Coast to Coast - February 21 2017 - End-of-Life Approaches - Open Lines.nfo
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Coast to Coast - February 21 2017 - End-of-Life Approaches - Open Lines
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General Information
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More Info............: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2017/02/21
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Release Notes
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DATE: Tuesday - February 21, 2017
HOST: George Noory
GUESTS: Dr. Jessica Zitter, Open Lines
Jessica Zitter, M.D. is an expert on the medical experience of death and dying.
She attended Stanford University and Case Western Reserve Medical School and is
featured in Extremis, an Oscar-nominated documentary about end-of-life
decision-making in an ICU. In the first half, she discussed her ideas for a
better way to exit life that could change some of the basic tenets of medical
culture. Dr. Zitter realized that in many cases, in her attempts to prolong
lives, such as by hooking patients up to feeding or breathing tubes, she was
actually causing more suffering for them. Because of this she added a new type
of medical training-- palliative care, to her regular practice at the ICU.
For dying or serious ill patients, the use of medical technology and machinery,
or the "End of Life Conveyor Belt," doesn't always make sense, but the default
medical position has been to keep patients alive at all costs, she pointed out.
A good death is "what is most in line with a particular person's preferences and
values," she continued, and that's why we need to be communicating a lot more
about the issue. Death and end-of-life decisions are seen as a taboo subject,
and like sex education, they should be brought more out in the open and taught
in schools, she advocated.
She cited the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco as a good example of making
dying patients' lives as high quality as possible. Zitter talked about POLST, a
binding physician's order dealing with life sustaining treatments, and advised
patients who do not want life to receive treatments such as a respirator, to
sign one of these documents in advance. She also spoke about witnessing the
phenomenon of dying patients seemingly hanging on until they receive their loved
ones' permission to pass.
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Open Lines were featured in the latter half, with a number of callers sharing
accounts of deaths of their loved ones. Todd from Manitoba, Canada spoke about
his suffering as a victim of the secretive MK-ULTRA project. A security guard
from North Bend, Oregon, posed the interesting question-- what if everything
that was ever talked about on C2C all came true and was revealed on the same
day? Jim in Spencer, Iowa expressed concern that even if we protected the grid,
an EMP attack or event could still fry electrical transformers and devices.
News segment guests: John Lott, Tim Ball
WEBSITE(S):
jessicazitter.com
BOOK(S):
Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life
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