Another film with a sympathetic portrayal of euthanasia wins award

Michael Haneke's Amour, The 2012 Palme d'Or Winner, To Be Released This December - CinemaBlend.com: Amour features two 80-year-old retired music teachers. One day they learn that their daughter, who lives abroad, has had a stroke and is partially paralyzed. The couple must deal with the emotional pain that comes with the ordeal.

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The Case for Kidney Donation Before End-of-Life Care

Taylor & Francis Online :: The Case for Kidney Donation Before End-of-Life Care - The American Journal of Bioethics - Volume 12, Issue 6: Paul Morrisey argues, "Donation after cardiac death (DCD) is associated with many problems, including ischemic injury, high rates of delayed allograft function, and frequent organ discard. Furthermore, many potential DCD donors fail to progress to asystole in a manner that would enable safe organ transplantation and no organs are recovered. DCD protocols are based upon the principle that the donor must be declared dead prior to organ recovery. A new protocol is proposed whereby after a donor family agrees to withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, premortem nephrectomy is performed in advance of end-of-life management. Since nephrectomy should not cause the donor's death, this approach satisfies the dead donor rule. The donor family's wishes are best met by organ donation, successful outcomes for the recipients, and a dignified death for the deceased. This proposal improves the likelihood of achieving these objectives."

The tricky question is whether the operation causes death. Morrissey says No. But critics have been scathing: “Bilateral donor nephrectomy will have catastrophic consequences on survivors of erroneous prediction of poor neurologic outcome or survival after [withdrawal of life support]. Morrissey's proposal violates the Hippocratic Oath of do-no-harm and the public trust in professional obligations to serve patients’ best interests.”
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Hospital-at-home programs for intensive-care patients spread

Hospital-at-home programs for intensive-care patients spread – USATODAY.com: Hospital-at-home programs refashion care for chronically ill patients with acute medical issues, testing traditional notions of how to treat people who become seriously ill. Only a handful of the initiatives exist, including the Albuquerque program, and programs in Honolulu, Boise New Orleans and Portland, Ore., offered through the Veterans Health Administration. The concept is getting more attention with increased pressure from the national health overhaul to improve the quality of medical care and lower costs. Hospital-at-home programs do both.

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In Rat Experiment, New Hope for Spine Injuries

In Rat Experiment, New Hope for Spine Injuries - NYTimes.com: Rats with a spinal cord injury that left their hind legs completely paralyzed learned to walk again on their own after an intensive training course that included electrical stimulation of the brain and the spine.

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Head of GPs in UK takes stand against assisted dying

BioEdge: Head of GPs in UK takes stand against assisted dying: The president of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK, Iona Heath, has taken a strong stand against the legalisation of assisted suicide. In an eloquent article in the BMJ she argues that campaigns in support of assisted dying rely on an excessively rosy view of society.

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Is the problem too much treatment? Or too little?

Not Dead Yet News & Commentary: Diane Coleman's Plenary Remarks at Adv. Care Planning and 'End of Life' Conference on May 31: Diane calls the disability perspective a Quest for Balance because "advance care planning has developed under the false premise that the primary or only problem is overtreatment of dying people. A balanced approach would also address the problem of undertreatment of people who may or may not be terminally ill. I want to emphasize that while the disability community may be most sensitive to this problem, it affects everyone who may find themselves on the patient end of the health care system."

She highlights a recent study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine in which researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center surveyed responses from more than 700 physicians in 34 states and found that over 50% of physicians misinterpreted a living will as having a "do not resuscitate" (DNR) order when it did not. About the same percentage over-interpreted DNR orders as meaning no treatment except "comfort care" or "end-of-life" care."

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Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace

Amazon.com: Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace (9781433530456): Michael S. Beates, Joni Eareckson Tada: Books: Michael Beates’s concern with disability issues began nearly 30 years ago when his eldest child was born with multiple profound disabilities. Now, as more families like Michael’s are affected by a growing number of disorders and difficulties ranging from autism to food allergies, the need for programs and paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Beates thus seeks to motivate churches to pursue ministry to children and adults with developmental disabilities. He works through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability to develop helpful principles for believers and churches, teaching them first to embrace their own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken.

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Get to Know: Lift Disability Network

LDN - About Page: "“We are a family of individuals extending Christ's love to the disability family through faith and friendship. It is our mission to lead in connecting the disability family through a collective voice of influence, innovative family support programs, and instructive learning initiatives."

Editor: Not to be confused with BFL's LIFT program for churches.

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Martin Luther and Childhood Disability in 16th Century Germany: What did he write? What did he say?

Independent Living Institute: Martin Luther's views on disability have been widely misapprehended and caricatured on the basis of a few items in a dubious edition of shorthand notes of conversations. His written and spoken arguments across 30 years (1517-1546) concerned with childbirth and infancy, devils, superstitions, changelings, prodigies, folly, disablement, deafness, participation in Christian sacraments, and exegesis of Biblical texts on disabled people, give a more reliable and interesting guide to his views, in the context of Luther's personal involvement with sickness, disability and practical care. Historically, European social and religious developments contained a broader range of views on disability than is commonly supposed, with some challenges for 21st century thought and practice.

Thirty national disability organizations blast "Deadly Consequences" segment of the Dr. Phil show

Thirty national disability organizations blast "Deadly Consequences" segment of the Dr. Phil show: On May 29, thirty national disability organizations lead by Not Dead Yet issued a letter to the Dr. Phil Show, criticizing its April 13th segment entitled “Deadly Consequences.” According to the letter, the segment “presented the idea that parents should be able to euthanize their children who have intellectual disabilities” and did so in “such an extremely unbalanced manner as to amount to a promotion of such a deadly proposition.”

“This segment was such a horrific assault on people with intellectual disabilities that ignoring it would be a dangerous mistake,” said Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet’s research analyst. “Dr. Phil even brought in Kevorkian’s former attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, to explain why parents should be allowed to order a lethal injection for their disabled children.”

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Palliation for Dying Undocumented Immigrants

Home: Palliation for Dying Undocumented Immigrants — NEJM: Sending dying patients to their homeland is nothing new. In fact, many palliative care teams in immigrant-heavy areas have started to provide this service as something tantamount to granting a dying wish.4 Sometimes patients themselves pay, but often funding comes through the patient's home government.

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How to Get on Disability

How to Get on Disability - CarePages.com: Social Security and other types of disability coverage all have different application processes. Here’s what you need to know about how to apply for benefits.

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How to give good gifts

Cancerquette Gift Guide Part II - What Helps. What Hurts. What Heals. - CarePages: This blogger has compiled practical tips for how to really help people with chronic or terminal illnesses.

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Culture Making Amid Cancer: The Choices That Suffering Makes Possible

Culture Making Amid Cancer: The Choices That Suffering Makes Possible | This Is Our City | Christianity Today: "I was 27 and had just earned a master's degree in medicine from Yale, and was halfway through earning a master's degree in journalism from Columbia, on my way to becoming a famous health-care reporter in Manhattan. And then I went to my doctor because something didn't seem right, and a week later I got the confirmation: I had breast cancer.

"My pastor showed up that day, while I was sitting in my surgeon's office, waiting to schedule my bilateral mastectomy. He sat with me in a silence that he occasionally punctuated with a sentence or two. 'We all think the world of you, you know,' he said. I nodded.

"A few minutes later he added, 'Cancer's a gift that God only gives to special people.' I thought, I'm not so sure."

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NDRN’s Report Should Serve As a Call to Conscience for Health Care Providers

Not Dead Yet News & Commentary: NDRN’s Report Should Serve As a Call to Conscience for Health Care Providers: The recommendations contained in the National Disability Rights Network's (NDRN) report, “Devaluing People With Disabilities: Medical ProceduresThat Violate Civil Rights,” constitute nothing less than a call to conscience for health care providers who are withholding life-sustaining treatment without consent from people with disabilities who are not otherwise dying. Sometimes this is done at the request of family members or other surrogates, who are often persuaded or even pressured by the health care providers themselves. Sometimes treatment is withheld based on the unilateral decision of the health care provider under what are often termed “futile care policies.”

What the NDRN report emphasizes is that people with disabilities are entitled to constitutional protections including 14th Amendment due process when third parties are seeking to withhold life-sustaining treatment.

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Judging human worth

Judging human worth | LifeSiteNews.com: Some of the great civil rights battles of our day are being waged in Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, and Montana this year. If you do not recognize those states as civil rights battlegrounds, you are not alone. While advocates for assisted suicide have targeted those states with legalization campaigns, residents may not fully appreciate what is at stake.

The connection between assisted suicide and the civil rights struggles of previous centuries is foundational. To claim that some human lives are not worth living is to deny the intrinsic and equal worth of every human being.

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Washington reports at least 70 assisted suicides

LIFE DIGEST: Washington reports at least 70 assisted suicides: The state of Washington may already have surpassed Oregon as the leader in legal, physician-assisted suicides. At least 70 Washington residents died in 2011 as a result of taking lethal drug doses prescribed by doctors, the state’s Department of Health reported May 2. The total may have been higher, however. It was uncertain if five other people who died after receiving prescriptions of lethal medication did so after taking the drug. Another 19 people who received the prescriptions died without ingesting the medication.

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Should We Kill Alzheimer’s Patients?

Should We Kill Alzheimer’s Patients? » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: A very disturbing article in New York Magazine by Michael Wolff. It tells the difficult story of his mother’s Alzheimer’s, a course of physical and mental decline about which I am very familiar as my uncle died from the complications of that awful disease. But Wolff says that such patients have lost dignity, and indeed, he more than implies the proper approach to dealing with dementia is to kill them sooner rather than bear the emotional and financial expense of caring for them over the long term.

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The Perinatal Hospice: Allowing Parents to be Parents

The Perinatal Hospice: Allowing Parents to be Parents | Charlotte Lozier Institute: Perinatology– also known as maternal fetal medicine—is that branch of obstetrics  concerned with the care of mother and fetus and the handling of high-risk pregnancies.

In recent yeatrs, perinatologists have been incorporating into their practice a new concept in perinatal care called the “perinatal hospice.” This care originated in 1996 with the controversy over “partial-birth abortion.” This abortion method involved the surgical procedure where the baby would be delivered to the shoulders as a breech, then deliberately held in place while a scissors or other sharp instrument was inserted through the baby’s posterior skull into the brain resulting in death. Many perinatologists believed this procedure so horrible that they sought to find a better way to care for our patients facing the hardest circumstances.

Perinatal hospice is the prenatal diagnosis of a terminally ill fetus in-utero leading to perinatal hospice as part of the continuum of end-of-life care. . . .  Many of the hospice principles were successfully applied in perinatal hospice. The emphasis is on affirming life by care for the loved one, yet regarding dying as a normal part of life. A conscious effort is made to neither hasten death nor prolong dying. The team stresses values beyond the mere physical needs of the dying individual and allows the parents to “parent” their child for whatever time they are allowed. The family is supported in their medical, emotional, and spiritual needs through an organized, multidisciplinary team that cares for them after the death of the loved child during the period of grief.
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US government sets out Alzheimer’s plan

US government sets out Alzheimer’s plan : Nature News & Comment: Last week, the government set out how it planned to spend a $50-million top-up to this year’s funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, announced in February as part of a bid to “prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease by 2025.” The money adds to the $448 million that the NIH was allocated to spend on the disease this year, and roughly half of it is already being used by scientists funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute on Aging.

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Georgia replaces assisted-suicide law that was tossed out

News in brief - May 21, 2012 - amednews.com: Georgia has enacted legislation to outlaw physician-assisted suicide, replacing a law the state Supreme Court struck down in February on First Amendment grounds. The law makes it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for any licensed Georgia “health care provider” to knowingly and willfully assist in the commission of a suicide.

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The Weaker Parts

The Weaker Parts | Dr. Georgia Purdom's Blog: Paul says, “Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Corinthians 12:22). Think about that in relation to those with disabilities: those we consider “weak” are indispensable in the body of Christ. Paul, an amazingly intelligent and gifted man, considered those who are “weak” to be indispensable. Not just “a good part of the body that we’re happy to have along,” but indispensable. Meaning the Body of Christ can’t function without them.

Video: The Sanctity of Life of Those With Disabilities

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Oncologists Responding to Grief

JAMA Network | Archives of Internal Medicine | Invited Commentary—Oncologists Responding to Grief: The practice of oncology can be stressful. While some stress can be motivating and challenging, in its extremes, stress can lead to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and self-perception of incompetence, all of which are considered hallmarks of burnout.

Stress and burnout should not be confused with grief. Grief is deep mental anguish arising from loss. Since death and loss are intrinsic aspects of oncologists' practice, grief is common, whether it be over the physical absence of a patient or the more abstract surrender of a meaningful joint struggle. Unaddressed grief over time can clearly contribute to burnout, which is an occupational hazard for physicians in general and oncologists in particular.

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Campaign to legalize assisted suicide in S Africa

Campaign to legalise assisted suicide in SA - Mail & Guardian Online: A controversial campaign to legalise doctor-assisted suicide and active euthanasia was launched in Cape Town on Thursday, spearheaded by the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicsSA) and Dignity SA. The launch comes two weeks after the much-publicized return to South Africa of Dignity SA founder Sean Davison, following his five-month house arrest in New Zealand for assisting his aged mother to die.

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Palliative Sedation Not = To Terminal Sedation/Euthanasia

Wesley J. Smith: The pro-euthanasia crowd intentionally and wrongfully conflates palliative sedation – that is sedating a dying patient at the end of life who is experiencing intractable pain or symptoms – with both euthanasia – fast killing the patient – and terminal sedation – slow killing the patient by inducing coma and withdrawing food and water. A good piece in the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy (201 2;26:30-39) shatters that lie. First, it notes that in palliative sedation, the point is to use the least amount of sedative to accomplish the needed palliation. From “Review of Palliative Sedation and Its Distinction From Euthanasia and Lethal Injection:”

Ideally, the level of palliative sedation is provided in a fashion that is titrated to a minimal level that permits the patient to tolerate unbearable symptoms, yet the patient can continue to periodically communicate…The three most common levels of providing PS include mild, intermediate, and deep. When mild sedation is used, the patient is awake and the level of consciousness is lowered to a somnolent state, withverbal or nonverbal communication still possible. With intermediate sedation, the patient is asleep or stuporous and can still be awakened to communicate briefly. The third level is deep sedation, which refers to the patient being near or in complete unconsciousness and does not communicate verbally or nonverbally. Besides regulating the degree of sedation, palliative sedation may also be provided intermittently or continuously…

The points to take away from the above are 1) palliative sedation is individualized to the patient’s needs, 2) the point isn’t to end the life of the patient, and 3) levels of sedation may vary in the same patient from time to time. In contrast, euthanasia kills the patientwith a lethal injection. And “terminal sedation” is merely the imposition of coma and withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration, sometimes without actual medical need and/or to make it easier for care givers–as in the much abused Liverpool Care Pathway in the UK.

Stand with the 8% – Down Syndrome Babies Who Weren’t Aborted

Stand with the 8% – Down Syndrome Babies Who Weren’t Aborted: Bristol Palin writes, "When Tripp is acting up — which he does often! — I sometimes joke with my mom, "Hey, want to trade kids?' I laugh."

Bristol Palin receives death threats for same-sex marriage stance

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Who is the Final Exit Network?

Who are the Final Exit Network? | NRL News Today: FEN is a group who aids and counsels suicide, and who will journey with a person to assist in in completing a suicide as part of their Exit Guide Service.

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Minnesota grand jury indicts right-to-die group

Minnesota grand jury indicts right-to-die group - BusinessWeek: A Minnesota grand jury has indicted a national right-to-die group and several members for their actions in the 2007 suicide of a suburban Minneapolis woman, prosecutors announced Monday. The 17-count indictment charges the medical director of Final Exit Network, Lawrence Egbert of Baltimore, and three other officials with felony counts of assisting suicide and interference with a death scene, a gross misdemeanor. It also charged the New Jersey-based group in its corporate capacity.

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Assisted suicide or a show of love?

LA Times: Alan Purdy, 88, sat by while his beloved Margaret, 84 and in unrelieved pain, killed herself. San Diego County authorities arrested him, but the issue is tough for everyone involved. Prosecutors worry that declining to prosecute will put them on a slippery slope: What if the next case involves someone whose illness was not terminal? What if the surviving partner had a financial interest in the death?