Monday, May 12, 2014

Death panels? Massachusetts haz them

Via Wesley Smith's page:

According to a medical study, since 2006, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bioethics Committee has forced people to not receive wanted resuscitation by imposing unilateral DNRs. And apparently, it’s all done in Star Chamber secrecy. From Thaddeus Pope’s blog (quoting from a medical symposium presentation):
If I read this correctly, thirty-eight percent of those upon whom the unilateral DNRs appear not to have been at the end stage of a terminal disease:
Patients for whom unilateral DNR was recommended were more likely to have conditions judged to be endstage rather than potentially reversible (62% versus 41%, p=0.05).
Unilateral Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) orders are a specific type of medical futility decision in which clinicians withhold advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest despite objections of patients or their surrogates. There is little information on how often and to whom unilateral DNR orders are applied. The ethics committee at Massachusetts General Hospital has had a unilateral DNR policy since 2006. We investigated the incidence, sociodemographic and clinical predictors, and outcomes of patients with unilateral DNR orders.
And who can be surprised that non whites were more likely to have an involuntary DNR imposed?

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