By Michael Cook “Dying patients living longer than expected lose NHS funds” was the BBC headline. The NHS is the UK’s government health service, which is publicly funded and free. But it appears that there are limits to its largesse. When doctors determine that a person has only a short time to live, the NHS …
Continue reading "Longevity does not always work in your favour in the UK "
Who has the final say about medical treatment in extreme cases, bioethicists or the mother? By Wesley J. Smith A few years ago, doctors in the United Kingdom decided to remove a dying baby named Charlie Gard from life support. Charlie had a genetic disease and because doctors believed his case to be hopeless, based …
Continue reading "‘Quality of Life’ Medical Authoritarianism Invades Texas"
By Dave Andrusko Earlier today, we reposted a terrific story written by pro-life bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. The immediate context was the attempt by Cook Children’s Medical Center in Ft. Worth, Texas to win the right to take little Tinslee Lewis off of life support and (this is really scary) “prevent her mother from pursuing …
Continue reading "Medical Authoritarianism and Tinslee Lewis, Charlie Gard, and Alfie Evans"
By Wesley J. Smith Imagine you are the parent of a little baby. She is desperately ill with severe breathing difficulties, a heart valve defect, and diagnosed as suffering from severe chronic pulmonary hypertension. She is placed in a pediatric intensive care unit where, many months later, she continues to live—but also periodically experiences what …
Continue reading "Texas Hospital Impeding Mother’s Attempt to Save Baby’s Life"
By Wesley J. Smith The utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer does not believe that human life has intrinsic value based simply on being human. Rather, he endorses a “quality of life” ethic in which some of us have greater value than others. Such discriminatory thinking leads to immoral viewpoints. Thus, Singer is best known for his …
Continue reading "Peter Singer Endorses Medical Discrimination Against Elderly in COVID Crisis"
By Maria V. Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Reporting at PennLive.com David Wenner writes that a “point system” proposed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health could leave an especially vulnerable population, people with disabilities, without the health care they need, when it comes to life-saving treatment for COVID-19. “Disability Rights Pennsylvania has filed a federal civil …
Continue reading "New “point system” for determining who receives health care prompts disability rights activists in Pennsylvania to file civil rights complaint"
By Jennifer Popik, JD, Federal Legislative Director Since its inception, the National Right to Life Committee has been equally concerned with protecting older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia as with protecting the unborn from abortion. We have recognized that involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment is a form of involuntary euthanasia, and therefore …
Continue reading "NRLC warns that proposed changes to Medicare Part D can limit access to life-saving drugs"
By Martin M. Barillas TUCSON, Arizona– Nutrition and hydration have been restored to a 32-year-old man in a coma in an Arizona Catholic hospital after his mom posted heartbreaking videos on social media last week saying that doctors were slowly starving her son to death. David Ruiz, a father of three, suffered a stroke and …
Continue reading "Food, water restored to comatose man in US Catholic hospital after mom fights for his life"By Wesley J. Smith Media Matters must be running low on targets, since it chose to go after a piece I have in the Weekly Standard this week urging that Congress repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). I argue that IPAB is both unconstitutional — a matter MM ignores — and a splendid vehicle …
Continue reading "Media Matters Fails to Discredit Me"By Texas Right to Life Under current Texas law, the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA, Chapter 166.046 of the Texas Health and Safety Code ) threatens the Right to Life of every Texan. The statute, known as the 10-Day-Law, is an immediate threat to vulnerable hospital patients. However, any one of us or our loved …
Continue reading "What is the Texas 10-Day-Law and who is at risk?"By Nancy Valko Editor’s note. This appeared on Nancy’s blog. In 1988 during the Nancy Cruzan case involving a young, non-terminally ill woman in a so-called “persistent vegetative state” whose parents wanted her feeding tube withdrawn so she would die, I was asked if I was going to feed my mother who had Alzheimer’s disease. …
Continue reading "Ethics, Alzheimer’s, and feeding tubes"By Wesley J. Smith There is a fight in the UK about whether to keep a seriously ill baby on life support or put her in palliative care to die. Typically of our age, the idea that a person has a life not worth living may really be about discrimination against the disabled coupled to …
Continue reading "Quality (Not Worthy of Life) Danger Ahead"