healthsignals new york

These creeps will commercialize anything

Got my first spam offering stock paperwork for durable power-of-attorney this morning. No doubt some slimeball riding the Terri Schiavo wave. How crass is that?

Ouch!

Matthew nails it on (hint, note today's date).

NEJM on Terri Schiavo case

From the New England Journal of Medicine Timothy Quill, MD and George Annas, MD (both are PDFs).

If this were any other case ...

Always trying to learn something, I listen and watch and watch medical ethics discussions, but rarely comment without some provocation.

But, I do know a bit about politics and political con jobs. So, I'm forced to ask the question, is this medicine or is it politics? If this were another patient and another physician, neither of them in the public spotlight, how would we respond to this?

Now I'm big on remote monitoring, telemedicine and the like, but to make this decision? Based only on a video tape? What about the perils of defensive medicine? Or is Senator Frist practicing politics and not medicine? What a dreadful political intrusion into an already agonizing family circumstance.

Here's a selection of links on the Federal bill on granting either parent of Terri Schiavo the right to seek action in Federal Court:

• An analysis of the original state court decision, including a discussion of the process and the criteria leading to the decision to remove the feeding tube.
• Other discussions at the Bioethics Discussion Blog at the American Journal of Bioethics and by way of the American Journal, Majikthise on Myths about the Terri Schiavo Case.
  
• Here's an analysis of the Texas law, signed by then Governor Bush which takes a decidely different direction, for example in this case allowing a hospital to remove life support over the objections of a parent when the hospital wasn't being paid. Here's another Texas case under the same law.
• And speaking of politics, here are the Washington Post story and in the Seattle Times on the political talking points memo in favor of pushing this issue (including targeting Senator Ben Nelson
• A summary of the affidavits filed in the case
• Here's a brief discussion of the lack of a relationship between the current debate and debates regarding the "right to die."
• Amanda Marcotte on a woman's perspective
• None of the above even gets into the wonderful ironies of the House voting to slash Medicaid spending the same week that it engages in this pandering. But Medviews takes a more analytical view of the Medicaid costs of extending the Schiavo precedent to many more patients.
  

We may add other links as they emerge. But I hope we don't need to.

Updates:
3/22: Summary of the analysis of Father John Faris, bioethics professor at Boston College and Catholic priest

On MLK day

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane."

                                                                            Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.