By Wesley J. Smith First, bioethicists said people should be able to refuse being “hooked up to machines” even if that meant almost certain death. Then, they pushed that meme farther, arguing that the right of refusal (including by surrogates) should also include nourishment by tube so the patient dehydrates to death. Give them an …
Continue reading "The Push to Starve Dementia Patients Appears in the New York Times"By Wesley J. Smith Editor’s note. My family and I will be on vacation through August 25. I will occasionally add new items but for the most part we will repost “the best of the best” — the stories our readers have told us they especially liked over the last ten months. The idea of …
Continue reading "Should We Starve Alzheimer’s Patients?"By Wesley J. Smith We have reached the point that indisputably mentally ill people are being allowed to commit suicide or to die from their terrible psychiatric afflictions. In Belgium, a chronic self-harmer was voluntarily euthanized and organ harvested. In California, a regulation permits the involuntarily institutionalized mentally ill dying to be released for the …
Continue reading "Anorexic Woman Allowed to Starve Herself to Death"By Wesley J. Smith People have the right to refuse medical treatment, including in an advance directive. But they do not–and most definitely, should not–have the right to force caregivers to starve them to death when sustenance is not medically delivered, e.g., spoon feeding. There has already been one Canadian case–lost–to force a nursing home …
Continue reading "Push Continues to Starve Dementia Patients"