New Hampshire's legislature is considering a bill to address end-of-life care that includes language that may give hospital ethics committees the legal right to withdraw care from a patient. Pamela Hennessy comments:
Hospital ethics committees are not groups of doctors who interact with patients, families or caregivers of the patient. Rather, they are people who protect the legal interests of the hospital or nursing home, particularly when disputes over care arise. To a great degree, they mind the company store -- not necessarily the customer.It's also passive euthanasia, aimed at eliminating the weak and helpless. Remember Terri Schiavo, Andrea Clark, Haleigh Poutre, and, most recently, Yenlang Vo. Read the rest, including legislative contact information, at the North Country Gazette.Putting the power to end the lives of people they don't know, based on cost containment practices or life quality judgments is not only an invasion of the patient's privacy -- it's asinine.
