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Thursday, August 5, 2004 |
Reuters: "In face-to-face interviews with 410 physicians in the Netherlands, 52 percent said that in the previous two years they had administered sedating medications while withholding fluids and nutrition for patients nearing death.
Hastening death was partly the intention of the physician in 47 percent of the terminal sedation cases and the explicit intention for 17 percent.
According to their report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Judith A. C. Rietjens from Erasmus Medical Center in Amsterdam, and colleagues, found that physicians discussed the use of terminal sedation with the patient in 59 percent of cases and with patients' relatives 93 percent of instances. The decision to forgo food and water was discussed with the patient in only 34 percent of cases.
While physicians surveyed 'almost always' discussed the use of terminal sedation with relatives, Rietjens and colleagues found it 'remarkable' that general practitioners often did not consult other physicians or caregivers and rarely sought the advice of specialists in palliative care or pain management.
This concerns Dr. Muriel R. Gillick from Harvard Medical School in Boston, who notes in an editorial that 'although state-of-the-art palliative care should substantially control pain in 90 percent of cases', pain was the most common reason for turning to terminal sedation.
'That the Dutch physicians seldom used palliative care consultation underscores the concern that they may have used terminal sedation when a less drastic approach existed,' Gillick writes."
I fully agree with Dr. Gillick. From personal experience I know that it is enough for one nurse (who does not personally know the patient) to mention to the physician that the patient is having pain, for a parcel to arrive from the chemist with heavy morphiates without any information leaflets. If you ask for such a leaflet you immediately understand that when administered the patient will die in a couple of hours. I think this is inadmissible. No information, or wrong information, is given by doctors; nothing is done to ease the pain by other means (because the health insurance will not pay for this in the case of terminal patients). And in many cases the doctors disregard the wishes of the patients and their families.
1:19:33 PM 
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Slate: "In a court filing on Friday, the administration announced its intention to deny Guantanamo Bay detainees full access to counsel to prepare their habeas corpus petitions and signaled that it would resume its relentless legal tactics to fight the detainees in the courts on a host of procedural issues."
Asia Times: "'Pakistan is not sending its troops to Iraq.' So reads the most recent handout from the Pakistani Foreign Office and the clearest signal yet that President General Pervez Musharraf is finally attempting to distance himself from the United States' sphere of influence, even if only for domestic expediency."
Boycot Bush and his war profiteers.
12:21:08 PM
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A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;
U, cycles, vibrement divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;
O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux !
Arthur Rimbaud
We're free, and freedom tastes of reality. Now, this is a dubyas way of putting it. Dubya understands reality.
What I am referring to is this, the green U:
U, cycles, vibrement divins des mers virides, Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux.
This, in fact. We owe Ton Overmars our freedom. He lifted the ban on absinthe.
I like Absente. It is delicate, much more refined than Pernod. Much of the romance behind Absente lies in the preparation ritual. But be moderate, don't be a Dubya.
11:56:23 AM
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This is obviously a doctored billboard, though the picture of the young Bush seems genuine. But is this the real Bush? He looks like Bush, he talks like Bush, so it is Bush. Nevertheless, this is too good to be true. This is a drunken Bush, apparently on a wedding party. But why no security guards? Because he's with friends? (Reason enough to blend out the interviewer.) It must be Bush on the booze again. I watched the video ten times.
Update: After some heavy research, I found this:
"If George W. Bush ends up in the White House, The Smoking Gun would like to be the first web outfit to formally offer Dubya an artifact for his future presidential library. The Republican's wacky performance in this 1992 wedding video excerpt - shot years after Bush went cold turkey in July 1986 - needs to be preserved for future generations.
The video was shot at the August 29, 1992 wedding of Jamie Weiss, the daughter of Dubya's close friends Mike and Nancy Weiss. Mike, a Lubbock, Texas lawyer and CPA, was Bush's campaign chairman during his first political race (an unsuccessful 1978 congressional bid) and was one of the Texas governor's earliest political appointments."
Now you know all about it.
1:31:14 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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