Lawyer for Final Exit Network Slanders Hospice
Assisted suicide advocates pretend that they support hospice, but their work undermines the entire concept, or at least, twists it into something that would be unrecognizable by its creator, Dame Cecily Saunders. But now a lawyer named Michael Kaminkow, who is defending two of the Final Exit Network assisted suicide defendants, has gone so far as to slander hospice. From the story:
"Whatever happened here is no more than what happened in a hospice," said Michael Kaminkow, an attorney representing two of the network members arrested Wednesday. "In reality, a hospice is a suicide. It's just a little slower."Shame on Kaminkow. First, hospice isn't about causing life to end. It is about alleviating suffering and promoting human community and dignity for people with terminal illnesses and their families. Second, in 1997 the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that refusing unwanted life-sustaining medical treatment, which is part of the hospice program, is not the same thing as suicide or assisted suicide. Third, sometimes people in hospice don't die, but get better. Finally, the man who his clients are accused of assisting in suicide was not terminally ill. He had previously had jaw cancer, but he had not experienced a recurrence of the disease.
Perhaps this is ignorance talking. But it is a cruel ignorance.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Final Exit Network. Criminal Defense.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:59 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
I understand what hospice is supposed to be, and often is, but from what I've heard, it often isn't. Last week someone was telling me about people not being treated for u.t.i.s in hospice. My objection to hospice is that it is part of the "end-of-life" culture, and anything that is that is tricky, just as assisted suicide can verge over into euthanasia and murder (same thing), and legitimizing what is "desireable" ends up promoting what is not. Same with "bioethics." Death is part of life, and one is alive up until the moment one is dead, and focusing on anything other than life, in any way, is dangerous.
Likewise "palliative care." The minute we say, "let's keep them comfortable while they are dying," we are saying, "death is supposed to be comfortable," which leads to "the person would be more comfortable if they were dead. Life is nasty, brutish, and short, it is about the fight and struggle to live, it is not all peaches and cream, and labelling anything that has to do with not-life, or impending not-life, as positive leads to acceptance and promotion of what is less benign along the same lines. "Hospice" has beome a shibboleth and has helped to create and drive the death culture, and grown as an institution along with it. The acceptance of the concept of hospice leads to the desire for the legitimization and availability of assisted suicide, and to "euthanasia."
All these buzzwords -- "hospice," "end-of-life," "palliative care," "terminally ill,""assisted suicide" -- go together, and are bad gungee, and as I just said, regarding the more benign among them as positive leads to regarding the ones that are the opposite of benign as positive. Making an enterprise out of the end of life in any way leads to the causing of the end of life.
As for "terminally ill," the doctors should shut up about that and stop predicting "how long" someone "has to live." (Which can also be interpreted in terms of living being an unwelcome obligation.) It's just too dangerous for "hospice," even at its best, to be an institution, because people are idiots. I'm against it. While I know that SHS knows what hospice is supposed to be and has seen hospice done right, I still say that it's part of the culture of death, just as "bioethics" is. The attorney who said what's quoted here is right; such things DO go on in hospice all the time.
I know that everyone is not like me and would not prefer to go through hell at the end, with every possible means of life support, just to be alive, or like my mother, who, after having been sold a bill of goods with a "living will" which to her was just another version of the George Foreman grill she bought and used once (she was my mother; I knew and understood her, which the strangers who insisted on her death did not), wanted to live no matter what; I have her genes, of course; I've come very close to dying more than once, I know where the line is and how thin it is and how important it is to stay on this side of it, and I have logic, and I know what I'm talking, nor am I the only one who can say those things. I know that not everyone would hate the harps and the things about hospice that make it wonderful to some as I would hate them, and that not everyone would prefer a nice, normal death like getting run over by a taxi, as I would, to the "comforts" of hospice."
But error has to fall on the side of life, not on the side of what's easier, and life is fighting, and the death culture has to be fought. I've seen how the "hospice culture" infects, and how it leads to wacky thinking and approval of euthanasia. A dear friend, who loved and cared for both of her own parents in their old age, now is a hospice aide, something for which she has "the gift," and was a rock of support for me throughout my mother's ordeal, but I've noticed how even she has drunk the kool-aid of end-of-life culture and at times was surprised at her "old, supposed to die" perspective. When I was trying to find the kind of specialist my mother wanted to help her have every possible chance to live, as she desperately wanted to and was fighting with every ounce of her being to do, I encountered one after another secretary, nurse, office manager, etc. who worked in the office of whatever doctor I was trying to enlist on my mother's behalf and who would self-righteously regale me with her "own opinion on end-of-life," for which I hadn't asked, mind you, and which was irrelevant to my mother's situation. I've met idiot after idiot who is smug with satisfaction in their certainty that they "would not want to live on life support" and "glad to have their papers in order." The city in which I live is rife with "hospice culture" and the home of a "star" "pioneer of palliative care" who has written of his participation in an assisted suicide, been sued by the state's attorney general (who, thankfully, won in the U.S. Supreme Court), gone to Switzerland to research assisted suicide, preceded and, I have been told, encouraged Kevorkian, and is spoken of by the idiot ignorant around here, of which there are all to many, as "wonderful." My mother died, against her will, aware, and knowing that she was being murdered, because of that "atmosphere." I know what it is to be given dirty looks by strangers who only know what they read in the newspaper or saw on tv, that my mother was "in a coma" and "had signed a living will," and to have been spoken, reviled, and blogged about as if I were a demon because I would not "let her go." (She didn't want to "go.") In this town, hospitals and "health care corporations" have social workers trying to push elderly people who aren't even sick into "hospice" because "they are old and supposed to die," because of "cost considerations," etc., adult children of elderly parents have to fight that machine at every turn, every time one turns around, one hears that so and so is "in hospice," and "hospice" is regarded as "a good thing," and I am here to tell you, from real and tragic experience, that the mindset involved in all this leads, in settings other than hospice, to those who need, deserve, want, and can benefit from medical care not receiving it, and to the murder of those who do not want to die and are desirous and capable of continuing to live.
Just as in the oxymoron "eu"thanasia, associating the concept of "good" with death in ANY way is lethally dangerous and is something that society simply cannot afford. Yes hospice, properly done, makes death less unpleasant -- but death is not desireable, and we cannot afford to associate "less unpleasant" with the concept of death, because the result is that what is undesireable happens to those who are not even terminally ill. It is absolutely perilous in a world in which doctors no longer have to take the Hippocratic oath and are trained at hospitals that teach them that the old are supposed to die and that encourage euthanasia. Doctors aren't taught logic in the first place and are not the sharpest tools in the shed in the first place, and when they are taught, as they are taught, that life is a terminal illness, hospice is just too dangerous a concept and institution to have around.
ANYTHING to do with "end of life" is dangerous. People just aren't that smart. Look how they sign "living wills" without having thought logically, without having taken into account that they cannot possibly know in advance what the situation would actually turn out to be, without realizing what can happen. Look how they opine about the elderly when they themselves have never BEEN elderly. No one has, except for the elderly themselves, and they are getting murdered left and right in the same world in which hospice is accepted. Someone here a while ago recounted the apocryphal story of the funeral director who answered the younger man's question, "Who would want to live to 95?" with "Someone who is 94." That hits the nail on the head, and that there even is such an apocryphal story sums up how much stupidity runs rampant in those at whose mercy the elderly are.
It would be nice if there could be "hospice," as hospice is supposed to be, without the rest of the death culture, but that's like saying that we can benefit from scientific and medical research on non-human animals without having to pay the price of its ill effects, such as callousness and utilitarianism, "futile care theory," etc., and that selfishly causing other beings to suffer does not lead inevitably to our own suffering. It can be called moral all day long as justification, along with the theory of human exceptionalism, but that doesn't make it moral, or us exceptional. It's like smoking cigarettes and expecting to remain immune from lung cancer, emphysema, and/or circulatory and heart disease. It's lethal cirular thinking. We can't have our cake and eat it too. In the case of the institutionalization of hospice, as with "living wills" and assisted suicide, it's just too dangerous, because people just aren't that smart. If everyone were on Wesley's level, it would be different. But they're not.
Sorry for the long unbroken paragraph above.
I know some will say that hospice is good because dying IS part of life. But I don't see it that way; that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hospice is, by definition, an "easy way out," just as are assisted suicide and what euthanasia is claimed to be. Just as abortion, and embryo selection, and the things that are done in scientific/medical research that are wrong, and the arguments that seek to justify them, are, for that matter. There's plenty of time for things to be easy, and to feel no pain, and to reflect on our lives, and commune spiritually with others, and all of that, after we're dead. Life is an absolute good, and every day above ground is a good day; we don't need any aspect of the death culture, including hospice, "to make it better." Yes it makes things easier for the family; nursing homes do, too, and look what goes on in those places, and for that matter in hospitals, as opposed to the way things are supposed to be there. It's just one more way for people not to take responsibility, and to leave things to "experts" who are strangers.
And when we leave things to "experts" who are strangers, look what happens. Those who put plastic bags over the heads of those who "want" assisted suicide are strangers, too. Kevorkian is a stranger. Doctors who opine on how long one "has" (we never have anything other than the current moment) are strangers. Doctors and hospitals who euthanize are strangers. Lawyers who present us with "living wills" are strangers. Hospices are run by strangers, and, without Wesley or someone(s) like him, there, there is "stranger danger" in hospice, too. No, that lawyer isn't wrong. In fact, he made my point, even while representing clients who are agents of what SHS rightly decries and is fighting valiantly.
My final point is that the medical establishment wants there to be hospice as a dumping ground. The "choices" people make about hospice, what kind of care they want there, etc., the forms signed, etc. are no different than what goes on in hospitals, no different than the "living will" concept which is really a way to get people off the planet without "wasting resources." See, there's "choice" again. Ones forced on people who are not exactly at their best, whether they are actually dying or doctors just say they are in order to get them into hospice. Doctors have no business saying how long one "has" (no one has more than the present moment) in the first place, and people hae no business taking their word for it. One can be in hospice and "dying," and therefore not treated when one has a u.t.i. The only way to stop the deadly juggernaut the "medical establishment" that no longer requires taking of the Hippocratic oath and bullies doctors et al. into the "choice" of going along to get along or not working as doctors et al. on is to take away what they use -- animal research that make possible career-advancing "studies," insurance, and hospice, among other things. Yes it's radical, but what is at stake could not possibly be more radically important, and radical means are necessary and entirely appropriate. "Death as part of life" is, to begin with, an oxymoron, that we are all dying every moment notwithstanding; the kind of "dying" hospice addresses is in a different category, and yet at the same time making it "part of life" invites the death culture right in and tells it to take its shoes off, set aspell (forever), make itself comfortable, and here, have a nice martini. "Hospice" opened a Pandora's Box, and now we're running around with butterfly nets and flyswatters as the death culture buzzes ever louder around us and kills more of us each day. Hospice is just another version of "making things easier" concerning something that is not supposed to easy. The "nice" aspect of it encourages the rest of the death culture, as does its "choices" aspect. It's playing on the enemy's team. Much more heavy weaponry is needed if the war is to be won.
Why are people as afraid of change as they are, when it's literally a matter of life and death? Enough of them wanted "change" to elect Obama, and now we need change from what he is doing that advances the death culture. Oh, what would we do without animal research, without insurance, without hospice...Oh, I don't know, maybe not be swallowed up by the death culture.
And no, hospice isn't supposed to be about making people die, and when it's done right, it isn't. But that's how it's getting used.
I have heard from some priest friends that hospice has been pushing a lot of starvation-death recently; my friend's father-in-law was recently starved after his swallowing stopped working.
His is a hard case to gauge, as he has been bedridden for years and suffered dementia, all from a degenerative neurological condition. But he was not in the process of dying when it happened, he perhaps had had a small stroke.
So, it could make sense to not feed him with a tube or other invasive means...but then again I am wary of deciding these things for those who have not made their wishes known.
Anyway, my priest friends have charged that they have seen more than a few cases lately where hospice was involved in caring for a long-term disabled care person who was NOT dying, and pushed the idea of witholding nourishment.
I wonder how true this is, and if the Final Exit guy is referring to this?
Or is he just a jerk, trying to further normalize what lanthe is rightly saying has already been done by our language?
Holyterror: I think both things are true: He's referring to what you described, AND he's trying to "normalize" it
The 1997 decision may (or may not; I haven't read it and thus can't say what I'd think if I did) be theoretically correct, and obviously it deals with nuance and distinction, but 9-0 notwithstanding, it opens Pandora's Box. Roe v. Wade stood, too, and an awful lot of people don't think it should have. This is what happens when the law gets involved with things it shouldn't get involved with in the first place. Should there be a ruling on whether children should have to eat spinach? Some things are just too personal and private to be subjected to courts and legislatures; once they are, the door is open and the death culture walks in and the juggernaut starts.
Also, refusing treatment IS suicide, and assisted suicide at that. And refusing to give treatment, under whatever guise, is murder.
And I hate to say this, but, re the foundress of hospice: Another one with a title. Actually I thoght it had been Kubler-Ross. Basically anything that makes an enterprise of "end-of-life" is dangerous. People can't figure out, in hospitals, in "health care," in families, in religion, in communities, in life, even, if God forbid it comes to that, in government, how to be kind to the dying without "experts" and a "specialty" being established? Baloney.
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