End of Life Decisions

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 3/31/05 at 7:39am

...often a case of do as I say, not as I do....

From today's Salon:

"It was almost inevitable that the biographies of the politicians using the Schiavo case as a platform would be examined for their own decisions about the medical care of their family members or patients. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, bedeviled by ethical scandals, forced the bill through the House, while issuing medical bulletins that Schiavo "talks [and] laughs [and] expresses likes and discomforts," and comparing his political embattlement to the effort to reattach her feeding tube. In 1988, according to the Los Angeles Times, DeLay decided along with other members of his family to pull the plug on his father, Charles Ray DeLay. There was no chance he would recover from a tram accident and would "basically be a vegetable," according to DeLay's aunt. The instruction posted on his chart read: "Do not resuscitate." DeLay filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the tram manufacturer and settled for $250,000, after which he became a leading opponent of such lawsuits.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., who offered a positive diagnosis of Schiavo's recovery on the basis of having viewed clips of videotape and called for her "rescue," had as a doctor pulled the plug on a "regular basis," his staff acknowledged. And in 1989, Frist published a book, "Transplant," in which he stated that anencephalic infants, suffering the same condition as the cortex-dead Schiavo, should be classified as "brain-dead."

Even the Franciscan Brothers of Peace, a ministry numbering only 10 monks, two of whom have appeared as personal counselors to the Schindlers, Schiavo's parents, confronted a crisis when the founder of their group suffered a heart attack and severe brain damage. He was kept alive through a feeding tube, but in 2003, after a dozen years, the monks decided to withdraw his life support. Their inconsistency in doing one thing while encouraging others to do another is best left for them to explain. More important, their presence is a small indicator of a larger political crackup."