VA’s Death Book – Update

Is this how we repay veterans for their patriotic service to America?

This is a follow-up on my previous post, “DeathCare For Veterans.”

My updates are in blue.

Here’s page 21 from the Veterans Administration’s handbook, Your Life, Your Choices, on “What makes your life worth living.”

The handbook has 6 authors. The two leading or senior authors are Robert Pearlman, MD MPH, and Helene Starks, MPH.

Pearlman was among a group of bioethicists who filed an Amicus Curiae supporting the respondents (Timothy Quill, Samuel Klagsbrun, and Howard Grossman — all MDs), in a 1997 Supreme Court case, “Vacco v. Quill.” The respondents and Pearlman favor “right to die,” otherwise known as physician-assisted suicides.

The other leading author of the VA death handbook is Helene Starks. You’d be comforted (not!) in knowing that she is on record as being pro-euthanasia.

In other words, the two senior authors of this VA handbook are both in favor of euthanasia.

I read all 52 pages of the handbook. What I find most disturbing is page 21. The handbook is in pdf format, so I can’t copy & paste it onto this blog. The following is the best I can do.

While you read the text I reproduced from page 21, ask yourself this question: “What is the purpose of having a veteran ask him/herself all these questions? What’s the point?”

Read this, then tell me if this isn’t a subtle ecouragement to sick or elderly veterans to just give up on life?

After you’ve read the material below, please be sure to read the Update!

~Eowyn

…………

From p. 21 of the Veterans Administration’s death handbook, Your Life, Your Choices:

Instructions: This exercise will help you think about and express what really matters to you. For each row, check (✔) one answer to express how you would feel if this factor by itself described you.

For each the following questions, the veteran is asked what he thinks his “life like this would be“:

• difficult but acceptable?
• worth living,  but just barely?
• not worth living? [the word "not" is underlined in the handbook]
• can’t answer now?

Here are the questions:

a. I can no longer walk but get around in a wheelchair.

b. I can no longer get outside—I spend all day at home.

c. I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being.

d. I am in severe pain most of the time.

e. I have severe discomfort most of the time (such as nausea, diarrhea, or shortness of breath).

f. I rely on a feeding tube to keep me alive.

g. I rely on a kidney dialysis machine to keep me alive.

h. I rely on a breathing machine to keep me alive.

i. I need someone to help take care of me all of time.

j. I can no longer control my bladder.

k. I can no longer control my bowels.

l. I live in a nursing home.

m. I can no longer think clearly-I am confused all the time.

n. I can no longer recognize family/friends

o. I can no longer talk and be understood by others.

p. My situation causes severe emotional burden for my family (such as feeling worried or stressed all the time).

q. I am a severe financial burden on my family.

r. I cannot seem to “shake the blues.”

s. Other (write in):

At the bottom of the page is this:

Instructions: To help others make sense out of your answers, think about the following questions and be sure to explain your answers to your loved ones and health care providers.

If you checked “worth living, but just barely” for more than one factor, would a combination of these factors make your life “not worth living?” If so, which factors?
If you checked “not worth living,” does this mean that you would rather die than be kept alive?
If you checked “can’t answer now,” what information or people do you need to help you decide?

**********************

UPDATE I:

Now that you’ve read the above, which is taken from page 21 of the VA handbook, Your Life, Your Choices, let me ask you all this question:

Let’s say, a veteran is depressed and responds to Question b’s “I can no longer get outside—I spend all day at home” with “my life is not worth living.” He then, as per the handbook’s instruction, inform his loved ones and health care providers about his answer.

What are they supposed to do with this information? Put a pillow over his face and kill him? — all because, in one moment in his life while reading this Death Handbook, he thought his life is not worth living because he “spends all day at home and can no longer get outside”?

The proper and humane and respectful thing for the Veterans Administration to do is to urge any veteran who thinks his life is not worth living because he spends all day at home to IMMEDIATELY GET THERAPY FOR  HIS DEPRESSION!

There are solutions to many of the scenarios posed in this Death Book, such as:

• Anti-depressant med and/or psychotherapy for a veteran who “can no longer get outside and spends all day at home” or who “can no longer walk but get around in a wheelchair”;
• Family counseling for a vet who feels he “can no longer contribute to his family’s well being”;
• Surgery to repair sphincter muscles for a vet who “can no longer control his bowels”;
• Better pain med for a vet who is “in severe pain most of the time”;
• Better more effective med for a vet who is in “severe discomfort most of the time (such as nausea, diarrhea, or shortness of breath).”

All of this, of course, cost money. Which is the reason for this VA Death Book’s very subtle message to vets to just give up.

The fundamental mistake is to put government in charge of health care, including veterans’ health care. Instead, if individuals — including vets — are given tax incentives in the form of “health care dollars” to spend, we can shop around for the best health care from PRIVATE healthcare providers. That, in turn, creates competition among all these private entities, which then lowers medical costs. Instead of doing that, Obama and the Dems mean to exacerbate the problem by nationalizing all health care, thereby subjecting all Americans to the VA’s brand of “health” care.

UPDATE II (8/30/09):

The Veterans Administration has removed its death book, My Life, My Choices, from the website: http://www1.va.gov/pugetsound/docs/ylyc.pdf. If one goes there, this is the message you get:

PAGE NOT FOUND: The page you are looking for is unavailable. The page name may have changed, or the page has been removed.

Interesting, uh? You think the uproar from our expose has something to do with this?

~Eowyn

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