Assisted Suicide Group Admits to Undermining Proper Hospice Care
Compassion and Choices, the assisted suicide advocacy group, has admitted to undermining proper hospice care. That's not how they put it, of course. It brags that nearly 100% of Oregon assisted suicides last year--88% with which their representatives were involved--were in hospice. From the C and C press release:
Compassion and Choices, the nation's largest advocate for end-of-life care and choices and steward of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, today noted that nearly 100% of terminally ill individuals using the law in 2008 were enrolled in hospice. Hospice enrollment among those using the Act increased to 98%, with 59 of the 60 individuals enrolled. Over the prior 10 years of the Act's existence, 86% of patients using the Act were enrolled in hospice, in itself a very high rate of use.They should be ashamed, not proud. This press release is essentially an admission that its representatives interfere with the proper provision of hospice care, since an essential service of hospice is suicide prevention.
The published statistics from Oregon, for what they are worth, state that only two of the people about which the press release referred, were directed to a mental health consult, which is not the same thing as treatment. In 2007 there were zero referrals. This indicates that the patients who committed assisted suicide received no formal intervention for suicide prevention.
How is withholding suicide prevention is any different than providing inadequate pain control? Hence, Compassion and Choices undermines and interferes with the application of full and proper hospice care. I don't see any other way of looking at it.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Oregon. Compassion and Choices. Hospice.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:12 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
Correlation isn't causation.
Hospice isn't perfect. Pain and symptom control still could have been inadequate, leading to patients using the Act.
Your interpretation is certainly possible, but it isn't definitive, any more than mine is.
dr. dredd: According to the propaganda, er statistics published by C and C, er Oregon, only three had concerns about pain control.
Those who are compassionate and respectful of others' choices don't use those words to describe themselves, any more than people with ethics need to have "committees" and "meetings" to discuss ethics. Actions speak louder than words, and that's an understatement in the contexts just mentioned.
Cruel.
Callous. Parlous. Unforgiveable. Criminal. Unbelievable in a civilized society. Oh, but wait -- that's not what we've got.
I've noticed in the past couple of days that the number next to the flag of Greece over to the right here is going up much faster all of a sudden.
Do you have a link to the stats posted by C and C?
dr_dredd: I might if you do a search of the site. I think I have linked their numbers before but I might have just read them. I am sure if you go to the C and C Web site it will be there. Also, hit the link to the PPC article I quoted. He has more numbers there than I felt could be put on a blog for ease of reading.
Finally, Oregon also publishes weekly stats.
WJS
The Saintly demeanor of Florence Nightingale is now overshadowed by the the New Age Icons & health care expediters who were forecast so many many years ago.
Revelation 13:7 (King James Version)
7And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
The fakery of compassion is in taking the easy way out and not providing care in the hopes of a recovery and pretending a society is doing the compassionate thing.
Donnie: I don't know what New Age has to do with it and with the health care expediters. I find the "new age" thing annoying; the music, the lingo, etc. -- and I'm a professional astrologer (a field which is not new-age; it's age-old). What's the connection? To me it's like saying that animal rights is anti-life.
The number for Greece is jumping up. I wonder why. Maybe because it's the birthplace of western civilization? It's interesting. If the death culture has gotten even a toehold and needs to be fought there (as it did in Italy, with Eluana, and that's another last place I'd expect it to), things are even worse than I thought. They don't even have trees to block the sunlight since they cut them down to build ships millenia ago.
Donnie: I'm don't mean to sound flip; I really do want to know what the connection is in order to be able to follow the logic of it. I could have missed something.
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