May 24, 2008

Chimps Are People, Too... Yeah, Whatever

From the article "European Court agrees to hear chimp's plea for human rights":

His name is Matthew, he is 26 years old, and his supporters hope to take his
case to the European Court of Human Rights.

But he won't be able to give
evidence on his own behalf - since he is a chimpanzee. Animal rights activists
led by British teacher Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally
declared a 'person' so she can be appointed as his guardian if the bankrupt
animal sanctuary where he lives in Vienna is forced to close...

...Miss Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years,
says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person.


A seemingly good idea, if not rather comical, for a seemingly good cause. I hate to see animals used and abused. But the attempt to declare an animal a person- not a good idea, not comical, and, in fact, it's quite ominous.

It is becoming an accepted idea, as evidenced by those who believe that even animals can be people, that there is a difference between a person and a human. So, with this reasoning, 'human being' doesn't automatically mean 'person', and, therefore, not every human being is afforded automatic human rights for simply being human, unlike 'persons', including the right to life.

This is what some animal rights activist such as Peter Singer want, for animals to be acknowledged as persons, while at the same time denying the existence of personhood for some people, such as the fetus, infants, and children and adults with profound cognitive disabilities.
Here's an example of his thinking from the story "An Ethical Man":

"'HIV research using chimps has not been very helpful as they don't seem to get
the disease in the same way humans do,' Singer explains. 'So I don't think it's
right and it's causing a lot of suffering and distress to beings who are
sensitive animals--social animals who should be living in social groups and who
suffer being in isolation and confined and that's wrong. If we need beings very
like us to do this on, we should perhaps [turn to] the families of people who
tragically have been brain-damaged and have no hope of recovery from persistent
vegetative state who are totally beyond suffering because they are beyond
consciousness."

May 20, 2008

Sex Change Treatment for 7 Year-Olds

From the blog Secondhand Smoke:

This seems to me to be unethical human experimentation: A doctor in Boston gives hormones to children who believe themselves to be transgendered to help prevent puberty and move them toward a sex change. From the story:

Boston's Children's Hospital bills itself as the hospital for children--and now it's also the hospital for children who want a sex change, a procedure some critics are calling "barbaric." Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has launched a clinic for transgendered kids--boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys-- and he's opening his doors to patients as young as 7. Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty.

The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.

Spack also offers some teenagers hormone therapy, a drastic step that changes the way they grow and develop. While the effects of drug treatments can be stopped, long-term hormone therapy can be irreversible, causing permanent infertility in both sexes.

We have no true understanding of the causes of transexualism. We don't know that a kid who is seven and thinks he is a girl will still feel that way when he is 20. He might. Some transexuals report having those feelings very early. But we don't know how many people there might be who felt that way at 7 but don't at 20.

Worse, to medically intervene with strong hormones--the long term impact on the child's body and mental state we cannot know--when there is no underlying physical disease requiring the treatment, is to me, abuse. What if it causes cancer in 20 years? What if it impacts on the children of these children? What if the hormones impact their emotional and mental states, perhaps influencing their transexuality? We can't know the answers. All of this is just too new.

I am reminded of "Ashley's treatment," in which a profoundly disabled girl's normal physical development was interfered with through surgery and hormones to allow better ease of care. Caring motives notwithstanding, that was wrong, at least without a court order, as the hospital so admitted.

And now this: According to the story the Europeans are already traveling this path. And of course, NPR has come out with a properly nonjudgmental feature story:

The hormone blockers are the first stage of the treatment, but there's a second stage that's possible. Once children have postponed puberty for three or four years, at around age 16 they can choose to begin maturing sexually into the opposite gender, the gender they want to become. To do this, they begin taking the hormones of the opposite sex. For males, taking estrogen at this point will bring on breast and hip growth--and all the attributes physical and emotional of females. The reverse will happen for girls who take testosterone. Spack says this treatment can help make an adult transgender male almost indistinguishable from a biological male in terms of physical appearance. "We can make it possible that they can fit in in the way they want to. It is really quite amazing," he says.

This is unconscionable and reflects how sick our culture is becoming--and I am not referring to transgendered people. The inability or unwillingness by a growing number of us to make any judgments that might be criticized as moralism--lest one be denigrated as a bigot, premodern, or a hypocrite--has created a moral vacuum in which very little remains out of bounds. And the worst part is that the greatest victims in the ongoing and utter collapse of norms are our children.

May 12, 2008

While Worshiping

I often refer to the reality of those with disabilities not fully exercising themselves as the necessary members of the body that they are. Who aren't being welcomed by their fellow members, i.e., the rest of us. I see them fully as part of the body of Christ.

However, at this moment, during this opportunity for praise, I saw them as His bride! His beautiful bride. There's a difference in the love of a man's body, you see, and the love for his bride. And, oh, how Jesus loves His bride! Intimately and passionately He loves those hidden in the deepest, most secret of crevices known as nursing homes and institutions. He sees them, and He longs to stretch out His hand to reach them and capture them. For they are most lovely to Him.

And I wondered what has happened to His bride? To this part of His Bride, that they are hidden away and suffering so under the oppression of indifference.


We can be His hands. We can stretch out on His behalf to bring the hidden ones into His body, where Jesus longs to make them His bride! And we will all be ready and waiting for His return.

May 6, 2008

PRAY: California Legislature Expected To Vote This Week On Bill Promoting Euthanasia

From Life News:

Undaunted by their repeated failure to get the California legislature to approve
a bill legalizing assisted suicide, the sponsors of the bill are moving forward
with a new measure that promotes euthanasia in limited circumstances. Pro-life
groups are asking for phone calls to defeat the bill.

Last Tuesday, on a straight party line vote, the Assembly Judiciary Committee sent AB 2747 to the Assembly floor.

Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, the authors of the pro-assisted suicide bill, are behind the bill.

Brian Johnston, the head of the California Pro-Life Council and the author of a seminal book on assisted suicide, talked with LifeNews.com about the measure's problems.

"On the surface, AB 2747 seems like a simple bill benefiting the hospice care industry," he said. "However, it contains a sneaky loophole that will permit doctors and health care providers to transform the rarely used practice of 'palliative
sedation' into a vehicle permitting assisted suicide."

Palliative sedation, otherwise known as deep sedation, is the sedation of a suffering and imminently dying patient to the point of unconsciousness and the bill changes the standards surrounding its use.

Johnston says AB 2747 has a host of other problems -- including defining terminal illness as having one year or less to live.

"We believe this is very arbitrary and subjective because predicting a patient’s
time from death is merely a lifespan forecast," he says.

He says the bill also would create situations where cost considerations could affect treatment options, as assisted suicide options are generally cheaper than treatment.

Ultimately, Johnston told LifeNews.com that "AB 2747 promotes practices
which may hasten death, overlooking what should be the primary focus of
counseling to a patient approaching the end of life, chiefly excellent
palliative care and hospice referral."

Pro-life groups fear that deep sedation, once introduced and promoted in California, will become a frequent occurrence as it has been in the Netherlands, one of the few nations to approve assisted suicide and euthanasia.

An April study finds the number of patients killed via deep sedation is on the rise.Researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam found 1,800 people -- or 7.1 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2005 -- involved deep sedation.

That percentage rose from 5.6 percent of all deaths involving deep sedation in 2001
while, during the same time period, euthanasia death fell from 2.6 percent of
all deaths to 1.7 percent.

Judith Rietjens of Erasmus University told Reuters, “The increased use of continuous deep sedation for patients nearing death in the Netherlands and the limited use of palliative consultation suggests that this practice is increasingly considered as part of a regular medical practice.”

American author and attorney Wesley J. Smith commented on the recent research.
“Demonstrating the subversive nature of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement on proper medical care, Dutch doctors are switching from lethally injecting patients to sedating them into a permanent coma so they die by dehydration over a period of days or weeks,” he said.

Smith said he thinks physicians are changing the way they kill patients
so they don't have to be present during the actual death and can assuage their
consciences.

ACTION: Please contact your member of the California Assembly
immediately and urge strong opposition to AB 2747 because it promotes
euthanasia. You can find contact information at http://www.assembly.ca.gov/.

Doctors vs. Parents: Who Decides Right to Life?

From Houston Press:

Following surgery, Sabrina Martin's condition went south. And then, her family
says, Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital set about arranging for her
demise.

...The doctor told us that Sabrina'd had two strokes and because of
them, she was in a coma that they didn't think she was going to come out of. And
if she did, she would be a vegetable."

As shocking as the devastating news of their daughter's condition was, Lopez and Murray say it would not compare to what happened next.

Within about three days of the second surgery, Lopez says, doctors "started talking about our options. And we started getting scared, because the options were not good."

Lopez and Murray say that doctors and hospital staff began pressuring them to withhold treatment and feeding, which would ultimately starve Sabrina to death. To the parents, this was unacceptable. They wanted their daughter to live.

"I was very disappointed with the way Memorial Hermann handled things," Lopez says. "They put it out on the table that we were being selfish."

Murray and Lopez accuse the hospital staff, doctors and nurses of doing everything they could to try to end Sabrina's life during the ensuing six weeks, including:

• Refusing to implement simple procedures such as giving Sabrina feeding and breathing tubes that would have enabled the parents to take their daughter home and care for her themselves,

• Attempting to turn relatives and friends against Lopez and Murray by encouraging
them to persuade the parents to withhold treatment, all the while violating
federal privacy laws by discussing Sabrina's healthcare information,

• Entering two separate do-not-­resuscitate orders against her parents'
wishes, and

• Threatening the family with convening the hospital's ethics committee, which under Texas law can overrule the family's wishes and withhold life-support treatment from a patient.

As Lopez and Murray saw it, the hospital and physicians that caused their daughter's condition were now trying to end her life. And it seemed like there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Terrified, Sabrina's parents called the nonprofit organization Texas Right
to Life, which referred Lopez and Murray to an attorney. The parents were able
to transfer Sabrina to Texas Children's Hospital, where Lopez says Martin
received treatment that doctors at Memorial Hermann had refused to give,
treatment that saved her life...

...When asked for comment about Sabrina's case, Memorial Hermann spokeswoman Beth Sartori issued a statement saying, "Sabrina Martin's story is a sad one, and everyone associated with her care at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital is deeply sympathetic to her and her family. However, because of the lawsuit against the hospital and the physicians that cared for her, we are not at liberty to comment further."...

...Memorial Hermann was one of a host of hospitals across the state that along with doctors and right-to-life groups endorsed the Texas Advance Directives Act, which the Legislature passed in 1999 and which was signed into law by then-Governor George W. Bush. (The right-to-life groups have now backed off their support of the
Advance Directives Act and say the law is unfair and gives too much power to
­doctors.)

In essence, the law gives doctors the ability to eithercontinue or withhold life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or the patient's legal guardian. To do so, the doctor presents his case before the family and an ethics committee, and if the committee agrees with the doctor's decision, the family is given ten days to find another facility that will comply with their wishes before treatment is either continued or withdrawn. Families are given a list of lawyers and organizations to help facilitate a transfer.

Texas and Virginia are the only two states in the country that have a time limit as part of such laws, Virginia's being 14 days for the family to find a transfer.

In Texas, the law has come under fire over the past several years. Families, their lawyers and right-to-life groups have battled doctors and health care facilities in the media and in court to try to prevent them from employing the act. In 2007, an attempt to lengthen the ten-day time period died in the Texas House of ­Representatives.

In general, opponents — ranging from rightwing, right-to-life groups all the way to the American Civil Liberties Union — say the law gives too much power to the
hospitals and doctors and takes away individuals' civil rights to determine
their own fate...

...Graham says another disturbing pattern she sees at Memorial Hermann is doctors entering orders not to resuscitate patients without first checking with or gaining consent from the families.


"It's a totally separate mechanism that accomplishes the same goal," says Graham, "but much quicker."

In Sabrina's case, doctors entered two orders not to resuscitate the teen, according to Sabrina's medical records...

...Three days after Sabrina's second surgery, one of her doctors entered an order not to resuscitate her, says Painter. Lopez and Murray had no idea he had done so. They say they did not want the order put in. According to hospital records, the same day that the instruction was entered, a social worker documented that it "appeared (Lopez and Murray) did not agree with the recommendations for DNR as of yet."

Then, two days later, a different doctor issued a second order not to resuscitate
Sabrina, the very day that hospital records show Lopez had requested a second
opinion from another neurologist.

"I felt so violated," says Lopez. "I couldn't believe they would do this. I mean, we're talking about a hospital; they're supposed to have the patient's best interest, and this was way too soon to be giving up."

Lopez was further dumbfounded when doctors refused to insert a feeding pipe, called a G-Tube, or perform a simple tracheotomy, placing a breathing tube into Sabrina's neck, allowing her to leave the hospital so that Lopez could care for her daughter at home.

"They never proposed the G-Tube and trach," says Lopez. "I researched the options and said we wanted that. But Memorial Hermann wouldn't do it, saying she wouldn't have a high quality of life. And I was very disappointed because I was like, 'How do you define quality of life?' She doesn't need to play basketball as long as she can understand what we're saying."...

...Shortly after transferring to Texas Children's Hospital,
Sabrina began to improve so dramatically that doctors recommended she not go
home but rather be moved to a rehabilitation facility in San Antonio. There, at
Kindred Hospital, Sabrina emerged from her coma. Doctors were able to remove her
breathing tube and Sabrina began getting better, even advancing to the point
where she was able to help her younger sister do math homework by counting on
her fingers. Doctors now say Sabrina should have a full life expectancy.

"The people at Memorial Hermann said this would never happen," says
Lopez...


..."I'm so glad we did what we did," says Murray. "It's a lot of
work. But it's better now than it was at first. Some days I just want to go up
to those doctors and say, "See, look at her now."

May 5, 2008

Why A wheelchair Is Not Purgatory

By Ruth at her blog, Wheelie Catholic:

WHEELIE CATHOLIC: Why my wheelchair is not my purgatory

I awoke this morning to an
MSNBC article
about the efforts of one man to walk again after acquiring a
spinal cord injury.

The article began with the words "It was only a chair, but it became his
purgatory".

Make no mistake about this: I applaud the efforts and hard work of the
individual in question. That's not at issue here, of course.

But to write an article saying that this man could have no life until he
walked again is inaccurate. To write that a wheelchair is someone's purgatory
(not a quote from the interviewed person) needs to be addressed. Why?

Because more damage is done to the perception of disability over bowls of
Cheerio due to media coverage than anywhere else. Not only that, but this
article ignores several facts that are well known in the spinal cord
community.

Read the rest over at Wheelie Catholic.


Alaska Governor Balances Newborn's Needs, Official Duties

From the Associated Press, via Yahoo news: Alaska governor balances newborn's needs, official duties

The doctor's announcement in December, when Palin was four months pregnant,
presented her with a possible life- and career-changing development.

"I've never had problems with my other pregnancies, so I was shocked,"
said Palin, a mother of four other children.

"It took a while to open up the book that the doctor gave me about
children with Down syndrome, and a while to log on to the Web site and start
reading facts about the situation."

The 44-year-old governor waited a few days before telling her husband,
Todd, who was out of town, so she could understand what was ahead for
them.

Once her husband got the news, he told her: "We shouldn't be asking,
'Why us?' We should be saying, 'Well, why not us?'"

There was never any doubt the Palins would have the child, and on April
18 she gave birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin.

"We've both been very vocal about being pro-life," Palin said. "We
understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential."


This is a big deal these days when a large majority of of those pregnent with chldren with Down syndrome choose abortion.