rssThe VA Pulls the ‘Death Book’ [UPDATE: Just One Local VA Website]
Monday, August 24, 2009 at 3:29 pm
- 5 Comments
According to David Freddoso, the Department of Veterans Affairs has yanked “Your Life, Your Choices: Planning for Future Medical Decisions,” a guide to writing a living will, from the main portion of its web site. That’s not quite right; a Website for the Puget Sound VA has done this, not the VA itself. But it’s the first buckle in a campaign to turn the document into a cause for scandal.
Jed Lewison does a good job of shredding an argument that made the rounds on Fox News all weekend: that the VA is handing out a “death book” telling veterans to kill themselves.
The book itself is subtitled “How to Prepare a Living Will.” Fox News Sunday gave a full airing to the strange spin of Jim Towey, a disgruntled former Bush administration employee.
My problem with the document, Chris, is that the author of it is a proponent of assisted suicide. He’s way out there on that issue. And the VA has been using this; a new directive just came out in July urging providers to refer patients to it. so in my view, there should be a balanced treatment. And this is a slippery slope that kind of makes people — when you look at the document, it makes people feel like they’re a burden and that they should do the decent thing and die.
Where to start? First of all, the book has six co-authors. Towey claims that Dr. Robert Pearlman was the primary author, and he was one of more than a dozen doctors who signed a 1996 amicus brief supporting, with limitations, the right of “dying patients” to assisted suicide. Towey claims that the book “makes people feel like they’re a burden,” when almost every reference in the book to “burdens” is about patients saving their families from the “burden” of wondering what the patients might have wanted as they lay in vegetative states. The other references look more like this:
And what does it say about assisted suicide?
Nonetheless, all it took was an article and a Fox News appearance for one man to scare the VA into pulling this material.
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5 Comments
Comment posted August 24, 2009 @ 9:12 pm
God, officials really have to stop kowtowing to this junk. Much like reacting to a screaming child, the more you play into it, the more you encourage it. Unless there is pushback, then this behavior will continue.
Comment posted August 25, 2009 @ 12:40 am
Apparently this was published in 2007 when George W. Bush was president. Fox News viewers, of course, will never know that. Why? Because Fox News won't tell them.
Comment posted August 25, 2009 @ 2:40 am
Don't call 911 if my heart stops. Are you sure?
Does CPR really save lives?
Would I feel any pain in a coma?
Page 2
This a lousy and pathetic way to start a book! Why don't you kill yourself is clearly the message of this book! I live in a nursing home which might be a reason that life is not worth living or I can no longer walk.
George W. Bush pulled this book and Obama has reinstated it.
Pingback posted August 25, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
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Pingback posted August 25, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
[...] Here is what the book actually says about assisted suicide (from David Weigel of The Washington Independent) [...]
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