For years, advance medical directives, popularly known as living wills, have been promoted as giving people control over what happens to them at “end of life”, i.e., when they are in dire medical straits. (1) It is hard to disagree with the concept. Certainly, people have the right to refuse treatment they don’t find helpful […]
June 11, 2021 By: Andrés J. Gallegos, Jennifer M. Sender ROBBINS, SALOMON & PATT, LTD. SEEKS JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL HICKSON, FILES WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT AGAINST ST. DAVID’S SOUTH AUSTIN MEDICAL CENTER & ITS PHYSICIANS Robbins, Salomon & Patt, Ltd. (RSP) on June 10, 2021, filed a multi-count wrongful death lawsuit against St. David’s South Austin Medical Center […]
A friend asked if I knew how many people have been medically killed since Covid-19. My answer is that there is no way to know. We know about Michael Hickson and we’re just learning about Sarah McSweeney and perhaps many others from a recent NPR investigation. However, when relatives agree, or at least don’t vociferously […]
The New York Department of Health recently requested public input from health care providers and patients on how to make advance care planning forms more understandable and easy to use. The Department provided a response template with questions focused on people’s experiences with three forms: the health care proxy, out-of-hospital do not resuscitate order (DNR) […]
This week, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline carried an article entitled “New End-of-Life Measure Quietly Sweeps the Nation.” The measure described is Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST), sometimes also called Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST). According to the National POLST Paradigm website, POLST originated in 1991, and 14 states had adopted it by […]
The second of six expected meetings of the Institute of Medicine Transforming End-of-Life Care Committee was held on May 29 at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. The topics addressed by the Committee include health care and long term services and supports issues facing people with chronic conditions and disabilities who may […]
Below is an embedded video. It’s an interview of disability rights activist/advocate/scholar/author Norm Kunc. He was with other anti-assisted suicide/euthanasia protesters in Vancouver yesterday. A trancript of the interview is provided below video. I transcribed it myself, so I cannot guarantee it’s error-free, but it’s at worst pretty darn close to verbatim. Norm Kunc: Well, […]
