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Michael Hickson

Last month, a disabled, 46-year-old African American man was euthanized without his consent or that of his wife. But rather than exploding amid our racial-justice moment, the story hardly yielded a peep from those who control our national discourse.

In 2017, Michael Hickson suffered a brain injury that left him paralyzed. Still, he was able to enjoy many activities: having books read to him, listening to music, answering trivia questions. He had memory problems, but he recalled his birthday and Social Security number with ease. Michael was leading the kind of life many people with disabilities do: not without difficulties but intrinsically valuable and dignified.

Then Michael contracted COVID-19 and was admitted to St. David’s Medical Center of South Austin, Texas. A disagreement over his care led to medical decision-making being taken away from his wife and given to the state and his medical team.

Michael didn’t do well and needed intensive care. His wife, Melissa, apparently did not trust his medical team and decided to (legally) record the exchange she had with her husband’s doctor.

As the recording shows, both agreed that Michael should not be intubated, but Melissa still wanted Michael to be treated aggressively. The doctor insisted aggressive treatment wouldn’t “help him improve” and “right now, his quality of life . . . he doesn’t have much of one.”

Melissa was taken aback: “What do you mean?” she asked. “Because he’s paralyzed with a brain injury, he doesn’t have quality of life?”

“Correct,” the doctor flatly replied.

Pressed further by Melissa, who admirably kept her cool, the doctor admitted he’d had three patients survive who were in Michael’s situation but claimed her husband’s case “doesn’t fit those three.”

read more:

https://nypost.com/2020/07/10/doctors-didnt-try-to-save-black-covid-19-patient-who-was-paralyzed/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

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    • No, it is not that. It is that unless the cure goes into big pharma's pocket, they will literally kill to conceal it. I know an organic clean farmer who is partners with a brilliant doctor. Together they have built up their raw milk, beef and pork to high levels of Omega 3, which is healing. Some high-powered doctors came from Chicago to talk to them about investing in them if they would expand their farm. The upshot is that that docs told them after hearing about everything, to stay small or get bodyguards. 

      That's the America we have under this corporatocracy.

  • The job of the FDA is SAFETY, not efficacy. The market should be allowed to decide if a treatment is effective. But like all the other gov alphabet agencies it's corporate controlled. So cheap/effective cures are suppressed. Dr. Robert Rowan one of the most well known ozone pioneers went to Sierra Leone and treated Ebola pts and every person he treated was cured. The prez of the country invited him to come. The HEALTH MINISTER shut it down. Slow expensive deaths are the goal. He's treating Covid pt's and curing them. Therapeutic doses of IV vit C, systemic ozone, nebulizing diluted hydrogen peroxide all effective treatments for Covid. But nonpatentable, and CHEAP. Which is good for us but bad for big pharma. Gates and his cohorts (including Clinton Foundation) stand to make Billions, if not Trillions (globally) by manditory vacines. Listen to Judy Mikovits on deaths from cytocine storm after people got Corona virus vaccines in past. Same thing happened with swine flu vaccine. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSgN8ONNKVs Mercola interviews Judy Mikovits

    Goldman Sachs & CNBC admitted it a year ago:

    "curing people is NOT a sustainable business model"

    Goldman warns researchers NOT to go for cures

    Most drugs are made in China, so why so expensive in USA than anywhere else?

    FDA doesn't care about quality, only #BigPharma profits    David Knight

    YOUR adult stem cells, from YOUR fat

    -aren't a drug

    -aren't patentable

    -now banned by FDA

     

    “Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.” Vladimir Lenin

  • We will be getting more of this not less. Ordinary people are weeds to the NWO/one world gov oligarchs (including Gates who will be killing us with his vaccines)

    by Betsy McCaughey

    August 28, 2009

    LifeNews.com Note: Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York state. This opinion column originally appeared in the Wall St. Journal and does not necessarily represent the complete views of LifeNews.com.

    Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving.

    Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

    The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare.

    Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House’s health initiative.

    Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

    True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors’ ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition to ‘use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment’ as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

    In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient’s needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007).

    Of course, patients hope their doctors will have that single-minded devotion. But Dr. Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care." One sign of progress he sees: "the progression in end-of-life care mentality from ‘do everything’ to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible." (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

    "In the next decade every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources. There is no consensus about what substantive principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations," he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 19, 2002. Yet Dr. Emanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line.

    "You can’t avoid these questions," Dr. Emanuel said in an Aug. 16 Washington Post interview. "We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a ‘God committee’ to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions."

    Dr. Emanuel argues that to make such decisions, the focus cannot be only on the worth of the individual. He proposes adding the communitarian perspective to ensure that medical resources will be allocated in a way that keeps society going: "Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

    In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.

    "However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated (see Dr. Emanuel’s chart nearby).

    Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

    The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, ‘It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,’ this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

     

     

    •  Josef Mengele is alive and well ... running the CDC and WHO.  A friend of the Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies the modern medical ethic is profit above lives... Expecting premium medical care is costly... although in actual terms it is not... drugs are cheap to produce and the research and development costs are often inflated to justify huge fees once approve.  Greed and avarice are now being replaced by a new ethic... it is no longer 'do no harm' it is maximizing profit and eliminate the elderly,, disabled and others with extensive medical problems.

      Resources are not scarce... money to supply the resources is what is short.  The Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, and medical caregivers all want more... and the patients are where they expect to obtain more.  The Eugenist are at work deciding how long you may live and soon enough it will be based on one's ability to produce sufficient income to justify the air you consume.

    • Wow. Just wow. "The Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, and medical caregivers all want more... and the patients are where they expect to obtain more." Now you are criticizing the best medical system in the US built on private companies. Why don't you be honest and tell us that you advocate for socialized medicine now? What other great ideas do you have? Government regulations of private companies that built the best healthcare system in the first place? Wow!!!

    • Paul...

      First, America doesn't have the best medical system in the world... PERIOD, not by a long shot.  We are not even in the top 15 countries.  You are buying into the lie regarding our quality of life and medical care.  Our Public Schools and private medical systems are broken and extremely expensive.   We are not getting the care we are paying for and quality care continues to deteriorate.  Given the trend reported in the article above, American's are at receiving rationed care and being euthanized without being informed...

      America once had the best medical system in the world...  every State had State, County, City, and Christian not for profit hospitals...  there were very few for-profit hospitals in the '50s.  The medical clinicians and providers were focused on care before profit. However, when the State-run hospitals were largely closed and sold to private enterprises and health insurance was introduced, the system took a nosedive in the quality and quantity of care.  Fees for service skyrocketed and the profit motive replaced quality of care as the motive for rendering medical services.   

      In the '50s medical insurance was unheard of ... people paid as they went for great medical care.  Medical bankruptcies were rare, unlike today. In 1970, the U.S. devoted 6.9% of its gross domestic product to total health spending (both through public and private funds). By 2018, the amount spent on healthcare had increased to 17.7% of GDP. In 1950, health expenditures accounted for only 4.6% of the gross domestic product (GDP).  Fees for medical care took off with the mass introduction of Private Health Insurance and the privatization of public hospitals and clinics... for-profit medical care.

       In 2018, the U.S. spent about $10,600 per person on healthcare — the highest healthcare costs per capita across the developed world. For comparison, Switzerland was the second highest-spending country with about $7,300 in healthcare costs per capita, while the average for developed countries, was only $5,300 per person.  In exchange for that the huge premium the United States ranks 15th among the world's quality of life index.

      The US ranks 46th in life expectancy, 15th in quality of life and 50th in infant mortality rates... we are not number one on any scale for any medical measurement of quality.  Get an EDUCATION before mouthing off. I am not for socialized anything... I am also not for the low quality of care in exchange for extremely high costs.  I personally can report that I spent 5 days in intensive care... with Doctors and Nurses standing over me the whole time in Saudia Arabia... and the bill was less than 2000.00 US Dollars.  That same care would have been over 50,000 in the US. 

      I noticed your comments often reflect a feudalistic obeisance and blind fielty... that is not what our founders intended.  The Patriot is not receiving what he is paying for in the medical system or from government and frankly, there is little difference between in the bottom line regardless of which party in power... The national debt is out of control, the government continues to grow, and the public receives less for their tax and consumer dollars each year.

      See: 

      https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1200478

      https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-h...

      https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality...

      https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

      https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

    • Thanks for all this information, and for letting us know that you are advocating socialized health care that you say delivers better numbers than our health care system does, and at half of the cost to boot. Guess what! Your Saudi friends come to the US if they need medical treatment. Entire wings at Johns Hopkins are blocked off for the Saudis. Why? Because the US obviously delivers the best health care in the world. Otherwise the Saudis would stay at home and go to the great socialized hospitals you rave about.

    • I'm not sure the best medical care system didn't exist when I was a kid, when we went to the doctor, paid about $20 bucks or so, and done was done. Now, the layers of middle management has cost taxpayers/patients/insurance companies tons of bucks. Is it reasonable for a hospital stay to be the kind of exhorbitant cost that it is now? That pharma makes so much while they price drugs higher for Americans than for Europeans? Under the remains of 0care and gov.co's "war on drugs", a patient having surgery, bringing in her pre-existing meds for a back condition (pain meds), had those pain meds measured out to her by the hour, with no consideration that her surgery was July3, and the dispensary would be closed the next day, leaving her out of her necessary back pain meds for two days. She thought she was going to die with pain. My friend. True story. Next true story. Bleeding after aneurism surgery. Patient back to ER, ER full of people, all kinds of conditions, trauma. Wheel chair brought out, no wiping down of wheel chair for bleeding patient, surgery the day before. Open wound. Brought into waiting room with all the other patients, who know what they had. It took a bit before the wife could get someone to separate her older husband from the ones in the lobby. Should they need to have been told to get this fragile patient separated? Just sayin' .  For all the cost, 0 forced big changes. Doctors forced to buy into hospitials. It is much more a money fund than before. 0 did real damage. Many docs retired when 0care took effect. Trump is forcing them to publish their costs. He sees the racket that came from 0care. 

    • Jea9...

      The accounts you cited above are not unusual today... Is there any wonder Medical Malpractice Insurance is so high... and that ambulance-chasing pettifoggers are raking in huge settlements, which are passed on to the consumers of health services in increased fees for services?

    • That is true, they are everywhere. Corporate medicine is almost as bad as no medicine. We need a from the bottom demanding local food and no more from China or even Mexico. California could be a breadbasket if managed right.....

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