The New Ideology in Health Care and How to Survive It

THE NEW IDEOLOGY IN HEALTH CARE AND HOW TO SURVIVE IT

Although this article by Rabbi Mordechai Biser is written from an Orthodox Jewish standpoint, I think it offers good advice for everyone, plus good background on how we got to the point that starving people to death is seen as a proper role (by some!) for some doctors and nurses.

...The new thinking in medical circles, often expressed in terms of the need to "ration resources," essentially seeks to justify letting patients die solely on the basis of the doctor's personal view that a patient's "quality of life" is so diminished as to no longer be a life worth living.

Dr. David Hoffman, a medical oncologist who serves as Assistant Professor at Albert Einstein Medical Center and attending physician at Einstein Montefiore Medical Center — and is thus well-placed to know how doctors and residents view end-of-life issues — reported at the Agudah convention that many residents and younger doctors now openly advocate this new approach. Dr. Hoffman added that many hospitals have already adopted actual guidelines defining quality of life that govern when to intervene and when not to, and that medical schools are teaching this material to doctors-to-be. Concludes Dr. Hoffman, "These disturbing trends… have made and will make more inroads into our medical… practice."...

...We do not know, cannot know, when a human being is truly incapacitated — when his or her soul has been released. Only when a heart has stopped beating can we be certain that life in its truest sense has ended. And so hastening or abetting the death of even a physically or emotionally compromised human being is no less an abortion of meaningful life than gunning down a healthy one...