points?

Everyone should have an advance directive to protect himself from unnecessary medical treatment at the end of life.

Withholding/withdrawing food and water is a natural – and even pleasant – way to die, and is a perfectly ethical means of controlling the time of death.
“The principle of double effect” can be used to justify terminal sedation

(as stated further in the article, giving medication for pain which enhances an earlier onset of death.)

The people who are talking these points are financed by powerful foundations.
Among the major foundations spearheading this effort are 1) the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, and infrastructure, and 2) George Soros’ Open Society Institute/Project on Death in America, which funded a cadre of professionals. In the last 10-15 years these two foundations provided well over $300 million to advance the integration of their version of palliative care into the American health care system.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I came across the following article regarding how the definition of palliative care has changed in the training of members of the medical profession. I have given only a few paragraphs of the article, but it would be well worth everyone’s while to go to the website and read the whole article. It is a long read, but worth your time and effort.

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9483

Repackaging Death as Life – The Third Path to Imposed Death
by Elizabeth D. Wickham, Ph.D.

Today bioethics is embedded in formal governmental regulations, state and federal laws, and medical ethics guidelines around the world. Bioethics is a subfield of ethics that was “created” in 1978 by the Belmont Commission and it quickly became internationally accepted. From its philosophic base has come the utilitarian (and futilitarian) culture that now threatens to permanently change the culture and practice of medicine
Earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI discussed a fundamental problem with bioethics in his address to the Pontifical Academy for Life. He said, ”some ethicists warn that modern bioethics is in fact a new normative system of ethics that, based on principles of utilitarianism, can never be compatible with Natural Law principles.

…(much more info. here. Too much to copy)

Strategy and Program Design
Have you noticed that people in this more nuanced wing of the euthanasia movement seem to be working from the same set of talking points?

Everyone should have an advance directive to protect himself from unnecessary medical treatment at the end of life.

Withholding/withdrawing food and water is a natural – and even pleasant – way to die, and is a perfectly ethical means of controlling the time of death.
“The principle of double effect” can be used to justify terminal sedation

(as stated further in the article, giving medication for pain which enhances an earlier onset of death.)

The people who are talking these points are financed by powerful foundations.
Among the major foundations spearheading this effort are 1) the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, and infrastructure, and 2) George Soros’ Open Society Institute/Project on Death in America, which funded a cadre of professionals. In the last 10-15 years these two foundations provided well over $300 million to advance the integration of their version of palliative care into the American health care system.

It’s good that Catholics are waking up to this, but I knew this almost ten years ago.

Caesar is demanding the death of the ‘inconvenient, the unfit, the useless eaters.’

Actions have consequences. The 08 election had disastrous ones that many people are just now beginning to sense.

 

[etspiri2sanctus]

It’s good that Catholics are waking up to this, but I knew this almost ten years ago.

Caesar is demanding the death of the ‘inconvenient, the unfit, the useless eaters.’

Actions have consequences. The 08 election had disastrous ones that many people are just now beginning to sense.

We need to spread the word. Most people still do not understand the ramifications of the 2008 election. Until the last POTUS election, I too lived in their world of ignorance/indifference. The 2008 election woke me up.

 

[JimG]

Earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI discussed a fundamental problem with bioethics in his address to the Pontifical Academy for Life. He said, ”some ethicists warn that modern bioethics is in fact a new normative system of ethics that, based on principles of utilitarianism, can never be compatible with Natural Law principles.

In this I agree with the Pope. It seems to me that essentially turning over life and death decisions to professional specialists in “bioethics,” even to Catholic bioethics groups, is fundamentally a dangerous thing to do. It takes decisions which should be made by patients and family and puts them in the hands of others who are more concerned with broad social goals and costs than with individual cases.

The fundamental principle is that one must do the ordinary means of care, but that there is no requirement to do the extraordinary means of care. And ordinary and extraordinary may differ depending on individual circumstances. Assisted breathing by ventilator is ordinary in most cases, I would think, but extraordinary and burdensome for one who is dying. That is just one example.

I would rather have such decisions made by family, not a committee.

But I also think it a mistake to think that we must do whatever can be done, regardless of cost or burden, for the sake of adding a few more months of life.

I’ve known some people who on the advice of doctors, underwent expensive and extreme treatments which added less than six or nine months to a lifespan. That seems unreasonable. I also know one woman, who upon receiving a diagnosis of cancer, elected to have no treatment whatever. I wouldn’t dare to challenge her decision, since treatment or not, the outcome would eventually have been the same.

The whole field of bioethics tries to make such decisions ahead of time and for other people, and that’s a dangerous proposition.