Daily Mail
Let more elderly die, says top heart doctor: Patients with low quality of life ‘should not be saved’
- Dr James Beattie believes that medics resuscitate too many elderly patients
- Says society does not see enough death, so people do not accept mortality
- Claims that pensioners’ quality of life should be given greater consideration
- Cardiologist works at East of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham
- He pointed out that frail pensioners routinely receive hospital medical interventions such as flu jabs which are designed to prolong life, but not necessarily improve it.
The cardiologist said that when it comes to resuscitating the elderly, particularly those with dementia, patients’ quality of life should be given more consideration and more people should be allowed to die.
Dr James Beattie should be euthanised
So where were you again Bawney when he was lying?
Barney Frank: Obama ‘Just Lied to People’ About Obamacare
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/barney-frank-obama-just-lied-people-about-obamacare_800489.html
Beattie is not only evil, but also stupid. He has painted himself into a logical corner. It is meaningless to talk about quality of life when there is no life.
Dr. Beattie will continue this mantra until the day he experiences chest pains.
Socialism is putting your life in the hands of politics and forces beyond any of your own control.
He’s no doctor. He might have been. Now he is just another social engineer moving the goal post another inch or so…
“‘If a person is in hospital, particularly an elderly person with multiple co-morbidities, if they have a cardiac arrest it’s a sign they are in decline,’ he told Radio 4.
‘It’s their act of dying and they should not be resuscitated, they should be allowed to die.’”
This is why it’s so all important that one’s family has the best interest and understanding of their dying loved one at heart.
I detest that the government should be involved. It should be the decisions of the directly affected people who know the heart of the soul of the person for whom they are making decisions.
We were confronted with the decisions to remove or not remove a breathing apparatus from one of our parents and to replace an awfully powerful breathing apparatus for another parent who was so agitated on it previously, and had to be restrained because of the machine, that had she died, it wouldn’t have been peaceful. Our spoken answer was let her (s) go to Jesus. These parents were 72 and 85.
Food and hydration – absolutely. DNR – when logically weighing all variables. Government business – absolutely not.
It is not a death panel, its an unauthorized running dog of the capitalists undocumented vacation from life committee formerly titled the Katyrn Forrest Renovation Board.
PJ: My parents both died at home with hospice just barely involved. They both died peaceful deaths without the use of morphine or other drugs. Hospitals would not have given them the care that we 3 kids did. They both went to heaven with smiles on their faces. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. There was a Presence here when mom left us. I long to see their young, precious faces again soon. I apologize for being long winded.
@ Redskin
Thank you so much for telling us that. That was beautiful.
The thing I regret was not bringing my mother to our house when she “knew” she was dying and asked me to have her brought here to our home.
I realize that I couldn’t have taken care of her for multiple reasons. She wanted that peaceful death, and was sharp enough to realize that a hospital might not give her the opportunity for a peaceful death. So I did the best I knew how, with the encouragement of a great nurse to allow my mom to be on a much less invasive breathing machine.
@Redskin—
That was not long-winded at all.
Thank you for what you said.
To say the Daily Mail article was poorly written is a gross understatement.
Perhaps they should have looked at the numbers of those who are coded and survive related to those who are coded and survive who actually leave the hospital with a resumed quality of life. That number approaches ZERO and has not changed for decades.
After years of Hollyweird presenting a farce that everyone that a resuscitation is attempted on survives, most in the western world have a severe lack of understanding of what happens when someones heart stops.
The time to have these conversations about DNR status is not when Grandma or Grandpa is sick and 911 has been called to take them to the hospital. The average age of my patients is 88 years old. I can’t recall how many times I have explained to families that Grandma is very ill, has dementia, bad kidneys and a bad heart. Yet the family wants everything done to “save her.” Worse is when the family thinks you can “code” someone a little bit. Performing a code on someone is like someone being a little pregnant. Its all or nothing.
If we are to have a reasonable conversation about death and dying of the elderly we need to start using the appropriate words. Patients don’t pass-on. They DIE. They experience DEATH. They are DEAD. Using the D-words are avoided by may in healthcare which often perpetuates our unhealthy culture of trying to save everyone.
Do I think the government has any role in death and dying? Absolutely not. We have seen what happens when government gets involved with death and dying and they become quite efficient with it.
“DEATH.”
The ONLY treatment socialized medicine ever does ‘right’… 🙄
Like all things socialized, this will only apply to the proletariat hoards, NOT the elite and their cronies.
Democratic donors will get all specialized treatment they want:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/todd-j-gillman/20100815-Pelosi-pulled-strings-to-let-dying-7500.ece
Veterans, you get to die on a waiting list…
This is something I’ve raled about for years. Death in Western canon is seen as an obscenity. Why? Because we shifted, mainly after WWI, to this promethean view that if we can do it we should do it. How many $1000.-plus vet bills have we paid for having our pets repaired because of the mushrooming growth of the animal health care system? Rarely does a vet counsel someone to just let their animal die. How much more so with our human loved ones? And because we have abandoned the idea of eternal life from salvation. Frankly, I cannot wait to have the bursting health of my 20’s as my great reward.
If there seems to be some question as to whether or not an old person who does not have enough health to allow them to exist in anything but a vegetative maintenance state, the answer should be obvious. We’re not talking about euthenizing, but merely letting nature take its course. To suspend death by unnatural means for a prolonged period serves no one. I’m not saying this from a “good of sociey” POV, but from the mercy for the individual one. If death is frightening to you or your loved one, then get to know Jesus and seek salvation. We’re all going to die eventually.
Their being all hateful and shit, I don’t think Demonrats, Progressives, Socialists, Laborites, rat-people, lawyers, Professors of _____ Studies, and anyone who happens to annoy me at any particular moment, has a very good “Quality of Life” and should escape the noose … err … be “allowed to die with dignity” as soon as possible.
We could reduce the size of the “Surplus Population.”
We can start with people who propound Socialized Medicine.
Abigail, there is a big difference between individuals choosing life saving intervention – and having the government limit choice for those they deem “useless”. Elderly, mentally handicapped, Republicans. Who gets to decide what someone ELSE’s life is worth?
@I M Simpleton — agreed, wholeheartedly. I hope you didn’t think I was saying the gov’t should have its hand in that.
@ Azygos
Amen and thank you.
@ AbigailAdams
You stated it so well.
People are afraid of going to their just reward.
CPR on the elderly, especially women with osteoporosis is often a horrifying fucking disaster. If you’re going to do CPR right on anyone, you’re gonna break a few ribs.
Plain Jane, Abigail, Azygos….yes yes yes. As a culture, we reject death because we as Americans reject aging, and we have forgotten how to die. We have such advances for prolonging life that we now live well beyond what our minds and bodies endure. I have a 102 year old patient who cries every day because she wants to join her parents. So I try to keep her comfortable until then.
Why put a feeding tube in a 98-year old woman’s stomach for malnutrition? I’ve seen families insist because they can’t let Nana go, even though Nana has been unconscious for over a month. My hospice will provide IV fluids for our patients, but we had one patient whose veins were collapsing within hours of each IV start, so family (full of doctors) insisted on subcutaneous fluids, which blew the patient up like the Michelin Man. Incredibly uncomfortable death, but again they couldn’t let Nana go (she was 94). I have a patient aspirating (inhaling) her food into her lungs, so her doc wrote an order to put her on a pureed diet with pudding thick liquids. Her only remaining joy in life is real food (all she can do anymore is chew) so her daughter requested that the order be reversed to comfort food, and let nature take its course.
The question I most often ask my families in hospice is “Are you prolonging a life or prolonging a death?”. I hate to have to be the one to ask because it’s a cold bucket of reality down someone’s back.
If you’re insisting on these interventions to keep your loved one alive, they better not be in a nursing home so you can visit once a month and not see the ramifications of your decision. Just because we CAN doesn’t mean we SHOULD. This is a PRIVATE decision to be made on a case by case basis, not a public/governmental realm.
Well said. Abigail, I do agree that our culture is not used to dealing with death. Our medical advances may have actually made things worse in a way, people have unrealistic expectations.
@ HooHooNayNay
So well said.
Sometimes I think the very people who try to keep a parent alive beyond logical understanding is because they didn’t nurture that parent while parent was fully functioning, and they are trying to alleviate their possible guilt of “neglect.”
I always joke with our kids (although I’m not really joking) that they have to promise not to pull the plug on us until we’ve already received the Sacrament of Healing (Extreme Unction).