I can’t imagine why the doctors responsible for this treatment still have their medical licenses.
“On a Thursday morning this past April, 61-year-old Darryl Young was lying unconscious in the eighth-floor intensive care unit of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. After suffering from congestive heart failure for years, Young, a Navy veteran and former truck driver with three children, had received a heart transplant on Sept. 21, 2018. He didn’t wake up after the operation and had been in a vegetative state ever since.
Machines whirred in his room, pumping air into his lungs. Nutrients and fluids dripped from a tube into his stomach. Young had always been fastidious, but now his hair and toenails had grown long. A nurse suctioned mucus from his throat several times a day to keep him from choking, according to employees familiar with his care. His medical record would note: “He follows no commands. He looks very encephalopathic”—brain damaged.
That day, in another wing of the hospital, where a group of surgeons, cardiologists, transplant coordinators, nurses, and social workers gathered for their weekly meeting in a second-floor conference room, his name came up.
“Anything on Darryl Young?” asked cardiologist Dr. Darko Vucicevic, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by ProPublica.
“Need to keep him alive till June 30 at a minimum,” responded Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the hospital’s heart and lung transplant programs.
Since the transplant, Young had suffered from pneumonia, strokes, seizures, and a fungal infection. The Newark transplant team believed that he would never wake up or recover function, according to current and former staff members familiar with his case, as well as audio recordings. Yet they wanted to do all they could to keep his new heart beating.
The recordings show that the transplant team was fixated on keeping him alive, rather than his quality of life or his family’s wishes, because of worries about the transplant program’s survival rate, the proportion of people undergoing transplants who are still alive a year after their operations. Federal regulators rely on this statistic to evaluate — and sometimes penalize — transplant programs, giving hospitals across the country a reputational and financial incentive to game it. Newark Beth Israel’s one-year survival rate for heart transplants had dipped, and if Young were to die too soon, the program’s standing and even its own survival might be in jeopardy….
June 30, Zucker explained at the meeting, was the date of the next report by a federally funded organization that tracks transplant survival rates. “If he’s not dead in this report, even if he’s dead in the next report, it becomes an issue that moves out six more months,” he said in the recording.
Zucker cautioned the staff against offering Young’s family the option of switching from aggressive treatment to palliative care, which focuses on comfort, until September, which would mark one year since his transplant. “This is very disingenuous, right? It’s very unethical.”
Dr. Martin Strueber, a transplant surgeon who has since left the hospital, then expressed hope that the transplant team could “move the program forward … to a status that we never ever have this discussion again,” or even have to “think about this ethical dilemma of keeping somebody alive for the sake of the program.”
“Bolton is no hero. You will note that we only know about this exchange through Hill’s testimony, and not through anything Bolton has said or done in service of the ongoing impeachment inquiry. He remains a dangerous monger of war who should be kept out of government for the same reasons we keep wolverines out of meat lockers. But even someone like Bolton recognizes the importance of, well, coherence in running a government.
‘The testimony revealed in a powerful way just how divisive Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to extract damaging information about Democrats from Ukraine on President Trump’s behalf were within the White House. Ms. Hill, the senior director for European and Russian affairs, testified that Mr. Giuliani and his allies circumvented the usual national security process to run their own foreign policy efforts, leaving the president’s official advisers aware of the rogue operation yet powerless to stop it.
F
At one point, she confronted Mr. Sondland, who had inserted himself into dealings with Ukraine even though it was not part of his official portfolio, according to the people informed about Ms. Hill’s testimony. He told her that he was in charge of Ukraine, a moment she compared to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.’s declaration that he was in charge after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, according to those who heard the testimony.
According to whom, she asked. The president, he answered.’
Say what, now?
Sondland’s turn on the perch will come later this week, but the canary chorus is beginning to sing in harmony now. Careers are becoming endangered, and the president* is running out of both people who’ll protect him and people whom he can blame, although he does have something of a gift for turning people from the former group into people in the latter. Giuliani’s already on the spit, rotating ever so slowly. The two mooks with whom Giuliani did business do not look like stand-up guys. And there’s nobody in this whole episode between Giuliani and the president*. Somewhere, behind his mustache, and perhaps out of sheer self-preserving serendipity, John Bolton did us all a favor.”
It constantly amazes me that the Times publishes people like this total ah. They should be ashamed, not because of her views, but because of her lies.
” YOUNGEST LIVING REAGAN DEMOCRAT TELLS ALL.
The New York Times does it again!
Why Are Democrats Jilting G.O.P. Voters Who Want to Like Them?
I just want to like you, Demmycrats, but you insist on killing babies and letting immigrants see a doctor when they’re sick, says Ericka Andersen — described by the Times only as “a freelance writer in Indianapolis,” but, David Klion notices, a longtime rightwing operative, writer for The Federalist, and former “Online Media Director for GOP House Leadership under Vice-President Mike Pence.” So you can tell she’s ready to consider voting for a Democrat!
Andersen:
‘Under President Trump, a small slice of America’s electorate seeks a reason to call the Democratic Party home for the very first time. But without adequate hospitality to welcome them, they will disappear quickly.’
Is she talking about those Trump voters the Times breathlessly apotheosizes every couple of weeks? I get the impression Andersen seeks to rep a more upscale conservative constituency — the kind who don’t fly Confederate flags but post endlessly on Nextdoor about black hoodlums dragging down their real estate values.
‘With a few exceptions on particular policies, the Democratic presidential field neglects abundant pools of potential Democrat converts, leaving persuadable audiences — like independents and Trump-averse, anti-abortion Christians (some of whom are white evangelicals) — without options.
The exception is Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the candidate making the most visible effort to help moderates and newbies feel included.’
Holy f!ck — she’s pushing Reason magazine’s favorite Democrat! True, a lot of conservatives who cheered Gabbard for challenging Obama’s foreign policy fall off the wagon whenever she claps back at Trump’s — see the mean MAGA comments to her condemnation of Trump turning our armed forces into Saudi rent-a-cops — but Gabbard has something that Andersen and dozens like her will always love — the potential to f!ck up the Democrats in 2020! She’s a Jill Stein they can jerk off to.
It seems Andersen mainly likes Gabbard — despite Gabbard’s positions like Medicare for All which, I’m pretty sure, the former Pence operative does not endorse — because abortion:
‘She has a progressive agenda that includes Medicare for All, but she’s also one of only two candidates who supports abortion restrictions in the third trimester. “Unless a woman’s life or severe health consequences is at risk,” she told the conservative podcast host Dave Rubin, “then there shouldn’t be abortion in the third trimester.”’
If this op-ed achieves anything, it will be to make more Democrats dislike Gabbard. Which will make more Republicans like her! It’s two-and-a-half-D chess.
Appearing on right-leaning media is another clue that she’s serious about attracting new voters (something Andrew Yang, the businessman candidate, has also prioritized.)
Oh God, that as!hole. Anyway, why should Democrats nominate an abortion moderate, what would they gain? Andersen (author of, I swear to God, “Peter Buttigieg Loves God’s Creation When It’s A Rainbow But Not When It’s A Baby”) does the non-math:
‘The voters are there, according to FiveThirtyEight. Younger white evangelical Christians now view Mr. Trump far less favorably than their parents’ generation: 60 percent of those 44 and under saw the president as “very” or “somewhat” favorable, compared with 80 percent of those 45 or older.’
I have a sneaking suspicion that of you’re a young white evangelical Christian who doesn’t like Trump, you’re a Rod Dreher “King Cyrus” type who will cry about Trump’s vulgarity all the way to the polling station to vote for him. (Either that or you’re secretly gay and it’s gonna go off like a bomb at Thanksgiving so have your traveling shoes polished, honey.)
‘And independents leaning right, who may have voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, hover around 10 percent of the electorate. There’s no guarantee that this translates to voting for the Democratic candidate in 2020…
LOL
‘…but speaking as a member of this group, I think the opportunity exists where it once didn’t.’
Speaking as someone not born yesterday, GTFOOH. We’re not (Andersen actually writes) “quick to placate culture warriors who demonize those with traditional beliefs about sex and gender” — we actually think gay and trans people are cool and have rights and we’re not going to trade them away so you’ll maybe decide to vote Democrat for the first time in your awful Jesus freak life.”
Look if you do not fit and you are showing that you do not by your behavior and commentary, then excuse yourself and leave. You can have contrary opinions as long as they are appropriate. This one is not,
I can’t imagine why the doctors responsible for this treatment still have their medical licenses.
“On a Thursday morning this past April, 61-year-old Darryl Young was lying unconscious in the eighth-floor intensive care unit of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. After suffering from congestive heart failure for years, Young, a Navy veteran and former truck driver with three children, had received a heart transplant on Sept. 21, 2018. He didn’t wake up after the operation and had been in a vegetative state ever since.
Machines whirred in his room, pumping air into his lungs. Nutrients and fluids dripped from a tube into his stomach. Young had always been fastidious, but now his hair and toenails had grown long. A nurse suctioned mucus from his throat several times a day to keep him from choking, according to employees familiar with his care. His medical record would note: “He follows no commands. He looks very encephalopathic”—brain damaged.
That day, in another wing of the hospital, where a group of surgeons, cardiologists, transplant coordinators, nurses, and social workers gathered for their weekly meeting in a second-floor conference room, his name came up.
“Anything on Darryl Young?” asked cardiologist Dr. Darko Vucicevic, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by ProPublica.
“Need to keep him alive till June 30 at a minimum,” responded Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the hospital’s heart and lung transplant programs.
Since the transplant, Young had suffered from pneumonia, strokes, seizures, and a fungal infection. The Newark transplant team believed that he would never wake up or recover function, according to current and former staff members familiar with his case, as well as audio recordings. Yet they wanted to do all they could to keep his new heart beating.
The recordings show that the transplant team was fixated on keeping him alive, rather than his quality of life or his family’s wishes, because of worries about the transplant program’s survival rate, the proportion of people undergoing transplants who are still alive a year after their operations. Federal regulators rely on this statistic to evaluate — and sometimes penalize — transplant programs, giving hospitals across the country a reputational and financial incentive to game it. Newark Beth Israel’s one-year survival rate for heart transplants had dipped, and if Young were to die too soon, the program’s standing and even its own survival might be in jeopardy….
June 30, Zucker explained at the meeting, was the date of the next report by a federally funded organization that tracks transplant survival rates. “If he’s not dead in this report, even if he’s dead in the next report, it becomes an issue that moves out six more months,” he said in the recording.
Zucker cautioned the staff against offering Young’s family the option of switching from aggressive treatment to palliative care, which focuses on comfort, until September, which would mark one year since his transplant. “This is very disingenuous, right? It’s very unethical.”
Dr. Martin Strueber, a transplant surgeon who has since left the hospital, then expressed hope that the transplant team could “move the program forward … to a status that we never ever have this discussion again,” or even have to “think about this ethical dilemma of keeping somebody alive for the sake of the program.”
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/10/its-very-unethical-audio-shows-hospital-kept-vegetative-patient-on-life-support-to-boost-survival-rates/
Open and shut case.
“Bolton is no hero. You will note that we only know about this exchange through Hill’s testimony, and not through anything Bolton has said or done in service of the ongoing impeachment inquiry. He remains a dangerous monger of war who should be kept out of government for the same reasons we keep wolverines out of meat lockers. But even someone like Bolton recognizes the importance of, well, coherence in running a government.
‘The testimony revealed in a powerful way just how divisive Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to extract damaging information about Democrats from Ukraine on President Trump’s behalf were within the White House. Ms. Hill, the senior director for European and Russian affairs, testified that Mr. Giuliani and his allies circumvented the usual national security process to run their own foreign policy efforts, leaving the president’s official advisers aware of the rogue operation yet powerless to stop it.
F
At one point, she confronted Mr. Sondland, who had inserted himself into dealings with Ukraine even though it was not part of his official portfolio, according to the people informed about Ms. Hill’s testimony. He told her that he was in charge of Ukraine, a moment she compared to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.’s declaration that he was in charge after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, according to those who heard the testimony.
According to whom, she asked. The president, he answered.’
Say what, now?
Sondland’s turn on the perch will come later this week, but the canary chorus is beginning to sing in harmony now. Careers are becoming endangered, and the president* is running out of both people who’ll protect him and people whom he can blame, although he does have something of a gift for turning people from the former group into people in the latter. Giuliani’s already on the spit, rotating ever so slowly. The two mooks with whom Giuliani did business do not look like stand-up guys. And there’s nobody in this whole episode between Giuliani and the president*. Somewhere, behind his mustache, and perhaps out of sheer self-preserving serendipity, John Bolton did us all a favor.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29472603/john-bolton-rudy-giuliani-hand-grenade-drug-deal/
It constantly amazes me that the Times publishes people like this total ah. They should be ashamed, not because of her views, but because of her lies.
” YOUNGEST LIVING REAGAN DEMOCRAT TELLS ALL.
The New York Times does it again!
Why Are Democrats Jilting G.O.P. Voters Who Want to Like Them?
I just want to like you, Demmycrats, but you insist on killing babies and letting immigrants see a doctor when they’re sick, says Ericka Andersen — described by the Times only as “a freelance writer in Indianapolis,” but, David Klion notices, a longtime rightwing operative, writer for The Federalist, and former “Online Media Director for GOP House Leadership under Vice-President Mike Pence.” So you can tell she’s ready to consider voting for a Democrat!
Andersen:
‘Under President Trump, a small slice of America’s electorate seeks a reason to call the Democratic Party home for the very first time. But without adequate hospitality to welcome them, they will disappear quickly.’
Is she talking about those Trump voters the Times breathlessly apotheosizes every couple of weeks? I get the impression Andersen seeks to rep a more upscale conservative constituency — the kind who don’t fly Confederate flags but post endlessly on Nextdoor about black hoodlums dragging down their real estate values.
‘With a few exceptions on particular policies, the Democratic presidential field neglects abundant pools of potential Democrat converts, leaving persuadable audiences — like independents and Trump-averse, anti-abortion Christians (some of whom are white evangelicals) — without options.
The exception is Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the candidate making the most visible effort to help moderates and newbies feel included.’
Holy f!ck — she’s pushing Reason magazine’s favorite Democrat! True, a lot of conservatives who cheered Gabbard for challenging Obama’s foreign policy fall off the wagon whenever she claps back at Trump’s — see the mean MAGA comments to her condemnation of Trump turning our armed forces into Saudi rent-a-cops — but Gabbard has something that Andersen and dozens like her will always love — the potential to f!ck up the Democrats in 2020! She’s a Jill Stein they can jerk off to.
It seems Andersen mainly likes Gabbard — despite Gabbard’s positions like Medicare for All which, I’m pretty sure, the former Pence operative does not endorse — because abortion:
‘She has a progressive agenda that includes Medicare for All, but she’s also one of only two candidates who supports abortion restrictions in the third trimester. “Unless a woman’s life or severe health consequences is at risk,” she told the conservative podcast host Dave Rubin, “then there shouldn’t be abortion in the third trimester.”’
If this op-ed achieves anything, it will be to make more Democrats dislike Gabbard. Which will make more Republicans like her! It’s two-and-a-half-D chess.
Appearing on right-leaning media is another clue that she’s serious about attracting new voters (something Andrew Yang, the businessman candidate, has also prioritized.)
Oh God, that as!hole. Anyway, why should Democrats nominate an abortion moderate, what would they gain? Andersen (author of, I swear to God, “Peter Buttigieg Loves God’s Creation When It’s A Rainbow But Not When It’s A Baby”) does the non-math:
‘The voters are there, according to FiveThirtyEight. Younger white evangelical Christians now view Mr. Trump far less favorably than their parents’ generation: 60 percent of those 44 and under saw the president as “very” or “somewhat” favorable, compared with 80 percent of those 45 or older.’
I have a sneaking suspicion that of you’re a young white evangelical Christian who doesn’t like Trump, you’re a Rod Dreher “King Cyrus” type who will cry about Trump’s vulgarity all the way to the polling station to vote for him. (Either that or you’re secretly gay and it’s gonna go off like a bomb at Thanksgiving so have your traveling shoes polished, honey.)
‘And independents leaning right, who may have voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, hover around 10 percent of the electorate. There’s no guarantee that this translates to voting for the Democratic candidate in 2020…
LOL
‘…but speaking as a member of this group, I think the opportunity exists where it once didn’t.’
Speaking as someone not born yesterday, GTFOOH. We’re not (Andersen actually writes) “quick to placate culture warriors who demonize those with traditional beliefs about sex and gender” — we actually think gay and trans people are cool and have rights and we’re not going to trade them away so you’ll maybe decide to vote Democrat for the first time in your awful Jesus freak life.”
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2019/10/youngest-living-reagan-democrat-tells.html
Simply an abominable post by an incredible cretin.
Can someone please ban the “Bert Schlitz” troll and remove its droppings?
Hey Joel:
Sorry, I have been busy. Thank you for your input.
BS:
Look if you do not fit and you are showing that you do not by your behavior and commentary, then excuse yourself and leave. You can have contrary opinions as long as they are appropriate. This one is not,