When Dame Cecily Saunders created the modern hospice movement, she adamantly rejected assisted suicide as an acceptable hospice activity. Saunders would be spinning in her grave if she read the proposed policy around assisted suicide that has been published by the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). Read More ›
“Futile care” is a pronounced threat to patient autonomy and the equality of all human life. This is the idea. When doctors think that the quality of a patient’s life is not worth living — but the patient, family, or surrogate want care to continue — doctors can overrule patients and terminate wanted life-sustaining treatment. Read More ›
This is outrageous. Kentucky denied a prisoner with hepatitis a life-saving drug that always works — because of the expense. Now, a court of appeals ruling finds that the move is constitutional. Read More ›
As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live. Read More ›
“Futile care” — the forced removal by doctors and hospital bioethics committees of wanted life-extending treatment over patient and family objections — is, alas, still the law of Texas. And now a hospital in Florida has sued for the right to do the same thing to Genea Bristol, age 41. Read More ›
Readers may recall the sad case of Jahi McMath out of Oakland, Calif. In 2013, Jahi experienced a severe bleeding event after throat surgery and a subsequent cardiac arrest. She was successfully resuscitated, but her brain was catastrophically injured from loss of oxygen. Doctors at Oakland Children’s Hospital declared her brain dead and announced plans to remove Jahi from life support. Read More ›
The West is tearing itself apart. The symptoms are evident in our bitterly divided politics and the attempts to punish those with heterodox views. Read More ›
Something evil happened recently in Austin. Michael Hickson, a forty-six-year-old African-American man with quadriplegia and a serious brain injury, was refused treatment at St. David’s Hospital South Austin while ill with COVID-19. Read More ›
