The Dutch Way of Death: Socialized medicine helped turn doctors into killers

On a Monday morning that he will never forget, Dr. Niko Wolswinkel's patient, a 77-year old woman dying from cancer, asked him to kill her. As a purely legal matter, he knew he could do it, but he searched his conscience. He couldn't bring himself to kill his patient; doctors are supposed to be healers, not killers. And, as a Christian, he believed it was wrong to take into his hands the power of God. A few days later, his patient died naturally. Wall Street Journal past featured article

Neonatologist Need Training to Guide Family Decision-Making for Critically Ill Infants

This study concludes that graduating neonatology fellows are highly trained in the technical skills necessary to care for critically ill and dying neonates but are inadequately trained in the communication skills that families identify as critically important when facing end-of-life decisions. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

The Steps of Coping With Grief

Guilt, sadness, anger, denial — these are just some of the emotions present during the grieving process. After a traumatic event, it's important to give your mind and body time to heal. Everyday Health

Related: When extended grief becomes depression

Watch Your Step: The Dangers of Falling

As blogger Sue Falkner-Wood notes, falling can be a serious matter for people with chronic health conditions: "Many of us are not as sure-footed as we used to be and must be more careful than the general population." Everyday Health

Smoking Worsens Multiple Sclerosis

Patients with multiple sclerosis who smoke appear to be at higher risk for the brain lesions linked with the disease and for brain shrinkage, new research suggests. Everyday Health

Honest Answers About Life With Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis blogger Trevis Gleason writes, "For those of you just joining, I posted a blog topic that allowed you (the MS community) to post any questions you might wish to ask me about my multiple sclerosis via the comment section." Everyday Health

'Crisis' over terminally-ill care

Official [UK] guidelines are causing a crisis in care of the terminally ill and growing anger among patients' families, medical experts say. The advice allows food and fluids to be withdrawn from patients, who are then continuously sedated, if they are judged to be close to death. BBC

Kevorkian movie, starring Al Pacino, Out Next Year

Jack Kevorkian is at it again promoting euthanasia. Meanwhile, the movie that will glorify his life and his killing of dozens and dozens of people will debut next year. Kevorkian wrote a book during his time in prison and the manuscript has been turned into an upcoming HBO movie entitled "You Don't Know Jack." Al Pacino plays Kevorkian in a role he says he appreciates. "It's an honor," Kevorkian said. "He looks exactly like me." LifeNews
Editor: How can Pacino look exactly like Kevorkian when Kevorkian looks nothing like Al Pacino?

Father's 'final days of agony'

A daughter has described how her father spent his final days in agony at a Sheffield hospital after being denied adequate pain relief. Thomas Milner was 76 and being treated for end-stage leukaemia and was not given enough top-up morphine to relieve his symptoms. Mrs. Brooks said initial hospital treatment for her father was good but he later suffered unnecessarily from not having enough medication. She said he was given 10 milligrams of morphine over 55 hours, which she said an independent doctor has since told her is a "pitiful" amount for a patient with a terminal illness. Sheffield Telegraph

Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading [UK] doctors have warned. Telegraph

Montana's top court to hear right-to-die arguments

Today the Montana State Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on whether the state should allow for legal assisted suicide. The case grew out of a decision late last year by an activist Montana District judge, Dorothy McCarter, who ruled in favor of the suit filed by the pro-euthanasia organization the Hemlock Society, now known as Compassion and Choices. The case will have an impact on the health care debate currently embroiling our nation's capital. CNN, Alliance Defense Fund

Journal blames people "who want to live" for confusion on assisted suicide

An editorial appearing in the prestigious British Medical Journal blames disabled people "who want to live" for the difficulties surrounding the debate in the UK on assisted suicide. Tony Delamothe, deputy editor of the BMJ, bluntly admitted that he is in favour of assisted suicide.
"The debate on assisted dying has been hijacked by disabled people who want to live. It needs to be reclaimed for terminally ill people who want to die." LifeSiteNews

Get to Know: Revolution Health

Find a doctor, health professional, hospital, or senior housing for you or a loved one. Help others by sharing your experience. Revolution Health

Health Tip: Keep Seniors Safe at Home

If a loved one with dementia is living at home with supervision, it's still important to eliminate potential dangers. Everyday Health

Husband gets slap on the wrist for assisted suicide

Citing “complexities and the odd nature of the case,” a Terrebonne Parish judge this morning ordered a Houma, LA, man to spend six months in jail for helping his ailing wife commit suicide. John Ahlf II got a five-year suspended prison term. He must also serve three years of probation, a year in home incarceration and take a mental-health evaluation and decision-making course. Ahlf pleaded guilty in May to the assisted-suicide charge, brought after he placed 130 pills and alcohol within reach of his wife, Mary Ahlf, who suffered from debilitating arthritis in her back, according to testimony. He said she threatened to kill herself many times, whether or not he wished to be present. Houma Today

Top 10 Tips for Managing Day-to-day Life With MS

Take control of your MS symptoms with practical strategies you can use every day. Everyday Health

Amassing a mountain of . . . pillows?

Hospice of Michigan is sponsoring Evan Koons' entry in ArtPrize, the largest art competition in the world - happening in Grand Rapids, MI. Together, they are on a mission to collect 7,000 pillows and win the $250,000 grand prize for his art piece called "I'm Still Alive." Evan has pledged half of any winnings to Hospice of Michigan's Open Access. Find out how you can help: Amassing the Mountain

Robert Schindler Dies

Robert Schindler, the father of Terri Schindler Schiavo, whose former husband subjected her to a painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death, died overnight. Schindler, 72, had been battling health issues and he died of apparent heart failure. Bioethics watchdog Wesley J. Smith noted that "his health was broken by the ordeal of trying to save his daughter’s life and he never fully recovered from the horror of watching her dehydrate to death." LifeNews

Doctors admit euthanasia being applied in Czech hospitals

Some doctors admit that euthanasia is being applied in the Czech Republic not to prolong patients' sufferings in hopeless cases, though it is officially illegal. It is called "wild euthanasia" and it means that doctors intentionally provide the treatment that leads to the patient's death with the aim to terminate his/her suffering. Being asked at a recent meeting of the Czech Doctors' Academy whether someone is convinced that euthanasia is not applied in the Czech Republic, no doctor raised his hand. Many doctors say the rules should be specified for the cases of patients whose further medical treatment is pointless and whose death is inevitable. Ceske Noviny

Get to Know: Down Syndrome Association of West Michigan

If you are a new parent of a child with Down Syndrome or new to the West Michigan area, please contact us so that we can add you to our mailing list and you will receive our newsletter free of charge for one year. Down Syndrome Association of West Michigan

Help, Hope, and Emotional Healing for the Terminally Ill

When you have a terminal illness, it's essential to get support from friends and family — and to do things you enjoy as long as you can. Care Pages

Instant happiness? Even for people with cancer?

“Come on…” said a friend as we climbed the hill home from the café five blocks away. “Really!?” I’d just shared with her that I considered my cancer a gift. Though most people with cancer hate to be told that – we don’t want to hear what’s good about cancer because we need to know first that others recognize our pain and feel for us - we like to share the insights born of our illness with those we love. Sadly, such insights are difficult or nigh impossible to grasp if one hasn’t experienced cancer. Care Pages

Financial Management During a Medical Crisis

When your loved one has a medical crisis, the last thing you want to — or can — think about is money. Sound financial planning will give everyone peace of mind. Care Pages

Hospital Faced Deadly Choices After Katrina

The full details of what Dr. Anna Pou did in the hours and days following Hurricane Katrina, and why, may never be known. But the arguments she is making about disaster preparedness — that medical workers should be virtually immune from prosecution for good-faith work during devastating events and that lifesaving interventions, including evacuation, shouldn’t necessarily go to the sickest first — deserve closer attention. This is particularly important as health officials are now weighing, with little public discussion and insufficient scientific evidence, protocols for making the kind of agonizing decisions that will, no doubt, arise again.

The New York Times report reads chillingly like Mengele's selection techniques at Auschwitz: "In the dim light, nurses opened each chart and read the diagnoses; Pou and the nurses assigned a category to each patient. A nurse wrote '1,' '2' or '3' on a sheet of paper with a Marks-A-Lot pen and taped it to the clothing over a patient’s chest. (Other patients had numbers written on their hospital gowns.) Many of the 1’s were taken to the emergency-room ramp, where boats were arriving. The 2’s were generally placed along the corridor leading to the hole in the machine-room wall that was a shortcut to the helipad. The 3’s were moved to a corner of the second-floor lobby near an ATM and a planter filled with greenery." These are the patients allegedly given a lethal dose by Dr. Pou.

End-of-Life Advice Not Always Welcome

When deciding whether to turn off life support for a loved one, family members aren't always interested in their doctor's advice, new research shows. The finding runs counter to assumptions among critical-care providers that families making such a heart-wrenching choice would welcome a physician's impartial opinion. US News

Disability and Life Advocacy Group Warn Against Veteran’s Administration Booklet

Members of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation are speaking out against the republication of a 1997 booklet produced by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs titled Your Life, Your Choices. The Foundation has taken issue with the language of the booklet for its treatment of legal and medical decision-making issues, which it finds to be private matters between patient, physician and family. “[T]he language used in Your Life, Your Choices is encouraging individuals to make life and death decisions based on a ‘quality of life’ judgment and not the Constitutionally supported position that the value of all citizens is equal and each has a right to live.” Terri's Fight

How’s Your MS Today?

The multiple sclerosis community at Everyday Health is growing like crazy! I’d like to introduce our “newbies” to our monthly posting which gives you a chance to check in with the rest of us. “How’s Your MS Today” has been going on for a number of years now. It’s our chance to take a look back at the previous month and see how/if our MS has been changing. Many find it helpful to glance back at their comments over the past 6-12 months before heading in for a neuro appointment; I know I do!

Sisters Face Death With Dignity and Reverence

A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream. “We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.” NY Times

Alzheimer's Disease Basics

. . . from Everyday Health

I am finally scared of a White House administration

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law. Nat Hentoff