This is the unfettered human maternal instinct, to put the lives of one’s children first. It’s so rare now, as to be newsworthy, and many would criticize it.
Stacie Crimm refused chemo for an aggressive tumor for fear that it would harm her baby. Her child was delivered prematurely. Stacie had only one chance to hold her baby girl prior to her own death. Prayers for her and her family.
Category: medical ethics
Treatment for Infertility, Cash Only In Ottawa?
MercatorNet: Are babies prizes or gifts?.
Margaret Somerville commented on a contest at an Ottawa, Canada radio station, HOT 89.9. They offered as a prize, up to three fertility treatments. Numerous couples submitted short statements explaining why they should be most eligible for such assistance. In the end, the field was narrowed to five contestants, and all of them “won” the treatments.
People of various views on the life issues are troubled by the contest.
Pharmer, as usual, gets down to the nitty gritty:
The main problem is not the contest itself, but the fertility treatments, which (depending on the type) frequently have in their design the idea that babies are objects. You see…… there is selective reduction. The parents are convinced (by the docs) to knock off some of the babies if there are multiples, to increase the survivability of the remaining one or two.
The type of fertility treatments is not specified, so it could include some procedures which inherently involve killing human embryos.
What most people are saying “yuck” to is not the killing that so often accompanies the fertility treatments, but the exhibitionism. These five couples may be putting that killing on display, since they agreed to shed the privacy which usually surrounds the treatments.
Note that the socialized medicine system of Ottawa is apparently not covering the treatment of the disease of infertility. That apparently has to be won in a contest.
Abortion Supporters Fear Legal Recognition of Biological Fact
Mississippi Abortion Amendment 26 Says Life Begins at Fertilization | Video | TheBlaze.com.
It’s in your developmental biology book, and your general biology text. Life for an organism of sexually reproducing species begins when fertilization is complete.
Mississippi proposes to recognize this fact in law, amid objections from abortion supporters.
They complain that this amendment might affect the availability of many birth control pills.
This is an admission that birth control pills, which operate by multiple mechanisms, including interference with implantation, have been misbranded as contraceptives.
Maybe we can request a surgeon general warning on BC pill packs that says: WARNING: this pill may operate by stopping the life of an early human embryo.
The warning could be upgraded for Plan B, and especially for Ella, doses of which can be accumulated for use in home abortions.
It is feared that legal recognition of what developmental biologists have observed might hurt the pharmaceutical and abortion industry. Maybe if they had been honest all along, such efforts as Mississippi amendment 26 would not have been necessary.
Chemical Abortion
Pro-lifers recognize surgical abortion as killing humans, but not all of them recognize the scope of the problem presenting as chemical abortion. Generally we recognize mifepristone, the chemical formerly known as RU-486. The initial name of the drug stayed with us, (the same as with the Artist formerly known as Prince). Mifepristone is best known in the U.S. for its function to kill unborn humans during the embryonic stage, up to 49 days of pregnancy, although it has other investigational uses.
Meet the TWINS! Ulipristal acetate and Mifepristone. As you can see, they’re not quite identical, but very close. Both are selective progesterone receptor modulators.
Mifepristone, RU-486 is the most regulated drug in the U.S. Pharmacists don’t dispense it. It’s supposed to be dispensed only by physicians, directly to patients. In China and other countries it has been used as a morning after pill, as well as a killer of later embryos and early fetuses.
Those astute drug companies knew that this drug would not sell as a morning after pill in the U.S. That’s why we have it’s TWIN, Ulipristal Acetate, approved by the FDA in August , 2010, and brought to us in by Watson Pharmaceuticals in December of the same year. Watson also distributes Next Choice, generic of the original form of Plan B.
At 0.5mg/kg, Ulipristal Acetate, marketed as ELLA, is usable as a morning after pill. It’s marketed as an inhibitor of ovulation, but the manufacturer admits that the operative mechanism depends on the timing of its use. Like RU-486, Ulipristone is an anti-progesterone. It stops the action of that hormone in the reproductive tract, inhibits proliferation of the endometrium, inhibits implantation, and kills the embryo.
Organs from Killed Patients are better for transplant use than organs from accident victims
Shock study: Organs harvested from euthanized patients make better transplants | LifeSiteNews.com.
In this Belgian study, 23.5 percent of the lung transplants are taken from euthanized patients. Better outcomes for the recipient are reported using these organs rather than those from accident or trauma victims.
According to a Canadian Medical Association report, 20 percent of Belgian nurses, interviewed for their study, reported involvement in euthanasia, with half of those cases being without request or consent of the patient.
(Perhaps there’s reason that Hugo Chavez hasn’t been doing any of his medical tourism in Belgium. )
Sodium Thiopental
It was good enough for Jack the Dripper Kevorkian to use in his “thanatron”, to kill patients, up until the time his medical license was revoked. He then switched to the use of carbon monoxide.
Kevorkian was eulogized in the New York Times as: “Fiercely principled and equally inflexible, he rarely dated and never married. He lived a penurious life, eating little, avoiding luxury…”
There has been an outcry that the use of sodium thiopental for lethal injection in capital punishment is inhumane, for various reasons, including the fact that it is very short acting, and the person might not be unconscious when the succinyl choline is used to paralyze, and the potassium chloride is used to stop the heart.
Things that make you say hmmmmmmm….
*Note- Sodium thiopental has recently been made unavailable for use in lethal injections, originally due to objections by international suppliers, and a number of states have substituted sodium pentobarbital.
Mo. House backs changes on abortion drugs, Plan B – Missouri | State & regional – bnd.com
Mo. House backs changes on abortion drugs, Plan B – Missouri | State & regional – bnd.com.
A law which prevents pharmacists and pharmacies from being forced to stock or dispense the morning after pills has passed the Missouri State house of representatives.
What About the Tracheostomy for Baby Joseph?
It’s good to juxtapose some lay-person friendly medical info up with the hot button pro-life issues of the day. So…. if you want to learn about tracheostomies for babies, and trach care at home, read a long term internet resource put up by the Bissell family.
A London Ontario hospital is holding a baby, Joseph Maarachli, on a ventilator, and has been refusing to do a tracheotomy so the boy can be taken home to be with his family. He suffers from a neurodegenerative disease which will take his life.
His family already knows the drill…… they previously lost a child to this problem. She had undergone a tracheotomy procedure, and was allowed to die at home.
This time, it appears that the Canadians are clamping down with the cost containment. The tracheostomy is “not indicated” for a patient with this kind of terminal disease, although it used to be allowed. Apparently the money has gotten tighter up there, with that socialized medicine system.
Which do you think is worse for baby Joseph?….. intubated on a ventilator in the hospital, or a tracheostomy and vent at home? With all the publicity, security and legal intervention, he’s in limbo on the former. No secrets on where the Daily Mail reporter stands on this issue.
Weekend Business: Repeal of Bush’s Conscience Protections for Health Care Professionals
It’s a whisper in the news……. You’d have to dig hard to find it. Obama gutted the regulations Bush had put into place to protect conscientiously objecting health care professionals from discrimination.
There were essentially no new provisions in Bush’s executive order, except to cause institutions to worry about receiving federal funds if they discriminated against health care professionals who refuse to kill humans in their practice.
Obama has returned the situation to its previous state: toothless conscience legislation, nearly unenforceable because unemployed health care professionals usually lack funds to bring civil redress when incidents of discrimination occur. Also, what remains of “protection” will only apply to what is obviously recognized as abortion to a layman, and sterilization. Objection to chemical abortions at the early stages of human development, and use of various biotech medical devices, unethically derived drugs, vaccines, transplants, implants (from killed humans) will not be covered.
Actually the situation is worse than it was previously, as the department of Health and Human Services has utterly no interest in hearing or cataloging incidents of discrimination. The head of this department, Kathleen Sebelius had no interest in enforcing medical standards applicable to abortion clinics in her home state of Kansas.
It is fortunate that the new Congress has shown some interest in this situation, otherwise it might be missed entirely by the public.
The actual repeal is gibberish, unless one has intimate familiarity with the underlying laws and regulations. Heritage Foundation has pretty much put it in English.
The Sebelius HHS will effectively leave conscientiously objecting health care professionals without protections, and all should be prepared to find new jobs or careers should a conflict between the employers mandates and personal conscience ever arise.
As previously, the protection of conscience for health care professionals will largely lie in the power of the internet, to expose institutions which discriminate against health care professionals who refuse to kill, and reduce private business, and the sources of charitable donations, funds and grants.
The No Surprise Department: Unauthorized Medical Exams.
No consent: patients probed by medical students – Madison Magazine.
Something has been up at the Australian teaching hospitals. Seems that the body cavities of patients are being “gang-examined” while said patients are in states of semi- or unconsciousness, without prior consent. In other words, Senior faculty members at medical schools have been ordering medical students to examine these patients intimately without prior consent having been given. Eighty two percent of the medical students in this study were willing to follow the directives.
This figure agrees with Pharmer’s long standing estimate that eighty percent of health care practitioners would be willing to toss away medical ethics concerns if their job status were at stake. The training starts early.
Having observed the moral/ethical decline of the health care industry, this article falls into the no surprise department.
Once the killing and the healing have become mixed, could one expect any better respect for patient autonomy than has been apparently exhibited in these cases?