“The game of life is hard to play — I’m gonna to lose it anyway”

A variety of interesting thoughts are presented in Reuters, Death and dying: When is it time to let go?, July 31, 2007:

• End-of-life issues top the list of ethical dilemmas hospitals face as medical progress enables doctors to extend an endangered life to the hard-to-determine point where they may actually only be dragging out death.

• These patients used to just die naturally, but now it might be doctors, hospital ethics committees or courts that decide if and when to let them. The more science discovers, especially about the brain, the harder it can get to make that decision.

• “Our technology is ahead of our morals,” said Washington Hospital Center medical director John Lynch. “From an ethical point of view, we haven’t learned when to use our technology.

• Even if further treatment is clearly futile, worried families can have difficulty accepting that a loved one in intensive care will not make it through * * *.

• “The two biggest manipulation tools that patients and family use are God and lawyers,” said Nneka Mokwunye, director of the Center for Ethics at the Washington Hospital Center.  “They know that lawyers scare the bejesus out of doctors,” she said, “and if the lawyers don’t scare them, God will. If somebody says you must keep my loved one alive until God performs a miracle, they don’t know how to respond to that.”

• New research shows patients deemed brain-dead might still be conscious.

• About 15 percent of patients actually sign advance order for end-of-life care.

Acknowledgment:  The title quote is from Suicide is Painless, better known as the theme song from M*A*S*H.