Mar 152006
Nearly a year after the fracas surrounding Terry Schiavo, a Minnesota legislator has cast himself in the role of a champion of disability rights. Tim Wilkin, a Republican House representative, has introduced a bill that forces medical providers to place feeding tubes in patients that do not have a living will or other “clear and convincing” evidence of their wishes. The bill is entitled the “Minnesota Starvation and Dehydration of Persons with Disabilities Prevention Act.” It sounds noble, doesn’t it? All across Minnesota, people with disabilities must be slowly wasting away while their loved ones stand at their bedsides, gleefully rubbing their hands together and muttering “Excellent!” Somebody should call the newspapers.
I don’t understand what this bill is trying to achieve. It would strip family members and designated proxies of the ability to make decisions about an individual’s nutrition and hydration, but it’s completely silent on other interventions like artificial ventilation, dialysis, or countless other procedures. Why the fixation on food and water? Is being forcibly fed somehow seen as less intrusive than being forcibly intubated?
I’m trying really hard to understand the logic behind this bill, because on first blush it reads like a manipulative and cynical exploitation of one family’s tragedy for political gain.
It is a cynical attempt to exploit something, what I am not sure. It seems to be part of the “right to life” folks attempt to preserve every fetus and body with only a reptilian brain operating while ignoring the needs of other people with disabilities. A good example is the struggle to get SSDI these days, particularly for invisible disabilities. For me it has been a three year struggle which isn’t over yet. Yes, I could work, if only I didn’t have to show up every day, or even at a certain time (depression and fibromyalgia will do that to you) but no way could I work the 60-70 hour weeks in my former job. And even the job they cited that I could do would be very difficult for me. Talking to people on the phone all day, being pleasant to everyone is difficult, especially when the folks on the other end are angry about what they are calling you about. My arthritis in my knees would prevent me from walking even as much as a sedentary job requires, so I would need a power chair, but of course, that isn’t possible because I can still walk. IMHO if they put as much money into helping people like me work as they do into the salaries of the administrative law judges and into feeding basically brain dead humans, we would all be better off. Unfortunately, these people focus on the beginning and end of life, and ignore the middle.
I recognize a parallel here to the actions of the “medical” staff in Guantanamo who are currently force-feeding detainees on a hunger strike. The message seems consistent – the government knows best. I definitely see a problem in both cases.
Have you considered writing an editorial for the Star Tribune about this?