Palliative Care: The New Stealth Euthanasia

Since the mid-1990s, several influential grant makers have collaborated to “change how we die in America.” Palliative care was their vehicle. However, the problem in palliative care is not strictly due to “the euthanasia movement,” as it is commonly known. Yes, there are a number of palliative care leaders who are affiliated with Compassion & Choices, (formerly known as the Hemlock Society) or who admit to being in favor of assisted ѕυιcιdє and euthanasia.  But, there is an equal threat coming from a growing cohort of bioethicists, physicians (often at academic health centers), community organizers and hospital/hospice administrators. They usually claim to be “neutral” on decriminalization of physician assisted ѕυιcιdє, and some will even say they oppose it. In reality, they promote the hastening of death by blurring the line between passive euthanasia (withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment or death by overdose of opioids) and good, common-sense medical care.



Who’s funding the movement?
Much of the funding to promote passive euthanasia came from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, beginning in the eighties, and from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, beginning in the nineties. RWJF funded infrastructure changes in the health care system, and Soros funded leadership development.
RWJF is known for making grants that promote single-payer universal health care, but perhaps is less known for its promotion of palliative care. Initially, RWJF funded a multiyear project whose results helped frame a three-pronged strategy for foundation funding as outlined in the Hastings Center Report: (1) Change professional education (i.e., for doctors, nurses, chaplains, social workers); (2) change institutions; and (3) change public attitude.
RWJF chose Midwest Bioethics Center (now the Center for Practical Bioethics) to lead a national program called Community-State Partnerships to Improve End-of-Life Care. This was to help build statewide coalitions.  Led by bioethics centers, ethics committees and ethics networks, they helped frame changes in state-level policy/guidelines on withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining procedures and pain management.

Among the early PDIA grant recipients were members of Choice in Dying, a right-to-die group known for its promotion of living wills and the “right to refuse treatment.”In the early nineties, Choice in Dying launched a demonstration project that became known as Education for Physicians on End of-Life Care, to incorporate end-of-life care into medical education.Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine was one of the sites. A few years later, the school received a PDIA grant to develop RC EPEC, a parallel, end-of-life education program for Catholics, which was incorporated into the “Recovering Our Traditions” materials/conferences of the Supportive Care Coalition (a coalition of Catholic health care organizations).

Ira Byock, now professor at Dartmouth Medical School and chair of its palliative medicine program, was another early PDIA grant recipient. Byock was a hospice proponent and nominally opposed to assisted ѕυιcιdє. He was, however, a big fan of pushing the envelope on the “right to refuse treatment.” For example, in the March/April 1995 issue of the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care, he wrote that though he would not write a prescription to help the patient commit ѕυιcιdє, he would “share with the patient information that he or she already has the ability to exert control over the timing [of] death. Virtually any patient with far advanced illness can be assured of dying—comfortably, without any additional physical distress—within one or two weeks simply by refusing to eat or drink.”
Byock worked with Karen Kaplan of Choice in Dying to give the old right-to-die organization a new “consumerist” look, and in 1998, the two announced that Choice in Dying would evolve into Partnership for Caring. Two years later, the Annals of Internal Medicine (March 7, 2000) published a controversial article he coauthored with Timothy Quill. They promoted “terminal sedation” and “voluntary refusal of food and fluids” as a way to hasten death.

How Catholic chaplains were lured in
Even the National Association for Catholic Chaplains has been influenced by this agenda. Palliative care teams include chaplains and are quickly becoming the standard in end-of-life care. When the NACC was restructured in 2000, the president and chief executive officer of HealthCare Chaplaincy (a multifaith organization funded by Soros, and Mary and Laurance S. Rockefeller, among others) was appointed to its board of directors. In 2004, professional pastoral care organizations, including the NACC, agreed to abide by a common code of ethics and common principles for processing ethical complaints. Then, in 2007, the Hastings Center and the HealthCare Chaplaincy received a grant to research “professionalizing” health care chaplaincy and to assess quality improvement.
NACC recommends that members receive training from the RWJF-funded Center to Advance Palliative Care’s Leadership Centers. Part of the training focuses on enabling the palliative care team—with its built-in chaplain— to obtain a position of trust with the patient and family. Spirituality is emphasized over religion. In fact, one RWJF/PDIA project (a November 2001 Last Acts workshop) went so far as to ask members to take the “religion” out of their work and instead be spiritual advisers and listeners.

The Catholic health connection
Supportive Care of the Dying was an organizational partner of Partnership for Caring, a right-to-die organization. Partnership for Caring dissolved, and Supportive Care of the Dying changed its name to the Supportive Care Coalition. The Catholic Health Association was one of the founders of SCC.
SCC’s message has not changed much over the past decade. Just as Choice in Dying promoted living wills, so does SCC. Just as Choice in Dying worked with the Center for Practical Bioethics, so does SCC. Just as Choice in Dying supported withholding/withdrawing from patients in a “vegetative state,” so does SCC. These are just some examples of how the bioethics/right-to-die movement has been incorporated into the Catholic health care system.
 
SCC’s former executive director, Sylvia McSkimming, and Catholic Health Initiatives’ senior vice president for advocacy, Colleen Scanlon, wrote an article for the September 15, 2001 issue of Catholic Health World (published by the Catholic Health Association) titled “End-of-Life Training Improves Patient Care.” In it, they discuss SCC’s first train-the-trainer session for nurses using the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium program, the nursing version of RWJF’s strategy to change professional education. They concluded, “Slowly and steadily we are moving beyond making a difference one death at a time to shaping end-of-life expectations and, ultimately, changing our culture.”

The palliative care movement is changing medical care in this country. With the “help” of Catholic health organizations such as SCC, we are turning away from life saving medicine to life rationing medicine.

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Who is behind the palliative care movement?
Some of the newly anointed “palliative care experts” are members of radical right-to-die organizations that supported the decriminalization of physician assisted ѕυιcιdє in Oregon or wrote articles in support of it:
Timothy Quill, a Death with Dignity board member, is notable for his article on facilitating the death of his patient “Diane.” He is now considered an expert trainer at the Center to Advance Palliative Care’s Leadership Centers.
Sean Morrison, who coauthored a controversial national survey on physician-assisted ѕυιcιdє with Quill in 1998, is now director of the National Palliative Care Research Center and was recently elected president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a Compassion & Choices advisory board member, is influential in pediatric palliative care. Dubler was tapped by the Hastings Center (arguably the nation’s most influential bioethics think tank) to develop an end-of-life conflict resolution and mediation program that will no doubt find its way into medical standards and government policies, as do most Hastings Center guidelines.

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John Mallon is a Catholic journalist and contributing editor for Inside the Vatican magazine. His personal web site is http://johnmallon.net .

Palliative Care: The New Stealth Euthanasia

Since the mid-1990s, several influential grant makers have collaborated to “change how we die in America.” Palliative care was their vehicle. However, the problem in palliative care is not strictly due to “the euthanasia movement,” as it is commonly known. Yes, there are a number of palliative care leaders who are affiliated with Compassion & Choices, (formerly known as the Hemlock Society) or who admit to being in favor of assisted ѕυιcιdє and euthanasia.  But, there is an equal threat coming from a growing cohort of bioethicists, physicians (often at academic health centers), community organizers and hospital/hospice administrators. They usually claim to be “neutral” on decriminalization of physician assisted ѕυιcιdє, and some will even say they oppose it. In reality, they promote the hastening of death by blurring the line between passive euthanasia (withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment or death by overdose of opioids) and good, common-sense medical care.

Extremely important topic and very well said.

I've seen it first hand with my grandparents, they treat these people like lab rats because they're elderly so who cares (they did the same with us given the jab mandates, absolute criminals, also used it to purge the good ones from the profession so it's going to implode IMO)... then you've got the fine line between removing pain and hastening death... you treat pain and if it hastens death for the very elderly and frail then it's not euthanasia but of course, if the goal is more hastening death rather than alleviating pain then that is a diabolical perversion!

It's like doping in sports, most of us rightfully condemn it but as soon as you get into the details, it's not so clear cut anymore as to what's considered an 'unfair' advantage and what isn't and then you've got all the ways the athletes try to get an 'edge' and then this subject becomes very grey... thus what's in the heart matters so when they are pro euthanasia, run a mile from them, for they are just as likely to 'euthanise' you without your knowledge or consent.

I've lost all trust in the medical establishment and will avoid them like the plague and never take a new drug without a well known and established rap sheet in order to make an informed decision. One day I'll probably have to take a risk somewhere not being an expert in the subject, but I'd rather do nothing than be murdered by these people.

You know, I wondered why 'euthanasia' was being embraced by so many people and being pushed into the main stream... well I don't wonder that anymore because many of these evil people were already doing it without peoples knowledge or consent.

"Our Lady of Victory, Ark of the New Covenant, Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate, Pray for us."

God Bless

United Nations is definitely a pusher and just take a look what they are for decriminalizing ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, porn, and euthanasia.  You mention it, they make wrong , ok.  No wonder we have over 435,000 invader criminals in the USA right now with not supervision.  Here in Glendale, AZ made the news yesterday, criminal picked up, let go, and he murdered/decapitated his mom's head all in the same day.

And know this, all dioceses run parishes are known as Civil Society organizations (CSO's).  They answer to the United Nations.  CSO's do as the UN says to do.  

Yes.  The UN owns our dioceses.  As a child, they had us collect money for poor children in foreign countries.  They would feed them rice when they could ship out better quality food.  They still scoop out this gruel stuff with added ingredients.  While those at top of UN and dioceses eat filet mignon, lobster etc.  The UN are deranged narcissists thinking they are mythical gods and goddesses.

It's like what Tucker Carlson so perfectly points out... They donate to these nameless and faceless people/causes... yet how do they treat those they know with names and faces? How do they treat their co-workers, staff, family etc? If not good then the other is a lie, like Judas, complaining not because he cared for the poor but because he was stealing from the money bag.

I remember many years ago going to a so called 'Catholic' School... they'd have those Caritas boxes going around encouraging people to donate money... nobody knows where all that's going, you think your doing good but there is no name or face, could be going anywhere, then many years later we find they were supporting abortion and other evil things... same when running into those salesmen down the street trying to sell charity... clearly they were getting a cut from it all... no thanks.

Then later find out even my own government were funding abortion and contraceptives in other parts of the world billed as 'Healthcare' and 'Charity' what an absolute joke...

They are deranged narcissists, then look at the Church, when one of them gets caught abusing children, he should go to jail obviously, but then they demand damages from the Church, which is our money, not theirs, so people who did nothing wrong are paying damages for wicked snakes in the Church who they had noting to do with. So darn corrupt and messed up... hence, back to Tucker Carlson's advice, donate to names and faces and people you know, not large faceless entities which easily become scamming and looting operations.

God Bless