Tag Archives: euthanasia

Killing us Softly - Part 5

Posted on May 26, 2026 by | 2 comments

“… we must be wary of those who are too willing to end the lives of the elderly and the ill. If we ever decide that a poor quality of life justifies ending that life, we have taken a step down a slippery slope that places all of us in danger. There is a difference between allowing nature to take its course and actively assisting death. The call for euthanasia surfaces in our society periodically, as it is doing now under the guise of “death with dignity” or assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a concept, it seems to me, that is in direct conflict with a religious and ethical tradition in which the human race is presented with ” a blessing and a curse, life and death,” and we are instructed ‘…therefore, to choose life.” I believe ‘euthanasia’ lies outside the commonly held life-centered values of the West and cannot be allowed without incurring great social and personal tragedy. This is not merely an intellectual conundrum. This issue involves actual human beings at risk…” — C. Everett Koop, M.D. * *taken from the book KOOP, The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor by C. Everett Koop, M.D., Random House, 1991

artwork (c) by Vickie Travis, design by Ron Panzer and Vickie Travis

Florence Wald and American Hospice

Florence Wald is the most famous leader of the modern American hospice movement. She was born Florence Sophie Schorske in New York on April 19, 1917. She received a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1938 and an M.N. from Yale School of Nursing in 1941. She received a second master’s degree from Yale University in mental health nursing in 1956, and became an instructor at the school’s nursing program. In 1959, she became Dean of Yale’s School of Nursing. The Yale School of Nursing was founded in 1923 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Wald’s entrance into hospice came about after she attended a 1963 lecture at Yale by Dr. Cicely Saunders, founder of St. Christopher’s Hospice in London. Saunders’ lecture emphasized minimizing pain in terminal cancer patients so that they could focus on their relationships and prepare for death. Wald immediately began reshaping the nursing school curriculum to put more focus on patients and their families and to emphasize care of the dying. Feeling further effort was required, Wald resigned as dean and went to London to study at St. Christopher’s. Upon her return, she organized the first U.S. hospice in Branford in 1971. Connecticut Hospice, which began by offering in-home care but eventually built its own inpatient facility, became a model for hospice care here and abroad.

Florence Wald, an agnostic and secular humanist, was an open advocate of euthanasia and assisted suicide, while Saunders, a devout Christian, opposed the practice and believed hospice made it unnecessary.

As productive and influential as Florence Wald was, she sharply disagreed with Dame Cicely Saunders’ life-affirming approach to end-of-life care and said: “I know that I differ from Cicely Saunders, who is very much against assisted suicide. I disagree with her view on the basis that there are cases in which either the pain or the debilitation the patient is experiencing is more than can be borne, whether it be economically, physically, emotionally, or socially. For this reason, I feel a range of options should be available to the patient, and this should include assisted suicide.”

So, is Wald saying assisted suicide should be made available for society’s economic needs? Or perhaps she’s referring to the family’s inheritance? Economic because it costs the family too much or the health care system too much? Social reasons because a dying family member is a stressful situation on the family?

Wald’s pro-euthanasia type of hospice is what is being delivered in many parts of this country, though many hospice professionals will strongly deny that. Those who do remain faithful to Dr. Saunders life-affirming vision, who relieve the suffering of the dying until a natural death occurs in its own timing, will say they do not hasten death. Those who do hasten death will say the same. The public often has no way of knowing which type of hospice their loved one will experience.

Many hospice leaders have spoken out against euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the whole American hospice movement has rapidly expanded since its inception. In 1983, Congress required Medicare to pay for hospice care, which put the treatment in mainstream medical practice. According to the Center for Nursing Advocacy, in 2010 over 5,100 hospice programs served nearly 1.6 million patients a year in the United States.

Hospice was once a grass-roots, home-based model of end-of-life care, but is now part and parcel of corporate medicine. In 2005, for-profit organizations accounted for half of all hospices, and they charted profits of about 12 percent from 2001 to 2005, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. (MedPAC) Link

Hospices that remain true to the Cicely Saunders’ life-affirming mission will not hesitate to proclaim the sanctity of life, while they intervene to relieve suffering at the end-of-life. Those for-profit and volunteer hospices that are willing to hasten death normally do not speak about the sanctity of life, and they do not teach their staff to never impose death. In fact, their training results in quite the opposite. The hospice industry has marketed itself as this “compassionate thing” that exists all over the country and is filled with angelic staff who care and work the kind of wonders Dame Saunders encouraged. There are thousands of stories of wonderful care received from hospices and how the patient and the family have benefited. There are also thousands of stories of patients being put to an early death by overdosing with pain cocktails or by dehydration and starvation. There has been a very slick, sophisticated and well-financed campaign to completely twist the positive contributions of hospice into something the public would never openly accept.

To be perfectly clear, water and sustenance are not heroic efforts to keep the dying alive. This is keeping the patient comfortable. When sustenance cannot be delivered, at least hydration can be given to keep the body comfortable. However, there comes a point where the patient’s body shuts down, and neither food nor water are desired or taken and death is imminent. Link

Palliative Care and Terminal Sedation

Palliative care is not exclusively practiced in a hospice. It is the specialization in the field of medicine which relieves the distressing symptoms of any serious illness at any stage of life, whether terminally ill or not. The World Health Organization states that:

“Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.”

Terminal or palliative care is used by a majority of hospices today. This often involves permanently sedating the patient, allowing the patient to dehydrate and die. It looks outwardly peaceful as the patient is made to sleep in a medically-induced coma, but the patient’s death is the result. Terminally-sedating the patient is something that can be done in hospice that doesn’t outwardly appear like euthanasia where a lethal agent is given. (Morphine is the potent opiate which directly effects the central nervous system. It has neurotoxic effects on the brain. Overdoses lead to asphyxia and respiratory depression. It slows metabolism, causes incontinence, and has acute and chronic effects on the endocrine system, blood, the heart and lungs. The hospice “cocktail” usually consists of Ativan, Haldol and Morphine). It also doesn’t outwardly appear like assisted suicide where a patient takes a lethal medication prescribed by a physician. Terminal sedation is more subtle and deceptive. This is what happened to my friend’s relative who I told about in Part 3. The man wanted to be with his family, but food and water was denied by hospice. (Yes, there are hospices that refuse to give any food or water and you must sign on to that when they are hired.) The sedating “cocktails” were given to the point where respiratory function was decreased enough to cause early death.

Palliative medicine is commonly used by hospice to relieve many symptoms of the dying patient. It is precise and tuned especially for each patient’s illness. However, there are facilities wherein every patient is sedated because all the patients are “agitated.” It is a perversion of hospice as well as palliative care. It is a deliberate railroading of patients to an imposed death, a hastened death through “palliative” or “terminal” sedation.

Surprising to many, terminal, palliative or “total” sedation is so commonly used today to hasten death (a method of stealth euthanasia) that it is defined by the pro-euthanasia Compassion and Choice’s “Good to Go Resource Guide” glossary. They define it as:

“the continuous administration of medication to relieve severe, intractable symptoms that cannot be controlled while keeping the patient conscious. This treatment renders the patient unconscious and relieves suffering by inducing an artificial coma. The unconscious state is maintained until death occurs.”

Unfortunately, it is used way too often on patients who are not having severe, intractable symptoms that cannot be controlled while they are conscious.

Ron Panzer of Hospice Patients Alliance states, “In many cases, the Adult Protective Service system is even used to intimidate those who truly care about the patient and object to clinically unnecessary or harmful interventions. These can be as common as giving morphine when there is no pain, sedating a patient who is not agitated, depriving the patient of needed medications when they are still benefiting from them or not providing food and fluids as needed when they patient is still benefiting from them. We have received many calls from families who tell us the hospice falsely accused them of being a threat to their own loved one and called APS when they voiced their objections to the death-protocols being implemented at the hospice. So we have those who truly care about the patient being accused of being a threat, and those who hasten death in charge of the agency entrusted to care for the patient!”

Euthanasia Society and Hospice

Many supporters of the sanctity of life simply do not know how deep this all goes and how successful the heirs of the original Euthanasia Society of America have been in our nation. They do not know how the Euthanasia Society is connected with the largest segment of the hospice industry in America, and when some have finally understood it, they have been shocked. Most of those who affirm the sanctity of life view hospice as the rightful alternative to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Sadly, this is becoming a rarity.

The largest hospice organization in our nation is the successor organization to the Euthanasia Society of America. According to the most prominent hospice leaders in the world, many hospices in the United States today have no reservations about hastening death through “terminal sedation,” or “palliative sedation.” Federal regulations governing hospice are far fewer in number than those protecting patients in nursing homes or hospitals, or that state agencies inspect hospices less frequently than nursing homes or hospitals. Some hospices may go years without being inspected at all. Because of the HIPAA privacy regulations, nobody interested in researching what is actually going on in hospice can get access to the data, so hospices that have an agenda can act without any outside interference or supervision.

Unlike Dame Cicely Saunders, a majority of leaders at the top of today’s hospice certainly look nothing like the sanctity-of-life hospice Dr. Saunders founded, yet they pretend to be. They are what we call utilitarians, interested in the profits, and expansion of their influence and business. The leaders at the top of the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (“NHPCO”) are the Euthanasia Society of America’s heirs and benefactors philosophically. The NHPCO is legally and corporately the final successor organization of the Euthanasia Society in the very strictest sense of the terms.

The Euthanasia Society of America successors, especially in hospice, are now proceeding with their plan to implement stealth euthanasia for citizens whose “quality of life” is deemed “unworthy of life.” The elderly and severely disabled are the targets, which feeds right into Obama Care. They don’t and won’t have to be the “very” elderly or “very” disabled. With Obama Care it will be the “not-so-elderly” (even 60 years old) or disabled, being placed in hospice and dying shortly thereafter, even though they had no terminal illness at all. Others have warned about these developments:

“In an era of cost control and managed care, patients with lingering illnesses may be branded an economic liability, and decisions to encourage death can be driven by cost. As Acting U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger warned in urging the Supreme Court to uphold laws against assisted suicide: “The least costly treatment for any illness is lethal medication.”

Here is the succession of name changes the Euthanasia Society of America has gone through. It is from Ron Panzer’s book, “Stealth Euthanasia, Health Care Tyranny in America.”

Several people who work with the elderly and dying have contacted me with first hand stories of what they’ve seen with hospice care. Others have been family members who have witnessed the lack-of-care in nursing homes and hospitals, as well as the euthanasia tactics of many hospice care givers. Still, some have been treated to wonderful care, the sanctity-of-life treatment Dame Cicely Saunders wanted for all of us who will eventually face death.

In Part 6, we’ll look at the origin of “Living Wills,” the changes to Medicare/Medicaid, and the non-profit and for-profit Hospice organizations and salaries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in Health

Tagged , , , ,

Killing us Softly - Part 1

Posted on May 20, 2026 by | 2 comments

Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless. Pearl S. Buck

Condemned German: “But we didn’t think it would go that far.” American judge: “It went that far the very first time you condemned an innocent human being.” … Conversation in the American motion picture “Judgment at Nuremburg.”

“From the Soviet gulag to the Nazi concentration camps and the killing fields of Cambodia, history teaches that granting the state legal authority to kill innocent individuals has dreadful consequences.” … Pete Du Pont, former Delaware governor

Passive Euthanasia

My dear mother died on July 19, 1994. She had Alzheimer’s, but her death was hurried along because she was deprived of food and water. My baby sister had medical power of attorney and was convinced by the nursing home physicians that mother would feel no pain. When I found out, I called the nursing home in Illinois and spoke to the medical director. I told him I did not want my mother starved and dehydrated to death. He told me she wouldn’t feel anything. He never said she was receiving any pain medication. I responded that there wasn’t much difference between what he was doing to my mother and what was done by the Nazis to concentration camp prisoners. He answered that my mother could feel nothing because she didn’t have her brain function any longer. Of course, being starved and dehydrated doesn’t help with brain function of prisoners either. I hung up and wept bitter tears. Momma died three days later. I later found out that what was done to my mother had been common practice for several decades. My mother did not deserve this end. Hydration would have kept her body comfortable until God took her home.

This is called “Passive Euthanasia.” Euthanasia is Greek for “good death,” but there is nothing good about dying from a lack of hydration. Link Passive Euthanasia is all too common in America today. It is hastening the death of a person by altering some form of support and letting nature take its course. Examples include such things as turning off respirators, halting medications, discontinuing food and water thus allowing a person to dehydrate or starve to death, or failure to resuscitate.

Passive euthanasia also includes giving a patient large doses of morphine to control pain, in spite of the likelihood that the painkiller will suppress respiration and cause death earlier than it otherwise would have happened. Such doses of painkillers have a dual effect of relieving pain and hastening death. Administering such medication is regarded as ethical in most political jurisdictions and by most medical societies, including the special “cocktail” given by Hospice employees.

These procedures are performed on terminally ill, suffering persons so that natural death will occur sooner. They are also commonly performed on persons in a persistent vegetative state; for example, individuals with massive brain damage or in a coma from which they likely will not regain consciousness.

The slippery slope of murdering the vegetative or terminally ill started in l935 in Britain, in l938 in the US, and in l980 in Canada. The British and American groups were very small and insignificant for the next two decades. It became bigger and more vocal after the hugely-publicized Karen Ann Quinlan “right-to-die” case in New Jersey in l976, which revealed to the public the extent of modern medical technology to extend life indefinitely in a persistent vegetative state.

Opinion polls show average support of 60 percent in the USA, 74 percent in Canada, and 80 percent in Britain. When actually voting in official ballot measures, the support has been 46 percent in Washington State (l991), 46 percent in California (l992), and 51 percent in Oregon (l994), which now has legalized assisted suicide. As for physicians, numerous opinion polls indicate that half the medical profession would like to see it made law. It also appears that about 15 percent of physicians already practice it on what they believe are justifiable occasions. Some leaderships of the professional medical associations remain adamantly opposed, but they seem to be declining rapidly.

Those who object to euthanasia are the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as well as fundamentalist protestant denominations. Killing an innocent is a crime against the 6th commandment, “Thou shalt not murder.” This commandment forbids the killing of the innocent, not the killing of the guilty, which can be sometimes ordered by the state for the common good. This is clear in the Old testament where Moses also gave laws to kill the guilty, and in the doctrine of the above mentioned churches. Euthanasia is a crime against the same commandment, just as is abortion. They are both murder.

Three people have told me about deaths in their family and what has happened with hospital employees and Hospice care. My mother’s experience was in an Alzheimer’s nursing home. Their stories are going to become more common with Obama Care. Here is the American physician’s original Hippocratic Oath. (Russian and Islamic physicians take different oaths.)

The Original Oath of Hippocrates

“I SWEAR by Apollo the physician and Asclepius,(the Greek god of medicine and healing) and Hygieia, (daughter of the god of medicine, Asclepius, and the goddess/personification of health) and Panaceia, (another daughter and goddess of Universal remedy) and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment, this Oath and this covenant. To hold him who has taught me this Art as equal to me as my parents, and to live my life in partnership, and if he is in need of money, to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brother in male lineage and to teach them this art, if they desire to learn it, without fee and covenant, to give a share of the precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else. I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick, according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness, I will guard my life and my Art. I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work. Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all internal injustice, of all mischief, and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves. What I may see or hear, in the course of treatment or even outside the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about. If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite be my lot.”

Obviously, one does not have to swear allegiance to a Greek polytheistic deity, but swearing the oath to a personal God is a tie that binds. The rest of the oath is pretty clear. Of special import is the portion I highlighted. Sadly today, our medical personnel have decided to speed death along rather than giving aid and comfort to the sick and suffering. They’ve become the “god” who decides life and death. I fear this practice on the sick and elderly will accelerate in the coming years, no, actually I know it will accelerate. For 40 years we have murdered the most innocent, America’s unborn babies. When I wrote the article, THE CULTURE OF DEATH, I said I would write another article regarding after-birth abortion proponents and their plans. I couldn’t bring myself to face the research I’d collected to write that article. The truth of our death culture is often more than I can bear especially with the babies. The elderly in our country have been the targets for decades as well. Instead of being cherished and honored, they are being treated as “useless eaters” that should quickly die. We need to know what to expect, what to alert our loved ones to watch for, and what to tell them we want at the end of our lives.

In 1993, Dr. Reed Bell wrote the book, Prescription Death: Compassionate Killers in the Medical Profession. He discussed the changes that had taken place in European countries over the previous 25 years. These changes are now happening in America at an exponential speed. Our culture has changed from a basic Judeo-Christian ethos and ethic to the prevailing secular humanist ethic and ethos. We have moved from a sanctity-of-life ethic to a “quality-of-life” ethic. Since 1973, we have accepted the right of women to kill their unborn babies for any reason at all because it’s a woman’s “right to choose,” and now, with Obama Care, we are moving rapidly to condoning suicide and the “right-to-die.”

One of the most frightening aspects of the euthanasia movement is called crypthanasia, (active euthanasia on sick people without their knowledge). A typical case might be an older person who has suffered a heart attack and is in the emergency room. His problem could be ameliorated with a pace maker, but because of his age and the cost of care, he is denied treatment and is allowed to die, or even assisted in dying (murdered)-by a physician who has decided he is not worth saving. This is done without the patient’s or his family’s knowledge or consent. The Judeo-Christian ethic has moved to a quality-of-life ethic and eventually moves to a “compassionate killing” of patients and the “duty-to-die.” Once we’ve accepted the notion there is a “right-to-die,” it doesn’t take much rationalizing to accept the idea that there may also be a “duty-to-die” and that our medical profession has an obligation to help people along in the dying process-even against their will.

The Manufacturer’s Handbook is clear throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Clearly, life is a gift, and only God Himself has the right to choose when our lives on earth come to an end. Human beings are not animals but unique beings made “in the image of God” (Gen 1:26-28). God says, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and “CHOOSE LIFE” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Life is a gift from God and the moment of death is God’s prerogative. “Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; ” (Job 14:5).

“To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted” (Eccl 3:1-2).

Sickness or injury at the end of life can cause suffering that can be trying on the family as well. Yet, again, God says, “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer … Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev 2:10).

God can heal even the hopeless cases. “…heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt 10:8). “For with God, nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

The majority of us fighting the onslaught of Communism in our beloved country are baby boomers. We are the ones the Communists in our governments want to eliminate next, most likely through Obama Care, which is a huge tentacle of UN Agenda 21’s population reduction plans. I’ve had several phone calls from friends whose family members have died in hospital or with hospice. The effort by medical care givers to speed the last breath of the dying is obvious in many cases.

One wonders, “Where is the church?” This is a question I’m often asked by those of you who read my articles. We’ll look at the church in an article to follow this one. Pray for our nation, pray for her people, repent for our sins, plead for mercy, and fight the monster of Communism. “And having done all, to STAND!”

 

2 Comments

Posted in Pro-Life

Tagged , , , , ,