Why are DNR's not banned and why is there still talk about legalizing euthanasia?

I have personally selected a living will with the DNA option, because I want the choice not to keep my body alive when there is no life left. I had a very ill sister, who spent her last years in a nursing home, except she was in the hospital half the time with complications from the tubes and meds that were keeling her body going. She insisted on no DNR, and her wishes were honored to the point where they spent 20 minutes bringing her back from cardiac arrest and succeeded. Then she was a brain dead person living in a very sick body. Her choices cost the government more than a million dollars; her last hospital stay was more than $155,000. All for nothing. She was never going to get better. I can't, personally, do that to my family and so a DNR, should I need it, is right for me.

I am very sorry for your loss. I lost my Mom a month ago yesterday.

It is so important that people make the choice that is right for them, or that they have a medical directive given to a trusted family member.

It is patient or family choice re the DNR. One is not required to have it. We had one for Mom, (who died under Hospice care at home) though it was not needed.

When I decided on Hospice for my Mom - I did so because she was 89, had advanced Alzheimer's (and possibly cancer), and was frantic with anxiety and pain. I wanted her last days to be as peaceful and pain free as the law would allow, and this was blessedly accomplished. I will never regret this choice.

I have a Living Will, as does my husband, and all our children know our wishes are the same as those we carried out for Mom.

DNR's are by choice. Personally I find DNR and any advance directives to be as central for planning for my future as saving for retirement, exercising daily, etc.

Regarding black box warnings, drugs in this group are essential for dealing with diseases. If bird-flu had gone to pandemic stage, Cipro would have been flying off pharmacy shelves as it is a front-line antibiotic. It is a black box drug. Warfarin
(Coumadin) is another bbd that is probably the best anticoagulant on the market.
BBD's are serious meds that do life-saving serious good. Is there a risk, yes, but there is a risk to everything we do.

If you think your mom died due to medical malpractice, then seek a legal remedy.

It's obvious that her death has left you bereft. Perhaps it would be good for you and your family to go to grief counseling to cope with the loss and mourning.

flowgo, I respectfully disagree. There comes a point where keeping the body working just doesn't serve the patient as a person. It wasn't that long ago that medicine couldn't do that, and people would never have made it as long as they now do. A DNR, especially for someone with a terminal illness, spares everyone the emotional and financial cost of prolonging the inevitable. .
Two days ago, we had a vet come to the house to put down our cat, who had an untreatable spinal tumor and who was increasingly miserable and could no longer walk or excrete waste. We can do that for a pet, but we can't do it in cases where prolonging physical life is causing true heartache for everyone involved...MOST ESPECIALLY THE PATIENT.
You are free to hold your own views. Please honor that others see things differently, and have good reason to.

dnrs and no drastic measures are just a good excuse for staff to kill a patient that has one. If a dnr patient is in the hospital or other medical facility for a minor treatable problem, the staff can give the dnr patient enough of the wrong meds or sedatives or whatever will work to kill the dnr patient and blame it on something else or just tell the family that the their loved one deteriorated and passed from whatever he/she was in the hospital for.If it is someone who is elder they can say it was from dementia or even old age.The staff can drug a patient since it is much easier to work with a unconscious person then someone who needs help. If too many sedatives are given it is no big deal when a patient is a dnr patient.cpr will not have to be done when the patient is needing the cpr from the overdose.dnr patients are more comfort measures for the staff since the staff already often do not want to bother to help all patients leave alone one with a dnr.The dnr patients get very neglected by the staff. The staff can decide when they want that patient to die and then kill that patient if it is convenient for the staff.They can make it look like it was natural instead of murder. Maybe the hospital is too crowded and they need that dnr patients bed.There is just a lot of dnr abuse which is why dnrs are so extremely dangerous to ones health and deadly. If the staff want to put an end to a patients life they have been known to get a doctor to put a dnr on a patient who does not have or want a dnr.This can be done without the family knowing unless they look in the chart. Of course this is illegal if the patient does not want one.Instead of the dnrs and no drastic measures there should be some way that the family can decide when their loved one is ready to go and be legally allowed to tell the staff no if the patient is ready to be hooked up to machines and get cpr.The staff should not even know what the family and patient wants until the actual time comes and the family is there to decide what should be done.It should not be the business of the staff until then, since the staff can take full advantage and abuse dnrs. Caregivers of elders or those with dementia should no the stages very well and the side effects of all the meds that the patient is given, especially sedatives and pain meds.Dementia symptoms are very similar to symptoms of sedative use and sedative overdose.However there are diffident differences that the caregiver must be well aware of. Also be aware of n.m.s.This is a sensitivity that people can have from such drugs as haldol and ativan.Be aware of patients that should not take these drugs because of certain health problems (black box warnings).It is a good idea to know everything about sedatives and the black box warnings.Medical staff are not trained much in how to use sedatives and what to watch for with black box warnings, so this is why black box warnings are ignored by the staff. If you have enough knowledge of what is going on in the medical field you will be more able to protect any of your family.Try to go to medical libraries to study more on the subject.

flowgo, you sound very angry, and like you have specific cases in mind. If you have evidence of murder, surely you have/are going to the police with it.

My husband has DNR in his file. He has been hospitalized twice since then and I saw absolutely no evidence of poor practices (other than hospitals are not equipped to handle dementia patients -- with or without DNR.)

My fear is that a hospital with particular religous affiliation might not honor the DNR decision. I have talked to the hospital administrators of the places that would most likely treat my husband to be reassured on this point.

All vulnerable adults (which is just about every adult in a hospital, at least for the duration of their illness) needs an alert and smart advocate, to see that the patient's wishes are honored.

I suggest that a hospital that is intent on murdering patients for their convenience would finds ways to do it with or without DNR paperwork. If such hospitals exist, it would take more than banning DNRs to stop them. (But the hospitals would make more money by prolonging life, so I'm not sure what the motivation would be. Hmmm.)

I am glad you have the right to not have DNR in your medical file. I am glad I have the right to have it. It is a very personal decision and I would hate to see it legislated.

I just read your profile. I understand why you are so angry. You feel that this happened to your mother. My sincere condolences on your tragic loss.

to igloo if my mom would have passed on her own without being forced to pass and been given comfort measures like dnrs are supposed to be used for, then I would have most likely been ok by now. I still would have been upset as when other loved ones in my family have passed, but I would have been ok by now since this happened over a year ago. Our family and friends are still grieving over how she passed. We have never been able to grieve about the loss of my mom since we are so angry and still traumatized over how she was forced to pass.The way my mom was forced to die as she struggled to live is what is causing me so much pain.The medical staff rarely showed her any mercy.One drug they gave her would have been great if she had another problem. It was a great drug for other problems but not hers.This drug instead killed her since it caused her problem to get worse.She still continued to fight so hard for her life, since she loved life and had always taken very good care of herself and was in great physical shape.The nurses had even told me that she should have continued on the drug that had originally helped her.They knew she was not supposed to be on the drug that they finished her off with, since it was deadly for what she had. Unfortunately, those were what they call staff comfort measures. It is just like antibiotic is good for a bacterial infection but you would not give that to someone who has a yeast infection since it will cause the yeast to mutiply.This is especially true if the person was in septic shock from the yeast infection. There were also sedatives she was not supposed have. A doctor had told us she should never be on them since she had a sensitivity to them but yet she was constantly given them.The black box warning did honestly apply to my mom but these warnings were completely ignored by the staff which then contributed to her death.The staff tried to kill her off with the sedatives alone but mom fought so very hard. There were so many things the staff did that made us believe that she was killed on purpose.They can get away with it since she had a dnr.dnr is not supposed to=murder yet it does. My mom would have never ever signed up for a dnr had she known how easily they can be abused and how dnr patients can be ignored or even forced to die. Medical malpractice is very difficult since the medical staff are very well protected. When a lawyer is aware of the dnr the lawyer will loose interest in the case and basically say that the dnr killed her. There needs to be laws that are put in place to protect patients instead of the staff since now medical staff are free to get away with murder.

to Maries mom thank you and I am very sorry for your loss too