The Push to Starve Dementia Patients Appears in the New York Times

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By Wesley J. Smith
National Right to Life

First, bioethicists said people should be able to refuse being “hooked up to machines” even if that meant almost certain death.

Then, they pushed that meme farther, arguing that the right of refusal (including by surrogates) should also include nourishment by tube so the patient dehydrates to death. Give them an inch . . .

After that, they said patients who are terminally ill (for now) should have access to prescribed poison to make themselves dead. Not good.

Now, they want to force caregivers to starve patients with dementia who eat and drink by mouth if so instructed in an advance directive.

This abusive proposal, which is being pushed aggressively in the professional literature, has now reached the august pages of the New York Times in a column by Jane Brody, the Gray Lady’s health columnist. From, “An Advance Directive for Patients with Dementia”:

Missing in standard documents [advance directives] are specific instructions about providing food and drink by hand as opposed to through a tube.

There is a logical reason for that. Advance directives cover medical treatments. But eating and drinking by mouth is not a medical treatment. It is humane care — like keeping clean, warm, turning to prevent sores, etc. — which are not part of advance directives.

Brody throws up some smoke, stating that the starve-me instructions would apply at the very end of life.

While trying to provide nourishment for a terminally ill person nearing death is commonly done in the name of comfort and caring, if that person cannot benefit from food or drink, it can become quite the opposite. When patients can no longer swallow what they are fed, they may choke and aspirate food or drink into the lungs, resulting in pneumonia that adds to their misery and hastens their death.

That can be true, and at such times, great care must be shown.

But the document Brody supports, written by an assisted-suicide advocacy group, does not require forced starvation to be limited to such times (my emphasis):

In the final, ‘terminal’ stage of all dementias, a person may become unable to swallow what is placed in his or her mouth, and lose the ability to ambulate, speak, recognize loved ones, and control bowel or bladder functioning.

Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease who contact End of Life Choices New York want to know how they can avoid the final stages of this disease. It is for those individuals, and others who fear being diagnosed with dementia in the future, that the Directive about assisted oral feeding has been created.

National Right to Life article continues here

Elderly Woman Resists Being Euthanized When She Sees the Needle, So Her Family Held Her Down

By Alex Schadenberg
Life News

The Washington Post published an excellent article on January 24, 2018 by Charles Lane. Lane, a respected editorial columnist who asks: How many botched cases would it take to end euthanasia for the mentally ill and cognitively impaired?

In his article, Lane examines several documented cases of euthanasia of incompetent or mentally ill people. The first case Lane refers to is the shocking story of a woman with dementia in the Netherlands who resisted dying by euthanasia:

The patient, referred to in official documents only as “2016-85,” had made an advance directive requesting euthanasia in case of dementia. But the directive was ambiguously worded, and she was no longer able to clarify her wishes by the time she was placed in a nursing home — though her husband did request euthanasia for her.

Despite the lack of a clear expression from the patient, a physician concluded her suffering was unbearable and incurable — though there was no terminal physical illness — and prepared a lethal injection.

To ensure the patient’s compliance, the doctor gave her coffee spiked with a sedative, and, when the woman still recoiled from the needle, asked family members to hold her down. After 15 minutes were spent by the doctor trying to find a vein, the lethal infusion flowed.

Neither voluntary, painless nor dignified, this physician-assisted death was referred to prosecutors by the Dutch regulatory commission — with, so far, unknown consequences.

Lane then focuses on the case of Sarah (Aurelia) a physically healthy 29-year-old woman who is scheduled to die by assisted death for on January 26 in the Netherlands. Lane writes:

Nevertheless, a 29-year-old woman, “Sarah,” whose sole medical complaint is serious, nearly lifelong depression and self-harming behavior, has received permission for euthanasia, to take place Friday, according to the RTL Nieuws, a Dutch media outlet.

29 year old Dutch woman approved for euthanasia for psychiatric reasons.

She was released from prison in December 2016 after serving 2½ years for arson. She received no therapy while incarcerated and, 12 months later, she persuaded doctors her psychological suffering was unbearable and untreatable.

“It was a long and difficult road before she finally got permission,” RTL Nieuws observed. “And that is why Sarah wants attention for her story. Not for herself, but for others who also find life psychologically too heavy, have no chance of healing and want to die in a dignified way.”

Lane then focuses on the psychiatric euthanasia deaths in Belgium:

Joris Vandenberghe, a psychiatrist at the University of Leuven, is calling for stricter controls. He complained last year that psychiatric patients have died at the hands of doctors who failed to meet criteria set forth in Belgian law.

 “I’m convinced that in Belgium, people have died where there were still treatment options and where there was still a chance for years and even decades of life.

Life News report continues here