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1:48am April 2, 2014

andreashettle:

Dialogue Begins About Feeding Tubes and Breathing Devices With Respecting Choices Program

youneedacat:

Last December, a significant number of national and local disability rights organizations as well as individuals with disabilities and supporters signed onto a letter addressed to the Respecting Choices advance care planning program at Gundersen Health Systems in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  The letter criticized two documents for inaccuracy and bias in their discussions of feeding tubes, bipaps and ventilators.  The documents were first discovered by Second Thoughts Connecticut activist Stephen Mendelsohn.

In response to our letter, Respecting Choices notified me that Dr. Hammes was out of the country until early January, but would be in contact upon his return.  Before preparing a formal reply, Dr. Hammes requested a telephone conference, which took place on February 5th, involving Dr. Hammes and his Associate Director Linda Briggs, as well as Cathy Ludlum of Second Thoughts Connecticut and myself.  This was followed by a letter from Dr. Hammes to the Disabilities Community which I’ve posted here at his request.  A disability advocate in Wisconsin also brought to our attention a “Dear Colleague” letter from Respecting Choices to colleagues engaged in advanced care planning.  On March 7, we had a second phone conference with Dr. Hammes to discuss the letter and determine our next steps.

As you can see in the letter below that Cathy Ludlum and I sent April 1st, Respecting Choices has discontinued sales of the two documents and we have agreed to form a committee to discuss potential revisions, with five members selected by Respecting Choices and five members by the disability community.

We believe that your support was essential to the progress that we have made thus far.   Below is our letter reflecting that progress and our next steps:

The title at top of this post (white text on green background) is a link.  You can follow that link to see the rest of what was posted at the original post at the Not Dead Yet blog site.  For convenience, I copy/paste the same link here:

http://www.notdeadyet.org/2014/04/dialogue-begins-about-feeding-tubes-and-breathing-devices-with-respecting-choices-program.html

Reblogging for Andrea’s added explanation.