robsta

I overheard one of the doctor's on my unit (rehab) telling a patient who had asked her about certain herbal combinations he was taking to alleviate MS, that she didn't know that much about herbal remedies, or diet for that matter as they weren't taught about nutrition in medical school. I was tending to another pt. on the other side of screen and my jaw almost dropped when I heard that remark. I talked with the MS patient later about the natural therapies he was taking and showed him how to use the Internet to research the pros and cons of the formuals he was taking. It was so hard, as I was being overly careful not to make any statements that might have been misinterpreted as being diagnostic/prescriptive, and ended up relying facial expressions to convey assent to his additional questions. Does anyone out there feel that there's been any reproachment between the two healing paradigms? Is the allopathic model ready to accept naturopathy as an ally? Are we really focusing on patient centered healthcare, or has it just become even more drug-centered, with an emphasis on management of symptoms, as opposed to finding cures? Are we ready for a whole new way of thinking? I know I am. :) robsta :)

We're dealing with issues, not personalities. Agendas, ideas, and government policies are more important than personality cults. Hitler was an important figure, but Nazism and Fascism could have arisen without him. The ideologies that spawned Nazism were formed back in the nineteenth century and arose when complex cultural/hisroical forces propelled it into being. This isn't about *Hitler* - it's about euthanasia in a culture that claims that life has no sanctity of itself (post-Nietzschean philosophical denial of the God-given right of personhood to each and every person), where absolute moral values no longer have any meaning. It's about *quality of life* vs. *sanctity of life*. So your attempt to dismiss Nazi era euthanasia by making comparison to Hitler's vegetarianism and vegetarianism today is a ruse and has no bearing on this discussion. For the record - Hitler and George W. Bush have a lot in common, and it's not Christianity that's the link. Think *death's head* - SS insignia, Skull & Bones. Think IG Farben and Prescott Bush doing business together - during wartime. Skull & Bones is a secret German occult blood brotherhood of death from the same polluted source that spawned Nazism. It's also known as *The Order of Death*. This is chanted during the Skull & Bones initiation: *"The Hangman equals death, The Devil equals death, Death equals death!"* And many Christians have serious doubts about President Bush profession of being a Christian because of his membership in Skull & Bones - as it is, this is a private matter between him and God, and God knows whether he's a sincere Christian or not. Hitler was a neo-pagan, not a Christian - he rejected his Catholic upbringing at an early age. He was deeply involved in the occult, and sought to replace Christianity with a new pagan order. Please feel free to do the research if you doubt anything I've written here. robsta :)

Did you actually read the contents of the article I posted? You may not agree with my position, but there's a large body of work out there that supports my position. Other than the ethical issue of terminating life before natural death occurs, pro-lifers are also engaged in opposing the global depopulation agendas beloved of eugenicists (see the litany of organizations quoted by former President Bush in an earlier post). You might consider doing some of your own research into the subject before wanting to know what kind of nursing I do - do you know how to use *Google*? BTW, rehab. I think you answered your own question. You're agreeing with what the author of the article wrote - that the doctors in Germany during the Nazi era (and before) killed (euthanized) many people that, quote: «may not have lived a life of any substance». This is the premis for modern day euthanasia also - we're both in agreement, are we not? This is the same ethical sentiment regarding euthanasia that exsited in Germany during Weimar.The author concludes that there are similarities between then and now. That the German euthanasia movement began in hospitals for compassion's sake, then progressed to the formation of T4 - and that T4 was instrumental in setting up the death camps in the East can be historically proven. Again, please feel free to do the research if you feel that I'm in error. robsta :)

Here's an interesting article that expresses my opinion on the matter. Please note the underlying parallels from the early part of the twentieth century, most of which pre-dated the Nazi era, and today. Lessons from History: Euthanasia in Nazi Germany by PJ King Present day death proponents of the "right-to-die" movement disavow any analogy between what they are selling and what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930's. And, if one does not examine the facts too closely, there appears to be none. After all, Hitler was bent on exterminating the Jews, even though he destroyed a few thousand others before he found his focus. His was a dictatorship, not a democratic nation. His agenda was political, not moral. He fed on hate, not compassion. And one could add to the list. However, if we look back to German society of the twenties and thirties, we find a civilized culture not so unlike our own. As a nation, Germany took pride in its art, its culture, and its science. People engaged in business, went shopping, enjoyed their families, followed the news. Genocide did not seem a likely development. But the seeds had already sprouted, though few foresaw into what kind of twisting vines they would soon grow. In 1920 was published a book titled The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, by Alfred Hoche, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a professor of law from the University of Leipzig. They argued in their book that patients who ask for "death assistance" should, under very carefully controlled conditions, be able to obtain it from a physician. The conditions were spelled out, and included the submission of the request to a panel of three experts, the right of the patient to withdraw his request at any time, and the legal protection of the physicians who would help him terminate his life. Binding and Hoche explained how death assistance was congruent with the highest medical ethics and was essentially a compassionate solution to a painful problem. Death assistance, according to the authors, was not to be limited to those who were able or even willing to ask for it. They would have such mercy extended as well to "empty shells of human beings" such as those with brain damage, some psychiatric conditions, and mental retardation, if by scientific criteria the "impossibility of improvement of a mentally dead person" could be proven. The benefits to society would be great, they said, as money previously devoted to the care of "meaningless life" would be channeled to those who most needed it, the socially and physically fit. Germans needed only to learn to evaluate the relative value of life in different individuals. An opinion poll conducted in 1920 revealed that 73% of the parents and guardians of severely disabled children surveyed would approve of allowing physicians to end the lives of disabled children such as their own. Newspapers, journal articles, and movies joined in shaping the opinion of the German public. The Ministry of Justice described the proposal as one that would make it "possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity" (reported in the N.Y. Times, 10/8/33, p. 1, col. 2). And the savings would redound to the German people if money was no longer thrown away on the disabled, the incurable, and "those on the threshold of old age." A 1936 novel written by Helmut Unger, M.D., further assisted the German people in accepting the unthinkable. Dr. Unger told the story of a physician whose wife was disabled by multiple sclerosis. She asks him to help her die, and he complies. At his trial he pleads with the jurors to understand his honorable motive: "Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?" The jury acquit him in the novel. The book was subsequently made into a movie which, according to research by the SS Security Service, was "favorably received and discussed," even though some Germans were concerned about possible abuses. With the public now assenting, the question turned from "whether" to "by whom" and "under what circumstances." The first known case of the application of this now-acceptable proposal concerned "Baby Knauer." The child's father requested of Adolph Hitler himself that his son be allowed death because he was blind, retarded, and missing an arm and a leg. Surely, in his condition, he would be better off dead. Hitler turned the case over to his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and in 1938 the request was granted. Over the next few months, a committee set out to establish practical means by which such "mercy deaths" could be granted to other children who had no prospect for meaningful life. The hospital at Eglfing-Haar, under the direction of Hermann Pfannmuller, M.D., slowly starved many of the disabled children in its care until they died of "natural causes." Other institutions followed suit, some depriving its small patients of heat rather than food. Medical personnel who were uncomfortable with what they were asked to do were told this was not killing: they were simply withholding treatment and "letting nature take its course." Over time Pfannmuller set up Hungerhauser (starvation houses) for the elderly. By the end of 1941, euthanasia was simply "normal hospital routine." In the meantime, no law had been passed permitting euthanasia. Rather, at the end of 1939, Hitler signed this letter: "Reichleader Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt are responsibly commissioned to extend the authority of physicians to be designated by name so that a mercy death may be granted to patients who, according to human judgment, are incurably ill according to the most critical evaluation of the state of their disease." Interestingly, physicians were not ordered to participate, but merely permitted to if they so wished. It was to be a private matter between the doctor and his patient (or the family if the patient was unable to speak for himself). Brandt, testifying at his trial in Nuremburg after the war, insisted: "The underlying motive was the desire to help individuals who could not help themselves and were thus prolonging their lives in torment. ... To quote Hippocrates today is to proclaim that invalids and persons in great pain should never be given poison. But any modern doctor who makes so rhetorical a declaration without qualification is either a liar or a hypocrite. ... I never intended anything more than or believed I was doing anything but abbreviating the tortured existence of such unhappy creatures." Brandt's only regret was that the dead patients' relatives may have been caused pain. Yet he justified even that: "I am convinced that today they have overcome their distress and personally believe that the dead members of their families were given a happy release from their sufferings." (A. Mitcherlich & F. Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 264-265.) Decide for yourselves whether parallels can be drawn between Germany in the thirties and forties and the world scene in the nineties (and today - my edit). *** robsta :)

Pro-euthanasia advocates seems to want to discuss the issue from one perspective only - the pro-euthanasia one; as if we both agree with the rationale behind euthanasia and are just quibbling about whether or not it should be legalized. Then they attempt to control the material that can be discussed and included in the debate. Fergus51 keeps on mentioning *Hitler* in her posts and believes that I should not include references to *Nazi Germany* in this discussion. I referred to legalized euthanasia in Nazi Germany as a historical precendent, and stated that I, along with others who have researched this, believe that the same rationale of declaring certain groups of people *non-persons* led the German medical community down the *slippery slope* that ended in their participation in the Holocaust. To quote what I wrote in an earlier post to support my premis » The German medical community colluded with and then participated in the Nazi euthansia program - hardly surprising considering their long-term involvement in eugenics and forms of social Darwinism - the idea that humanity is evloving to a new inevitable plane and that it was the job of enlightened individuals, like those in the medical profession, to speed the process along. This has ramifications today with embryonic stemcell research and therapeutic cloning - the modern-day offspring of the American, British and German eugenics movements of the early twentieth century. Eugenics is the long thread that connects abortion to euthanasia. I don't expect pro-euthanasia advocates to agree with me on this, BTW. The legacy of mid-nineteenth and twentieth century eugenics lives on today - and it's this movement that so strongly influenced the Nazi euthanasia program. And it's ticking along today under other popular banners, like population control, right-to-die movements, abortion on demand, the sterilization of the populations of India and Nigeria, etc. To quote former President George. H. Bush, Jr. in his foreword to *World Population Crisis* » World Population Crisis: The United States Response by Phyllis Tilson Piotrow; Praeger Publishers Foreword by George H. Bush, Jr. U.S. Representative to the United Nations, 1973 "Few issues in the world have undergone such a rapid shift in public attitudes and government policies over the last decade as the problems of population growth and fertility control. My own first awareness of birth control as a public policy issue came with a jolt in 1950 when my father [Prescott Bush] was running for the United States Senate in Connecticut. Drew Pearson, on the Sunday before Election Day, "revealed" that my father was involved with Planned Parenthood...As chairman of the special Republican Task Force on Population and Earth Resources, I was impressed by the arguments of William H. Draper...General Draper continues to lead through his tireless work for the UN Population Fund. Now the recommendations of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, chaired by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, have urged many agencies to take on a larger role and have called for the U.S. government to adopt a national population policy....one of the major challenges of the 1970s, the Second United Nations Development Decade, will be to curb the world's fertility... private organizations, like the Population Crisis Committee, Planned Parenthood, the Population Council, the Population Reference Bureau, the Population Institute, Zero Population Growth, and others, have played a major role in assisting government policy makers and in mobilizing the United States response to the world population challenge described in this volume." Signed, George Bush U.S. Representative to the United Nations This is a matter of public record, and one of a huge library of documents showing that global population control is alive and well at the start of this century. You may believe that population control is a good thing - I don't, but that's another debate. But I do believe that the genuinely compassionate and tender feelings that underpin many pro-euthanasia advocates sentiments are being manipulated by powerful forces within our governments that have an entirely different agenda regarding both abortion and euthanasia to the one we assume they have. I just wrote this to clarify my position, not necessarily to get into a debate on any of the above that's outside the scope of the immediate discussion. robsta :)

No, I didn't *miss Talaxandra's point* - what you meant to say was *I didn't agree with her point* which is entirely different. It's disingenuous to claim that bringing up *Hitler* and the *Nazis* clouds the issue. We have so few historical precedents to work with regarding legalised euthanasia, that if we go back in history and look at which governments supported legalised euthanasia, inevitably Nazi Germany comes to the fore - and until the Netherlands, and now Belgium, Nazi Germany has been the only government that I'm aware of that legalised euthanasia... hence their inclusion in the discussion. And I included my reasoning for including the Nazis in my previous post, which you may not agree with. Liberals hate to think that they're supporting a cause that was championed by the Nazis - which is understandable. But as I mentioned in an earlier post elsewhere, this ain't a left vs. right debate. It goes much deeper than that. robsta :)

Here's an interesting article from the *California Nurses' Association* that I thought would be of interest to readers of this forum. - robsta Euthanasia- A New Book Dissects the Debate Kit Costello, RN CNA President Imagine a forty two year old man in a severe car accident that renders him comatose for 16 months. A feeding tube is inserted for hydration and nutrition. The patient regains consciousness and some functional abilities though his deficits render him severely disabled. He can maneuver a motorized wheelchair on command, hand a ball to his therapist 80 to 100 percent of the time and show appropriate emotional responses such as kissing his mother's hand. His wife requests that the feeding tube be removed and he be transported to a nursing home where he will die from dehydration. The hospital ethics committee agrees. The patient's mother and sister intervene through the courts and an injunction is obtained to prohibit the dehydration. It's a real case. The man is Robert Wendland and the hospital is Lodi Memorial in California's Central Valley. The California Supreme Court is now scheduled to hear the case and decide whether the lives of conscious disabled people who cannot make their own medical decisions can be intentionally ended. This and other cases are discussed in a book by Wesley J. Smith titled Force Exit. An attorney and opponent of euthanasia and assisted suicide, Smith argues that these and other legal test cases and some ballot initiatives are creating a slippery slope that will eventually legitimize the killing of marginalized people-the poor, disabled, mentally ill and others- in the name of a "poor quality of life". To bolster this view, Smith recounts the post World War I euthanasia and eugenics movement in Germany where between 1939 and 1945 more than 200,000 people were euthanized. This was done with the active participation of doctors and nurses who had accepted a new "quality of life ethic", a distinct departure from the equality of life ethic. Of these thousands whose lives did not represent a "quality" existence, they included the cognitively or physically disabled, people with mental disease, infants born with birth defects, the senile elderly and even severely wounded German soldiers. Smith presents a chilling side-by-side analysis of the 1920 book by two respected professors Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding (Permitting the Destruction of Life not Worthy of Life), and current arguments advanced by proponents of the euthanasia and assisted suicide. The German academics' pre-Third Reich work ignited and legitimized the early euthanasia/medicalized killing movement in Germany. Hoche eventually turned against the euthanasia movement after one of his relatives became a victim. I wish I had read this book in 1992 when I served on CNA's Legislative-Regulatory committee. CNA was asked to consider supporting California Proposition 161, a euthanasia ballot initiative, that was ultimately rejected 54-46 percent by the voters. In discussion, I and others pointed out that a minimum standard to prevent abuse would be universal access to health care. Unless treatment was equally available to all for conditions like depression, mental illness and terminal illnesses (complete with effective pain control and hospice services), it would be dangerous to endorse any such measure. Medically uninsured or underinsured people could conceivably choose assisted suicide to spare their families the expense of a long illness. Or, their families might persuade the patient to "do the right thing". We ended up not supporting the measure, but many questions remained that Forced Exit goes a long way in answering. One question that is answered is defining the time frame, court cases and medical ethics panel pronouncements by the AMA and others that redefined tube feedings as "artificial nutrition". In this way, tube feedings went from being considered an element of humane care (like shelter, cleanliness and comfort) to a status of medical treatment. I remember going to an ethics seminar in 1982 where this was discussed. At the time I wondered how providing fluids and calories is any different than turning a patient or suctioning their airway. After all, wouldn't the patient reach for food, change position or cough and clear his or her throat if he or she was able? Wouldn't we consider not turning a patient to intentionally cause death by tissue necrosis and sepsis an appalling inattention to basic needs? In the book, Smith details the "food and fluid" legal cases as well as case studies of real people where death by dehydration was advocated or permitted. Some of these patients were not comatose nor in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). When this shift in ethical rationalization occurred, the withdrawing of food and fluids was to be strictly applied to those with PVS. The Wendland case shows how the boundaries are shifting. Smith maintains that this environment of redefining what is medical treatment and under what conditions it can be withdrawn, is contributing to the slippery slope of acceptability of both assisted suicide (physician and otherwise) and medicalized active euthanasia. Smith details the evolution of the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands case. In a country with universal healthcare, it could be assumed that there would be protections and safeguards. In reality, studies have revealed even then abuses occur. The Remmelink Report detailed Dutch euthanasia deaths in 1990 - 11,141. Of these, 5,981, or more than half, were involuntary! In other words, patients did not consent yet physicians and others actively euthanized people. Some of these patients were conscious and capable of objecting. Smith maintains that current lack of access to healthcare and cost incentives that allow profit from undertreatment are a dangerous foundation for any further liberalization of euthanasia via case law and legislation in the United States. In Forced Exit, he outlines several other deficiencies in our healthcare system that push people toward assisted suicide such as insufficient knowledge of treatment and pain control therapy, lack of resources for the disabled to achieve quality lives/ independent living and poor recognition and treatment of depression. As nurses it behooves us to question the euthanasia and assisted suicide movement in the context of our obligations as healers and helpers, the surrounding social policy issues regarding access to health care, and protection for disabled and other vulnerable people. *** robsta :)

The common mis-perception happens to be true though. Henry Friedlander shows in great detail how the T-4 euthanasia program evolved into the Final Solution - not as a prologue, but as an integral part of the dehumanization process that made the whole ghastly thing possible. Then there were immensly popular movies of the time, like *I accuse* which justifies *mercy killing* - the story of a husband and wife, she's a concert pianist, he's a doctor; she has MS, he finally puts her out of her misery to the soothing notes of a piano. She's terribly saddened to be a burdern to her long-suffering husband and even begins to refer to herself in self-abasing, non-human terms (how often do we hear that sentiment nowadays? - I still hear it). After killing her, he's brought to trial and stands accused of murder, but persuades the judge and jury that he did the right thing and accuses the legal system and the antiquated old-belief system for leaving countless people in misery and excruciating pain when they could be painlessly put out of their misery. This along with other forms of incessant pro-euthanasia propaganda. The German medical community colluded with and then participated in the Nazi euthansia program - hardly surprising considering their long-term involvement in eugenics and forms of social Darwinism - the idea that humanity is evloving to a new inevitable plane and that it was the job of enlightened individuals, like those in the medical profession, to speed the process along. This has ramifications today with embyonic stemcell research and therapeutic cloning - the modern-day offspring of the American, British and German eugenics movements of the early twentieth century. Eugenics is the long thread that connects abortion to euthanasia. Slippery slope to a new holocaust, based on past precedent?? Yes, but I believe that it would be by a different methodology, but the outcome would be the same - look at the statistics in the Netherlands since euthanasia was legalised there. (Please refer to my next post for clarification). robsta :)

Here's my take on it. You asked a very difficult ethical question, btw. Good question. » Removing Life Support - is the removal of life sustaining services without which the pt. could die. This may or may not be the desire of the pt. or the pt.'s family. Often qualifies as *euthanasia*. » DNR - the pt. may have an advance directive where they state that they do not want to be resuscitated in the event of needing CPR, or other life saving measure. There are differing degrees of DNR coding. This is always undertaken at the behest of the pt. in agreement with their wishes. » Euthanasia - known to some as *mercy killing*, is also often carried out in accordance with a pt.'s wishes. It also has a historical precedent of being abused, as it was in Nazi Germany, where the developmentally disabled and other so-called untermenschen were *euthanised* as part of the Nazi eugenics program. Euthanasia is, Oregon aside, illegal in the U.S. It is currently legal in the Netherlands (see start of thread) and in Belgium. I tried to give you as unbiased set of definitions as I could. The debate rages over the moral and ethical implications of each. Hope that helps. robsta :)

Yes, you're right - an anti-euthanasia advocate like myself would see the withdrawal of fluid and nutrition as *passive euthanasia* - one is not actively administering an agent that could bring on death, but is seeking to terminate life by witholding essential fluid and nutrition. Without opening up a subject that I believe is being discussed elsewhere in the forums, this is the issue at the heart of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case, and anti euthanasia advocates believe that this is a cruel and painful method of prematurely ending a life. robsta :)

Not a problem. Thanks for posting anyway. :)

Thanks :)

Hanna Kroeger, the German-born herbalist, recommends one of the following » » Vervain tea » Guarana (at onset of headache) » Lavender oil applied to forehead Thankfully, I don't get migraines so I've not tried any of these remedies, but I have taken Ms. Kroeger's advice for other ailments and found them quite helpful. In addition to avoiding MSG (often hidden in much processed food as free-forming glutamic acid), aspartame (should be considered a crime against humanity), try avoiding all soy products with the exception of soy sauce, which is fermented, and canola (or rapeseed) oil. Neither soy nor canola are fit for human or animal consumption - and I used to be a big tofu and edamame fan, but have stopped eating all soy. Also, a heavy metals detox wouldn't be a bad idea either - there is so much airborne pollution, with studies showing a major increase in barium and aluminum in the soil, not to mention potassium perchlorates (as recently reported on the news - the FDA cautioned us against eating lettuce as unsafe levels of perchlorate, a component in rocket fuel, were found in organic lettuce). Good luck! robsta :)

Thanks for the link. :)

Or the welfare comparison, where for whatever reason, a person isn't able to or doesn't want to participate in the labor market - we still feel that they should get something back, even if they weren't able to or didn't want to contribute to the system. This *eye for an eye* mentality seems a little harsh - a person may have contributed much in other ways, saving lives, supporting worthwhile causes, and when they may be in need, even if they didn't sign up as a donor, I hope that they'll get the best possible medical care - including organs if necessary. robsta :)