Christian Medical Association applauds new Tennessee policy to protect vulnerable patients during pandemic

Bristol, TN—June 26, 2020: The Tennessee-based, 18,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org) today applauded a Tennessee patient protection policy announced this afternoon by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and developed collaboratively between HHS, the state of Tennessee and disability rights groups.

CMA's Executive Vice President for Bioethics and Public Policy, Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, noted, "Patients with disabilities face even greater challenges than others during a pandemic, and we're thankful that both the federal government and the state of Tennessee are standing in the gap to protect the civil rights of all Americans. No person with a disability should have to fear that a government will assign their lives a lower value simply because they live with physical challenges."

The policy, announced today by HHS, reportedly incorporates crucial protections into the state's Crisis Standards of Care plan, stipulating that factors such as age or disability should not be used as criteria in determining the allocation of scarce resources. The policy also protects vulnerable patients who require additional resources from automatically being assigned a lower priority to receive lifesaving care.

Working with the HHS OCR, the state agreed to remove language permitting the use of a patient's long-term life expectancy as a factor in determining assignment of scarce resources. The policy also stipulates that long-term ventilator users will be protected from having their own ventilators taken from them and given to someone else.

Dr. Barrows, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist, observed, "Every human life is of immeasurable worth at every stage of life, regardless of physical challenges. We congratulate the HHS Office of Civil Rights for ensuring the civil rights of persons with disabilities. We also encourage the Department to ensure that civil rights are extended to vulnerable persons of all ages, including babies born prematurely."

Essay 7: Conscience freedoms protect against ideological agendas

Editor's Note: This is the seventh essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

With pro-life individuals increasingly targeted,
conscience laws can help protect both
patients and professionals from discrimination.

On January 26, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a conscience protection rule designed to enforce and educate regarding "a long history of providing conscience-based protections for individuals and entities with objections to certain activities based on religious belief and moral convictions. "[i]

The rule specifically cited over two dozen existing federal statutes protecting the exercise of conscience in healthcare, both for patients and professionals. Included in the laws are:

·      

Comment by March 27 on new HHS conscience rule that erects a wall against ideologically driven assaults

Action: Submit your comment by Tuesday, March 27 to protect conscience in healthcare

Today I submitted a document to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlining the reasons why a new proposed conscience protection rule serves the interests of health professionals and their patients:

TO: Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights RIN 0945-ZA03

FROM: Christian Medical Association and Freedom2Care - Jonathan Imbody

RE: RIN 0945-ZA03 or Docket HHS-OCR-2018-0002

DATE: March 26, 2018

Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority

The following narrative offers answers to specific requests for comments (marked below with numbers and quotations) outlined in the text of the proposed rule.

·       "Comment on all issues raised by the proposed regulation."

The Christian Medical Association and Freedom2Care, representing combined constituencies of nearly 50,000 individuals who are committed to the moral and ethical practice of medicine, heartily applaud this proposed rule. We laud the Department for producing an outstanding tool to enforce existing conscience protection law and to educate regarding our most cherished principles of freedom.

The proposed rule clearly and thoroughly lays down the legal and rational foundation for the Department's enforcement of and education about existing federal law that protects the exercise of conscience and religious convictions in healthcare, both for patients and for professionals. Given the priority of conscience and religious freedom in our nation's founding, in our Constitution and in our legal tradition, the case could not be clearer for restoring the rightful place of these freedoms among other civil rights laws and principles.

Only willful political corruption and ideologically driven assaults on these core founding principles can explain why in 2018 the universal integration of conscience and religious freedom in healthcare remains incomplete. Therefore the proposed rule offers a welcome, if long overdue, course correction to get the nation back on track on the principles on which this democratic republic depends.

While the proposed rule offers hope of a renaissance of a political, cultural and professional commitment to freedom of conscience and religious exercise, ideological forces within government, academia and the healthcare community continue to subvert these freedoms. As a survey of medical and academic publications will indicate, abortion advocacy and a strong undercurrent of intolerance for faith-based and pro-life commitments would sweep out of medicine any and all health professionals who hold to such ideals. A radical and authoritarian ideology that marches under the false flag of "patient autonomy" would force all professionals to participate in any legal procedure or prescription, regardless of professional judgment, medical ethics or moral convictions.

The result of such intolerance and coercion, left unchecked by federal law, court action and regulatory enforcement, would be a catastrophic loss of healthcare for millions of American patients. Hardest hit by the loss of pro-life and faith-based professionals and institutions would be the poor, the marginalized and the medically underserved.

By enforcing the freedom of pro-life and faith-based health professionals to continue to practice medicine, the proposed rule protects patient access to a diverse pool of health professionals and institutions. In the process, the rule also upholds and advances core American values of freedom.

To read the rest of the document, click here.

To learn how to quickly (30 seconds) submit your own comment on the proposed rule (deadline Tuesday, March 27) using a pre-written, editable form, click here.

To watch a quick video explanation, click here.

Federal Legislation Top Priorities - 2018

Note: The official positions of the Christian Medical Association and its affiliated Freedom2Care cover many policy areas. To maximize impact with current resources, CMA's Washington office focuses on the foundational right to life and freedoms of faith, conscience and speech—upon which all other rights and freedoms hinge.

Top Priorities: Freedom of faith, conscience and speech

·        Conscience Protection Act – S. 301, H.R. 644 - Prevent government coercion related to abortion.

·        Free Speech Fairness Act – S. 264, H.R. 781 - Protect free speech on political issues for nonprofit organizations including churches.

Top Priorities: Right to life

·        Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – S. 1922, H.R. 36 (passed) - Protect developing babies from abortions at the stage in which they can feel pain.

·        House Resolution on Dangers of Assisted Suicide – H. Con. Res. 80 - Prevent assisted suicide.

Other bills supported

·        Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act – S. 811, H.R. 1881 - Protect religious freedom of faith-based child service providers.

·        Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act - H.R. 217 - Redirect tax dollars from abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood to federally qualified health centers.

·        Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act – S. 220, H.R. 37 - Save lives of babies born in an abortion.

·        No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act – S. 184, H.R. 7 (passed) - Prevent tax dollars from funding abortion.

·        Parental Rights Resolution - S J Res 48 - Proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to parental rights.

·        Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act – S. 1823, HR 2405 – Gives community centers, including tax-exempt houses of worship, eligibility for disaster relief and emergency assistance.

·        Heartbeat Protection Act - HR 490 – would not allow a physician to perform an abortion: (1) without first determining whether the fetus has a detectable heartbeat, (2) without informing the mother of the results, or (3) after determining that a fetus has a detectable heartbeat.

Court victory protects Vermont physicians from assisted suicide option counseling mandate

The Christian Medical Association CMA, www.cmda.org) celebrates a court victory, thanks to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), that protects Vermont physicians from being forced to violate the Hippocratic oath and participate in assisted suicide. (Which tells you, of course, that doctors who participate in assisted suicide have dismissed a vital patient protection of the Hippocratic oath--so choose your doctor carefully.)
ADF's news release [emphases added] on the victory follows:

Victory for Vermont health professionals after pro-suicide group drops appeal

Compassion & Choices withdraws appeal of court decision that affirmed pro-life physician groups aren’t mandated to counsel, refer for assisted suicide
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
RUTLAND, Vt. – A pro-suicide group has dropped its appeal of a federal court’s decision which affirmed that a Vermont law can’t be interpreted to require pro-life health professionals to counsel or refer patients for assisted suicide. As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit officially dismissed the appeal Monday, thus ending the case.
The withdrawal of the appeal by Compassion & Choices leaves in place a consent agreement between physician groups and the Vermont Attorney General’s office, which agreed that the court was correct in deciding that the state’s Act 39 does not force conscientious professionals to ensure all “terminal” patients are informed about the availability of doctor-prescribed death.

ADF's Steve Aden

“Vermont health care workers just want to act consistently with their reasonable and time-honored convictions without fear of government punishment,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden, who argued before the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont in November of last year in Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare v. Hoser. “Conscientious Vermont healthcare professionals are in agreement with the state that the law doesn’t force them to participate in this heinous process, and they are pleased that the nation’s foremost advocate of assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, has abandoned its effort to force them to do so.”
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and ADF-allied attorney Michael Tierney represent the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare and the Christian Medical and Dental Association, groups of medical professionals who wish to abide by their oath to “do no harm.”
Act 39, Vermont’s assisted suicide bill, passed with a very limited protection for attending physicians who don’t wish to dispense death-inducing drugs themselves, but state medical licensing authorities construed a separate, existing mandate to counsel and refer for “all options” for palliative care to include a mandate that all patients hear about the “option” of assisted suicide. For that reason, the groups representing pro-life health professionals filed suit.
The court ruled that the groups lacked a legal right to bring the lawsuit because the law actually doesn’t force them to act contrary to their conscience—a finding that Compassion & Choices initially opposed. The dismissal of the appeal leaves Vermont healthcare professionals free to “do no harm” without fear of retaliation for their pro-life views.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

Previous news releases:

• 2017-04-05: Vt. health professionals planning next legal steps after decision on conscientious objection to providing suicide info
• 2016-11-07: Health professionals to court: Don’t allow Vermont to force us to help kill patients
• 2016-09-26: Health professionals ask court to stop Vermont from forcing them to help kill patients
• 2016-07-20: Vermont health professionals: Don’t force us to help kill our patients

Dem, GOP platforms contrasted on life issues

Both major political parties recently issued new platforms that communicate contrasting core values to the American people. Following is a breakdown of where each party stands on the life issues of particular concern to readers of this blog: abortion, sex education, embryos and stem cell research and assisted suicide:

Abortion

The Democrat party platform maintains that “that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion” (p. 37).

The Republican party platform focuses on “The Constitution’s guarantee that no one can ‘be deprived of life, liberty or property’ deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that ‘all’ are ‘endowed by their Creator’ with the inalienable right to life” (p. 13).

Democrats: “We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide critical health services to millions of people” (p.37).

“We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment [which prohibits most government funding of abortions]” (p. 37).

“We will support sexual and reproductive health and rights around the globe. In addition to expanding the availability of affordable family planning information and contraceptive supplies, we believe that safe abortion must be part of comprehensive maternal and women’s health care and included as part of America’s global health programming. Therefore, we support the repeal of harmful restrictions that obstruct women’s access to health care information and services, including the “global gag rule” and the Helms Amendment that bars American assistance to provide safe, legal abortion throughout the developing world” (p. 46).

Republicans: “We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare” (p. 13).

“We will not fund or subsidize healthcare that includes abortion coverage” (p. 13).

“Because of [Democratic party] opposition to simple abortion clinic safety procedures, support for taxpayer-funded abortion, and rejection of pregnancy resource centers that provide abortion alternatives, the old Clinton mantra of “safe, legal, and rare” has been reduced to just “legal” (p. 14).

“We condemn the Supreme Court’s activist decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt striking down commonsense Texas laws providing for basic health and safety standards in abortion clinics” (p. 14).

Sex education

Democrats: “We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care, evidence-based sex education and a full range of family planning services help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions” (p. 37).

Republicans: “We renew our call for replacing ‘family planning’ programs for teens with sexual risk avoidance education that sets abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior. That approach — the only one always effective against premarital pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease — empowers teens to achieve optimal health outcomes” (p. 34)

Embryos and stem cell research

Democrats: No mention.

The 2012 platform had noted that “the President issued an executive order repealing the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.”

The 2008 platform had issued a call to “lift the current Administration's ban on using federal funding for embryonic stem cells– cells that would have otherwise have been discarded and lost forever–for research that could save lives.”

Republicans: “We call for expanded support for the stem cell research that now offers the greatest hope for many afflictions — through adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and cells reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells — without the destruction of embryonic human life. We urge a ban on human cloning for research or reproduction, and a ban on the creation of, or experimentation on, human embryos for research” (pp. 37-38).

Assisted suicide and euthanasia

Democrats: No mention.

Republicans: “We oppose the non-consensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from individuals with disabilities, newborns, the elderly, or the infirm, just as we oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide” (pp. 13-14).

Event: "Making Life & Taking Life: Ethical Questions in Medical Science"

"Making Life & Taking Life: Ethical Questions in Medical Science,"

Thursday, March 10, 2016 | 7:00pm.

Christ the King Anglican Church

1801 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, VA.

Speakers:

Elaine Petty, Consultant on bioethical issues

Dr. Allen Roberts, Medical Director of the Surgical ICU,

Georgetown Hospital

http://www.ctkalexandria.org/events.html

Email: admin@ctkalexandria.org

Phone: 703-535-6815

A pro-life campaign for a pro-life president

A colleague recently asked me to sketch out a pro-life campaign for the next president. Here are some initial thoughts; I'd welcome your additions and comments:

“Life for All”

Emphasis

Protecting life in law while addressing the underlying pressures and concerns that contribute to life-dishonoring actions such as abortion, lethal stem cell research and assisted suicide.

• Nominate SCOTUS judges who will respect Constitutional originalism, apply equal protection of law to unborn, disabled, elderly, vulnerable
• Appoint pro-life personnel in key positions (Chief of Staff, HHS, State, USAID, Educ, CDC, AG, Surgeon General, faith-based offices)
• Throughout speeches, use personal stories, quotations, evidence and contemporary examples to illustrate the worth of all human beings from beginning of life onward

Beginning of Life Issues

• Work with Congress to make permanent Hyde, Weldon, and similar laws and also provide private right of action
• Restore and enforce conscience regulation in healthcare, accompanied by nationwide campaign (as planned but not implemented in time by GWB HHS)
• Rescind HHS abortion pill mandate
• First Lady campaign highlighting work of pregnancy centers
• Funding programs for medical pregnancy centers that offer ultrasound
• Enforce Dickey-Wicker, increase funding for embryo-safe stem cell research
• Get abortion subsidies out of international programs: restore programs such as Mexico City Policy, defund UN support of China’s one-child policy, etc.

Life-Related Issues

• Exec. orders across agencies in line with RFRA (would have prevented, e.g., HHS mandate)
• Work with Congress to rescind Obamacare and replace it with state high-risk pool safety nets to increase access; allow interstate insurance competition; encourage HSA’s; reform malpractice; adequately reimburse for Medicare
• Fund sexual risk avoidance (abstinence) programs as most effective way to reduce unplanned pregnancies
• Put real faith-based personnel in faith-based offices across agencies and make sure they have significant WH influence
• Shift international health focus away from gender/abortion ideology and onto saving lives
• Institute critical evaluation of international contraceptives programs safety, effectiveness and diplomatic implications

End of Life Issues

• Work with Congress to update appropriately aggressive Rx of pain meds while outlawing use of federally regulated lethal meds for suicide (e.g., PRPA)
• Increase focus on, possibly funding of, mental health and other programs that can prevent suicide and also highlight reasons to live
• Surgeon General anti-suicide campaign combined with initiatives re: counseling and support programs
• Work with Congress to pass laws prohibiting assisted suicide incentives

Specific legislation

See http://cqrcengage.com/f2c/learn

My Op-ed in Washington Times magazine: "Selling Suicide"

Selling suicide

Published in Washington Times magazine, American CurrentSee, Feb. 4, 2015
by Jonathan Imbody
Compassion and Choices, the never-say-die advocates for state-sanctioned assisted suicide, seem to have mastered the art of putting lipstick on a pig. Whether or not Americans learn to see through their euphemisms and illogic may well determine the fate of many vulnerable patients, including those in California and 20 other states where the organization now is leading a well-funded lobbying campaign to legalize assisted suicide.

Compassion and Choices, the never-say-die advocates for state-sanctioned assisted suicide, seem to have mastered the art of putting lipstick on a pig. Whether or not Americans learn to see through their euphemisms and illogic may well determine the fate of many vulnerable patients, including those in California and 20 other states where the organization now is leading a well-funded lobbying campaign to legalize assisted suicide.

What is Compassion and Choices?

Reincarnated from a previous life when known as the Hemlock Society, the more politically correctly named Compassion and Choices nonprofit organization claims on its website, “For over 30 years we have reduced people’s suffering and given them some control in their final days.” 

Reincarnated from a previous life when known as the Hemlock Society, the more politically correctly named Compassion and Choices nonprofit organization claims on its website, “For over 30 years we have reduced people’s suffering and given them some control in their final days.” 

That claim would come as news to the medical and pharmaceutical professions, which, unlike nonprofit advocacy groups, actually are trained and authorized to prescribe and provide medications that reduce suffering. Pain medication reduces suffering; lethal pills end lives. Suicide does not control death; it merely accelerates it.

The group also claims to "increase patient control and reduce unwanted interventions at the end of life." Yet the law has long recognized patients' right to decline "unwanted interventions at the end of life."  Given the pressure by insurers, unscrupulous heirs and uncompassionate caretakers on vulnerable, depressed and disabled patients to end their lives early, assisted suicide represents the real threat of an "unwanted intervention at the end of life."

What is the real purpose of Compassion and Choices?

Compassion and Choices remains a Hemlock Society, focused on securing lethal chemicals for people to kill themselves. Lacking the ability to legally obtain lethal pills, Compassion and Choices advocates would transform physicians from healers into killers. Their pro-suicide policies parallel the treatment of Socrates, who died a self-inflicted death by hemlock, while opposing the teachings of his contemporary, Hippocrates, which for millennia have protected patients from deadly physicians.

Suicide activists employ verbal engineering

Suicide, however, remains a hard sell in the United States, where just 16 percent of the population views suicide as morally permissible. So suicide activists have learned to obfuscate reality with doublespeak.

Professional polling provides ample rhetorical ammunition. Gallup Polling found, for example, that "70 percent of Americans favor allowing doctors to hasten a terminally ill patient's death when the matter is described as allowing doctors to 'end the patient's life by some painless means.'"

Gallup also found that 60 percent of Democrats (compared to just 41 percent of Republicans) resonated with slanted language such as, "When a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide if the patient requests it?"

Critical thinkers pull back the curtain of rhetoric

Apparently government-leery conservatives tend to critically analyze the smooth rhetoric designed to advance state-sanctioned assisted suicide, no doubt wondering:

·         Would state governments that sanction suicide block the media, watchdog groups and the public from investigating suspected abuses? (Yes; Oregon's assisted suicide law actually stipulates that "information collected shall not be a public record and may not be made available for inspection by the public.")

·         Might activist judges liberally construe and expand the phrase "pain" to mean not only physical but also psychological pain? (Yes; European courts already have slid down that slippery slope.)

·         Could courts determine that disabled persons' inability to ingest lethal pills means that they must be allowed to request euthanasia--thus empowering doctors to actively kill their patients? (Almost certainly, under equal access principles.)

Critical thinkers who have studied history and health may also ask probing questions such as:

·         Can physicians help kill their patients and still follow the Hippocratic ethic, which protects patients by forbidding physicians to "give poison to anyone though asked to do so" and insists on, "first, do no harm"? (No.)

·         Can physicians can accurately predict a patient's life expectancy? (No.)

·         Can physicians treat most patients' pain? (Yes, and updating legislation could ensure even more aggressive pain treatment.)

Anyone with a loved one facing a difficult illness, depression or financial hardship should ask:

·         Might family members not learn of their loved one's suicide until after she's dead? (Yes--as under Oregon's law.)

·         Could legalizing suicide send suicide-vulnerable young people a deadly message? (How could it not?)

·         Would vulnerable patients be pressured into requesting assisted suicide? (Only when heirs, insurance companies and governments could save money with a quick death rather than expensive healthcare … or when caregivers became tired or uncaring … or when a depressed patient felt like a burden on others.)

State officials calculate the cost

Assisted suicide activists depend on carefully crafted emotional stories to convince legislators, judges and voters to sanction suicide. No wonder assisted suicide advocates recently have focused on Oregon resident Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old woman diagnosed with brain cancer who publicly profiled her determination, which she ultimately and tragically fulfilled, to take lethal drugs to end her life. A now-iconic photograph of a smiling Brittany lounging with her adorable puppy has helped paint a new face on a suicide movement marred by polarizing personalities such as macabre death doctor Jack Kevorkian and the recklessly blunt Hemlock Society founder, Derek Humphry.

You won't find assisted suicide advocates profiling another Oregon resident, Barbara Wagner, who also found her cancer impacted by Oregon's legalization of assisted suicide. ABC News reported this revealing example of the pressure imposed on patients by state-sanctioned suicide:

"The news from Barbara Wagner's doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing. The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay. What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50."

Barbara Wagner appealed the drug denial twice but lost both times. The drug maker eventually responded to pleas from her doctors and provided the medication at no charge, but it was too late; Barbara died three weeks after starting the treatment.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Americans will wake up before it's too late and recognize the financial and psychological pressures, the deceptive rhetoric and the threat to the vulnerable posed by state-sanctioned assisted suicide.

*Jonathan Imbody serves as VP for Government Relations for the Christian Medical Association and directs the Freedom2Care coalition.

Dr. Ben Carson's patients stories reveal how the choices physicians make can mean our life or death

Photo: World Net Daily www.wnd.com

Writing in The Washington Times, Dr. Ben Carson highlights the life-or-death power entrusted to medical professionals and institutions:

Several years ago, I was consulted by a young woman who was 33 weeks pregnant and was on her way to Kansas get an abortion. I informed her of the multiple options available to her outside of abortion and she decided to go through with the pregnancy even though the child had hydrocephalus and required neurosurgical intervention after birth a few weeks later. She kept the baby and loves the beautiful child that has resulted.

A couple of decades ago, I came into the pediatric Intensive Care Unit on morning rounds and was told about a four-year-old girl who had been hit by an ice cream truck, and was comatose and exhibiting little neurological function other than reactive pupils. I tested her pupillary reflexes and both pupils were fixed and dilated. The staff indicated to me that this is something that must have just occurred. I grabbed the bed and with some help, transported her quickly to the operating room for an emergency craniotomy. I was met along the way by a senior neurosurgeon who told me I was wasting my time and that at best, we would end up with someone in a vegetative state.

Nevertheless, we completed the operation and a few days later, her pupils became reactive and she eventually left the hospital. I saw her a few years ago walking through the hospital with her own 4-year-old little girl. She was neurologically fully intact and told me she had become somewhat of a celebrity because of the experience I just related. What do these two stories have in common? Read more...

The Bad Samaritan

Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and [a]beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. --Luke 10:30-32 (NASB)

How can it be that despite the pleas of an incredulous 911 operator trying to elicit a twinge of human compassion, a trained nurse stood by and watched 87-year-old Lorraine Bayless suffer a heart attack, collapse and die?

When people lack internal character, compassion and common sense, they relate only to external rules. The Glenwood Gardens retirement community’s stonyhearted “no CPR” policy provided the Bad Samaritan nurse just the cover she needed to absolve herself of refusing to rescue a fellow human being in distress.

The context of this tragedy is a scandalously under-regulated retirement community system, a health care system increasingly driven more by money than by compassion, and a society that is growing colder to the value of its older members and of life itself.

We don’t have to succumb to a society that stands by and watches the elderly die, stuffs aging parents away like discarded heirlooms and even hastens their death through euthanasia and assisted suicide. We can reverse this creeping culture of death—by visiting and caring for the elderly, enacting protective laws and regulations, and teaching our children to value human life and esteem their elders.

Unless we redeem the lives of the aged among us, we are not only imperiling the elderly today; one day we will find ourselves at the mercy of a merciless society.

Why the Dutch pro-life minority can't rule out their untimely death at the hands of the majority

In an article entitled, "Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Rick Santorum’s bogus statistics," Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler relies on technical Dutch definitions in too hastily dismissing Rick Santorum's comments on the euthanasia fears of elderly Dutch

"Man may not make a decision to end [my] life"

While conducting euthanasia research in the Netherlands, I learned first hand how the Dutch disguise death by doctors. The Remmelink report cited by Kessler actually revealed that while doctors used lethal injection to euthanize 949 patients a year without the patients' consent (clearly involuntary euthanasia), they also ended the lives of over 20,000 patients by "opioid overdose intending death" without the patients' consent (not defined as involuntary euthanasia but yielding the same deadly result for non-consenting patients).[i]

In the Netherlands, I interviewed officials of the 70,000-member Dutch Patients Organization (Nederlandse Patienten Vereniging), which defends patient rights. The organization recognized a need to publish for concerned patients guidance documents (pictured at left) that read, "Under no circumstances may a treatment be given with the intention of ending my life, because I believe that man may not make a decision to end life."

The minority of Dutch who oppose euthanasia have good reason to feel vulnerable to an unsolicited death at the hands of the majority.

---

[i] van der Maas PJ, van der Wal G, Haverkate I, et al. Euthanasia physician-assisted suicide and other medical practices involving the end of life in the Netherlands 1990-1995. N Engl J Med 1996;335:1699–1705.

"Donor dead yet?"--CMA physicians challenge imminent organ transplant policy changes

Washington, DC--November 14, 2011--The 16,000 member Christian Medical Association (CMA) urged a "no" vote today on proposed changes in the ethical standards the government endorses to guide organ transplants, contending that the changes would weaken ethical boundaries and could endanger patients, open the door to abusive practices by healthcare facilities and force conscientious professionals out of medicine.

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens conveyed the warning in a letter sent today to John R. Lake, M.D., President, Board of Directors of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) in Richmond, Va.
The OPTN board is considering the policy change today and tomorrow. OPTN recently proposed changes to the Donation after Cardiac Death (DCD) Model Elements. The proposed new, mandatory policy is designed to guide procedures in securing organs from patients immediately after death--the very definition of which has engendered controversy.
CMA's letter noted, "The removal of the requirement of 'irreversibility' of cardiopulmonary cessation exposes patients to potential exploitation. CMA is concerned that relaxing the definition of death would considerably increase the risk that procedures to remove vital organs would be performed on some patients lacking unambiguous signs that death has occurred. CMA is also concerned about the impact that publicized abuses of the new policy could have on the public’s trust in transplant medicine and their willingness to volunteer as future organ donors."
CMA also noted, "The proposed Requirements remove the important stipulation separating patient care from donation solicitations. Whereas previously the hospital’s primary healthcare team and the legal next of kin must have decided to withdraw ventilated support or other life-sustaining treatment before the patient is evaluated as a DCD candidate, under the proposed policy a patient may be evaluated as a DCD candidate prior to a decision by family members and caregivers, which ought to be free from external pressure. Gone is the crucial wall separating patient care from donation solicitations. Such undue influence on difficult decisions at a heart-wrenching time is ethically unacceptable."
CMA further observed, "The proposed Requirements broaden donor criteria to include patients without cognitive neurological injury. As physicians, we are greatly concerned that patients with chronic illnesses such as spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) would be vulnerable to real or perceived pressure to decline further treatment in order to donate their organs…"
CMA concluded, "The unintended consequences of the proposed Requirements would be antithetical to the ethical practice of medicine. By loosening previous stricter guidelines, by eliminating vital safeguards and by failing to clarify key criteria, the proposed Requirements signal that hospitals and healthcare professionals can now relax ethical concerns and safeguards in favor of pursuing a utilitarian 'higher good' of obtaining a greater number of organs for transplant. We believe that such a change in emphasis, however subtle, would erode the ethical practice of medicine by promoting a culture of utilitarianism or casualness regarding life and death decisions.
"If physicians conscientiously opposed to such policies were forced to retire from the practice of critical care medicine rather than participate in them, society would lose many dedicated, skilled and compassionate caregivers."
Resources:

• Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) and Organ Availability Committees: Proposal to Update and Clarify Language in the DCD Model Elements - proposed policy change document
• United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) - private, non-profit organization that manages the nation's organ transplant system under contract with the federal government

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