Sosato
13-06-2005, 03:14
I've been following the stuff about people in persistent vegetative states and such with mild interest over the last few months, and while milling around through the news, I found this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Sydney_morning_herald_masthead.png
Let the brain-damaged die, say doctors
by Carol Nader
Mon 13 Jun, 1.25am
Early withdrawal of medical treatment from patients with severe brain damage is "clinically, ethically and legally justified", an international intensive care specialist has said.
Associate Professor Stephen Streat, an intensivist at Auckland City Hospital's department of critical care medicine, said prolonging the life of patients with severe brain injuries who faced and existence in which they could not care for themselves was "unseemly, undignified, even, perhaps you might say, obscene. What is there for the patient to gain from having that process unduly drawn out?"
Professor Streat, who spoke at the annual scientific meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation at the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel in Sydney yesterday, said decisions about the point at which treatment would cease should be made by doctors and patients.
Discussions on the patient's condition should begin when the patient was first admitted to intensive care.
In a paper titled "When do they stop", he said some patients could be saved, but it was important to identify patients who were not "rescuable".
He said focusing on so-called "miracle" patients who defied the odds condemned a much larger number of people.
"If we make decisions that allow for the remote possibility of an utterly unexpected 'good' survivor, then we will end up with a very large number of accompanying 'bad' survivors," he said.
His comments come after a debate that began in Britain last week in which doctors and nurses discussed whether to allow the most premature babies to die. Professor Streat said similar considerations applied to adult patients who had serious brain injuries caused by trauma such as car crashes, whose brains had been damaged by being deprived of oxygen - as in the case of Maria Korp, in a vegetative state after being found in the boot of a car - and patents who had had a brain hemorrhage.
He said research showed that 80 per cent of people believed having a severe disability in which they needed a full-time carer was a worse outcome than death.
The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation chairman Associate Professor George Skowronski, said that among the hardest things in intensive care medicine was approaching the aspect of failure.
"Despite all our hard efforts and technical wizardry there are often times, because of the nature of the diseases we work with, that it becomes clear that a patient is either going to die or survive in a state in which they won't thank us for surviving," he said.
"The question then becomes how do we pick those people reliably, because we don't want to make any mistakes, and having come to that conclusion, how do you negotiate your way through that with the families and the people closest to the patient?"
Bioethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said resources were also part of the issue. "If you've got an intensive care unit that's crowded and you've got people that can't get in because you've got beds occupied, then of course you can withdraw what I'd call overly burdensome treatment," he said.
©2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
I know there are some avid pro-life people here. What do you think of it?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Sydney_morning_herald_masthead.png
Let the brain-damaged die, say doctors
by Carol Nader
Mon 13 Jun, 1.25am
Early withdrawal of medical treatment from patients with severe brain damage is "clinically, ethically and legally justified", an international intensive care specialist has said.
Associate Professor Stephen Streat, an intensivist at Auckland City Hospital's department of critical care medicine, said prolonging the life of patients with severe brain injuries who faced and existence in which they could not care for themselves was "unseemly, undignified, even, perhaps you might say, obscene. What is there for the patient to gain from having that process unduly drawn out?"
Professor Streat, who spoke at the annual scientific meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation at the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel in Sydney yesterday, said decisions about the point at which treatment would cease should be made by doctors and patients.
Discussions on the patient's condition should begin when the patient was first admitted to intensive care.
In a paper titled "When do they stop", he said some patients could be saved, but it was important to identify patients who were not "rescuable".
He said focusing on so-called "miracle" patients who defied the odds condemned a much larger number of people.
"If we make decisions that allow for the remote possibility of an utterly unexpected 'good' survivor, then we will end up with a very large number of accompanying 'bad' survivors," he said.
His comments come after a debate that began in Britain last week in which doctors and nurses discussed whether to allow the most premature babies to die. Professor Streat said similar considerations applied to adult patients who had serious brain injuries caused by trauma such as car crashes, whose brains had been damaged by being deprived of oxygen - as in the case of Maria Korp, in a vegetative state after being found in the boot of a car - and patents who had had a brain hemorrhage.
He said research showed that 80 per cent of people believed having a severe disability in which they needed a full-time carer was a worse outcome than death.
The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation chairman Associate Professor George Skowronski, said that among the hardest things in intensive care medicine was approaching the aspect of failure.
"Despite all our hard efforts and technical wizardry there are often times, because of the nature of the diseases we work with, that it becomes clear that a patient is either going to die or survive in a state in which they won't thank us for surviving," he said.
"The question then becomes how do we pick those people reliably, because we don't want to make any mistakes, and having come to that conclusion, how do you negotiate your way through that with the families and the people closest to the patient?"
Bioethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said resources were also part of the issue. "If you've got an intensive care unit that's crowded and you've got people that can't get in because you've got beds occupied, then of course you can withdraw what I'd call overly burdensome treatment," he said.
©2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
I know there are some avid pro-life people here. What do you think of it?