Thirty years ago. when bioethicist Arthur Caplan moved to Pennsylvania and applied for a driver's license, he asked about adding the organ donation permission to that document, and the clerk warned him: Don't do that: if you do they'll let you die.
already, many in minority communities refuse to sign living wills or no resusitation orders, because they don't trust the medical profession: The Tuskegee experiment is remembered in the Black community, and the collapse of trust by many after the Covid response will make things worse.
If this is approved, it will mean the Catholic bishops will object
But of course don't expect the MSM to warn you. They will quote elite bioethicists to prove it is okay, and if you oppose it, hey look at all those nice people dying.
It also pushed furthur the idea that people with severe brain damage are better off dead: and this will just push the idea it is not just cruel to keep them alive, but their death will save other, so let's kill them. Could euthanasia be far behind?
No I am not being paranoid, becuase there are reports killing depressed people and then donating their organs is going on.
Actually, when done carefully, the diagnosis of brain death means just that: no brain. No reflexes. No blood circulation to the brain. No brain to control your bodily functions and so the body will die when the machines are removed.
But less strict definitions are fuzzy: one third of people in PVS (aka persistant vegetative state, note that Orwellian term implying they are not humans to be loved but vegetables?
but sometimes lay people think that when doctors say there is no hope so pull the plug, or that a person is a "vegetable" so stop treatment, it is the same as saying they are brain dead. It is not.
and as far back as 1990, there were books written by ethicists saying hey let's limit treatment by law to people with low quality of life
and yes, this is being done in places like the UK where the N.I.C.E. can stop your treatment because of your quality of life
Yes NICE, again a nice fuzzy term to hide what they are doing.
One saw this type of forbidding treatment during covid, of course, where drugs that might or might not work were forbidden to be given and some docs are in danger of losing their license for giving a drug with few side effects to people dying of covid
At the same time, there is a difference between stopping extraordinary treatment or deciding not to get everything done for your disease, and euthanasia. THis also is a fine line: So when we stopped the ventillator on Joy's father who had a massive stroke, we did it after five days when brain swelling had gone down, and he died the next day. IF we had stopped it the first day, it would be considered removing extraordinary treatment, so again it would be permissiable, but the family would have felt Hey maybe he would have recovered so what was the hurry. But once brain edema had gone down, and he could breathe without a respirator, then removing the machines meant he could go to a regular room and have family there.
And Lolo decided against chemotherapy and died in his bed: he was 90, and the chemo probably would not have prolonged his life because of his other medical problems.
Personally I am happy I am retired now and since I live in the Philippines, where sophisticated medical treatment is available, but refusing extraordinary treatment is less controversial and there is respect for the elderly not present in the USA.
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