Text 11539, 66 rader
Skriven 2005-04-14 16:45:10 av Alan Hess
     Kommentar till en text av George Lagergren
Ärende: Bo Gritz
================
Whilst masticating on <Apr 14 05>, George Lagergren (1:106/2000)
wrote to Vern Humphrey:

VH>> I think it's pretty well gone -- alzheimer's patients will be
VH>> routinely killed by dehydration in the future.

GL> Correct, when the gov'ts. do NOT have the money to keep POOR
GL> alzheimer's patients on life support, the gov'ts. will pull
GL> the plug on them.

Like the law Gov. George W. Bush signed that allows Texas hospitals to pull the
plug on patients who are deemed hopeless, regardless of their wishes or next of
kin's wishes?

From the "Seattle Times" seattletimes.nwsource.com

As governor, Bush signed right-to-die law

By Knight Ridder Newspapers and Newsday

WASHINGTON - The federal law that President Bush signed early yesterday in an
effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law
that he signed as Texas governor, prompting cries of hypocrisy from
congressional Democrats and some bioethicists.

In 1999, then-Gov. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a
patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. The
measure also allows Texas hospitals to disconnect patients from life-sustaining
systems if a physician, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee,
concludes that the patient's condition is hopeless.

Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said yesterday that if the Schiavo
case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and,
because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding
tube would be disconnected.

"The Texas law signed in 1999 allowed next of kin to decide what the patient
wanted, if competent," said John Robertson, a University of Texas bioethicist.

While Congress and the White House were considering legislation recently in the
Schiavo case, the Texas law faced its first high-profile test. With the
permission of a judge, a Houston hospital cut off life support for a badly
deformed 6-month-old baby last week against his mother's wishes after doctors
determined that continuing life support would be futile. The baby died almost
immediately.

"The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her
head," said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University's
Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. "This does appear to be
a contradiction."

Bush's apparent shift on right-to-die decisions wasn't lost on Democrats.
During heated debate on the Schiavo case, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
D-Fla., accused Bush of hypocrisy.

"It appears that President Bush felt, as governor, that there was a point
which, when doctors felt there was no further hope for the patient, that it is
appropriate for an end-of-life decision to be made, even over the objection of
family members," she said. "There is an obvious conflict here between the
president's feelings on this matter now as compared to when he was governor of
Texas." 

<snip>

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