[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. I'm your host, Eric Anderson, and I'm pleased to be joined again by Doctor Howard Glixman. Listeners will know Doctor Glixman, who is co author of a wonderful book, your designed body, and is also a regular contributor to Evolution News. Welcome, Howard.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Great to be here, Eric.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: So, Howard, recently we've been talking a lot on the show about Doctor Richard Weichardt's new book, Unnatural Medicine's descent from healing to killing. And we've gone through lots of details with him about the history of euthanasia and assisted suicide, clearback to the Romans and the Greeks, and then up to the modern time. Definitely recommend that our listeners check that out. So I don't want to dive into too many of those details, but I'm really happy to have you on today because I know you were one of the reviewers and endorsers of the book. So maybe just to start out, why did you endorse the book? Why do you think it's an important topic we ought to be addressing?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Well, Eric, you know, like physician assisted suicide and euthanasia violates every principle of my life.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: You know, I'm a Catholic, so, you know, the commandments say not to kill the innocent. So that's not only other people but myself. And then I'm a physician. So the hippocratic oath, which says, you know, first do no harm, says also that I'm not supposed to kill my patient, even if they ask me to. And of course, they're vulnerable. I have authority over them. And then I've been a hospice doctor for over 20 years. So I have a lot of experiencing and managing a lot of end of life situations. So I recognize in the culture what I would say is maybe some lies and fears that are being spread around so that patients may try to get physician assisted suicide euthanasia rather than hospice care, which I would recommend as the alternative.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: So tell us a little bit about that, Howard. I know most of our listeners will know, but just describe briefly what you mean by hospice care and kind of what you do, and then we'll dive into a few examples later on.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, well, just to differentiate between palliative and hospice in palliative care is a general term of patients who have chronic disease that isn't going to get better. There's a lot of symptoms. They really don't necessarily want to go to the hospital a lot. They don't want to have a lot of testing done.
So, you know, you're ideally, if it can be seen in the home, that's great. But it's a totally different way of managing medicine. Okay. But hospice is specifically in order to get on the hospice benefit through Medicare. There's part A and part B Medicare, but there's also the hospice benefit where Medicare will pay for the hospice company to provide care for people that are considered terminal, that have a six month or less prognosis. So the hospice comes under palliative care. Okay.
And so, you know, we're very good at getting symptoms and symptom and pain, you know, good at very symptom and pain management.
And so a lot of times in that experience is when patients come on hospice and when they see how comfortable they are, they're, you know, they're happy to be there. Right. A lot of people don't know that.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Okay. So you're dealing sort of on a day to day basis with end of life challenges. People who are close to that, family members who are seeing their loved ones go through that.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Right. So typically what happens, you know, I would say about 30, 40% of the cases in hospice are metastatic cancer that have progressed and the patient doesn't want any more treatment. And the other 50 or 60% would be either end state, you know, dementia, stroke, syndromes, heart failure, emphysema, combination of all that.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: And so, yeah. And to me, it's like walking through a door. I mean, here's the. You just imagine you're, you're used to getting aggressive treatment, right? You think you're going to get better, etcetera, and then at some point you sort of, it requires, like, acceptance of what's going on and just the idea that, you know, length, you just want more time. But, excuse me, it's comfort care. You just want it. Whatever little time you have left, you just want to be comfortable. Right. As opposed to trying to live forever.
That's a totally different attitude. And so we have a skewed population, I think, in hospice because generally, people, especially, I guess, if you're in a state that has physician assisted suicide or euthanasia, people who come to hospice generally don't want that. They've already chosen by coming to hospice to get that care.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Right. Okay. And just to be clear, you're in a state that doesn't have that, at least not yet.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: No, I'm in Florida. Yes. We do not have it there.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Okay. So I think Richard was mentioning when I talked to him that there's ten states now that have assisted suicide, none that have euthanasia yet in the United States, but definitely starting out with Oregon years ago and up to ten now. So it's definitely coming down the road. Back up a little bit, though, for us. Howard, tell me about, because you were mentioning to me earlier, I think this would be great for our listeners to hear. Tell me a little bit about your personal conversion story and how this dealing with end of life or seeing end of life kind of played into that.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Well, I grew up in a nominally jewish household where the name of God was never mentioned. So, you know, when I became an adult, had no understanding of God. I knew nothing about God. When I finally decided to ask my, asked myself about what life is about, and I started to search for God, I reflected on my experience. At this point. I was just a regular GP, regular office hospital practice physician. And I reflected on what it was like to look after my critically internally ill patients and their families. And the people who really impressed me with their authentic humility and true compassion were the ones who made it so easy for me to provide healthcare, were the people who expressed their sincere belief in Jesus Christ. So it was this christian witness of how to live and die as an authentic disciple of Jesus that I found attractive. So much so that I said to myself, you know, I got to get some of that, you know, but. But I think another part of the story really is one thing to be baptized and become Christian. It's another story to, you know, try to live your life as a disciple of Jesus. And what really changed that was about, because I was still thinking like a secular doctor. And about five years after I had become Catholic, I had an end of life case in my own, in my own practice. And a patient came into the hospital, had surgery post operatively, had a massive stroke, and he was unconscious. You know, he was poorly conscious, problems with swallowing, severe weakness on one side of the body. And he started waking up, and he started moving the limb. I knew he was going to be left with a lot of disability, but unfortunately, he was post op, and the family sort of the hospital wanted to get him out. He was going to go to rehab or nursing home, and the family absolutely refused to put a feeding tube in. Now, we're not talking about a gastro, gastrostomy tube through the abdominal wall. We're just talking about a, what's called a dobhoff or a feeding tube through the nose, a very fine caliber tube, because I knew it was just a matter of two or three weeks. Usually people with this type of problem, once they wake up, they're going to be left with some weakness, but they're probably going to be swallowing fine.
And with what they wanted to do is what I would call passive euthanasia. Really, that's the idea that you either withhold or withdraw treatment or withholding treatment here. I really had a big problem with that. And I think he had made it sort of that made a deal with his family that never had let a feeding tube be put in in any way. So my problem was, I really had a problem with this. Okay. And I started thinking, well, you know, maybe I can let myself off the hook here because, you know, as a doctor, if a lady wants an abortion, you know, you can. I can provide that. That's because that's what they want. That's sort of the secular type of training. But then I realized, hold on, I'm a Christian now. I sort of wonder what the church teaches about this. And by the same token, I was sort of critical and sort of egotistical source. And, well, what can the church teach me? I've been practicing medicine 20 years. What do they know, you know? But I was so distraught about this because I really didn't know what to do, and I didn't really be wanted part of this, this past abuse nation. So I went to what's called the adoration chapel, where we have Jesus in the Eucharist, where we believe he's present body, blood, soul, and divinity. I got my knees and I started praying, and a little thought came to my, in my head, said, why don't you go check with the diocese, local diocese, and see if they have a bioethical expert, you know, someone? Because, you know, I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'm Catholic, but I really don't know what they teach on this issue.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: So I called up the priest, and it turned out I was exactly right. And basically I signed off the case. But just before I hung up with him, he said, would you like me to send you the information, you know, the documentation through the church of why they say this? In other words, discussion about christian anthropology. What does it mean to be human, the under christian understanding of, you know, what it means to be creating the image and likeness of God.
And when I got a hold of that stuff, I was so humbled when I realized the church really knows a lot about what I do. Some of this was written by physicians, but many moral theologians. And I remember thinking to myself, if they know so much about what I do for a living, maybe I should find out what is what they say about what I should do to be a disciple of Christ. So. But I learned a lot, and I started then going to different parishes in the church in my diocese, teaching them what the church teaches. And so they wouldn't accept physicians assisted suicide because there's always their attempt to try to get it passed within the state. So that's really changed things. And then I think eventually, I got more involved in my faith, started writing about intelligent design, and it's probably the main reason why I'm sitting here talking to you right now. That whole event just changed everything for me, because I remember thinking to myself, I've been a doctor 20 years. I'm 45 years old. Why didn't I know this?
I didn't know any of this stuff. So it's very important to really understand the basis, the christian understanding of what it means to be human that changes everything. Intrinsic dignity versus extrinsic dignity. So created in the imaging likeness of God, we're all created equal. That concept, which has been lost today, I think.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. Thanks for helping us understand a little bit about where you're coming from and how you came to this issue and kind of how you've dealt with it initially. Now, tell me a little bit about what you're seeing now in terms of your own practice, in terms of dealing with life. And maybe before we do that, howard, let me jump in real quick. I want to just flag a couple of definitions. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. We talked about it at length with Richard when he was on the show, but just for the listeners. So we're typically drawing a distinction between euthanasia and assisted suicide. And the distinction that Richard draws is that euthanasia is where the action is performed by the physician, whereas assisted suicide is typically understood as the physician would prescribe a pill or a drug of some kind with the expectation that the individual would then take that and end their own life. And so that's an important distinction for legal reasons, because there's ten states that have approved that assisted suicide approach and none so far that have approved euthanasia. And then it also makes a distinction, I think certainly Richard argues, and I would agree with him, it makes a distinction in terms of how we approach it ethically. But just want to get those definitions out there to make sure people understand what we're talking about. So in your own personal practice now, as you deal with end of life situations and your hospice care, you know, maybe share a personal experience or two or just what you're seeing generally in this area.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Well, as I said, I've been a hospice doctor about 20 years. The first twelve or 13 years, I did the whole gamut. So I was an assistant medical director, and we had patients with all the type of conditions.
And now, the last eight years, I think I've talked to you before, but I sort of concentrate on people with heart failure and fluid overload and try to help because there's a lot of people that come on hospice that sort of fall through the cracks. They don't necessarily have metastatic cancer, but they've had multiple medical problems. And once again, it doesn't matter what the diagnosis is. And generally when they come into hospice, it's sort of like, you know, you got to remember that they're sort of shell shocked. I mean, the whole family, they're looking for help.
Sometimes it's out of the blue that the doctors say, hey, maybe you need to go in hospice, and they're responsible. You abandon me, doctor, that type of idea. So when I come in, I'm ready to hear anything.
But.
But to give you an example of sort of what hospice can do, unfortunately, you know, if you have cancer, I think one of the common reasons why people think about physicians to suicide is that they have cancer and they're really worried about dying with pain and other symptoms, other problems. But, you know, you got to keep in mind that the same medical advances that we have, that allowed us to keep people alive and treating cancer, etcetera. Well, we've also got those same advances in medication and pain management. And if you have cancer, and if you're at a big clinic like Sloan Kettering or MD Anderson, they probably had a palliative care, really good pain management there. But a lot of times, cancer, unfortunately, cancer doctors are, although they're really good at treating the cancer, they're not necessarily great at pain or symptom management. And so hospice, we have several drugs we use. I remember a case very well, this elderly greek lady. She was about 80 years old with her son. I get a call on a Tuesday afternoon at 04:00 that she's coming on our service. She'd been in and out of the hospital. She's got pancreatic cancer, and she's got all the severe pain. She's got a lot of symptoms, and she's just miserable. And so I give the admission, and then we go through the medication, and I notice that, oh, okay, she's only on this drug or that drug. And I do the usual things that we do in hospice. I just ordered, like, four or five different meds that we use, got rid of a couple of other ones and said, okay, I'll see her tomorrow. So I went to see her the next day. I walked in, and as I walked in, this little lady came out of her bedroom, and the first thing she said to me was, what did you do?
And I sort of like, you know, put my head. She goes, I haven't felt this good in six months.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So I said, well, I just did what we usually do in hospice. And unfortunately, we made her feel so good that a month or two later, she left and went back for chemo and probably died from the chemo. Her son was really upset. But sometimes we get. It's been shown that people with cancer live longer when they stay on hospice rather than continue with the treatment because there's just a lot of side effects, especially if they have metastatic disease.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: But in general, it's very rare, in my experience, to see people complain and want to have physicians assisted suicide, but it's not present in the state. It may be different in other states. So if it's available and a person comes on hospice, I don't have that experience. They may come on and say they want to have physician assisted suicide. In my mind, if they come on a hospice, and they're asking that maybe the hospice isn't doing such a good job. I don't know. Because, you see, hospice involves not just a physician, but you have nurses, you have a health aide, you have social workers, you have music therapy, you have volunteers.
It's a whole team approach to keeping the people comfortable at home or in an assisted living facility. And by and large, there's many cases where someone comes on, and I hate to misuse the word dysfunctional, but sometimes everyone's all over the place. And eventually, though, it can be. We used to have our team meeting where we would talk about the patient coming on. And the first two meetings, you could hear the frustration in the social worker and the nurse just having difficulty with the patient or the family, et cetera. But maybe six weeks or two months later, with everyone doing their thing and the family coming together, and then we're talking about maybe the person passing away and we're all looking at each other saying, well, that was a tough one, but it was really worth it because the whole family is just really ecstatic about how it worked out. You can't tell till you get involved. But hospice is. Hospice is just a great organization. But when you've seen one hospice, you've only seen one hospice. So sometimes people, I hear sometimes people had problems with certain ones.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. But if done right, it sounds like there's a sort of a holistic approach that's not just treating the pain, it's addressing other things. I know that when I talked to Richard, he mentioned that at least on the surveys that he's seen, pain was actually not the primary reason why people would ask for assisted suicide or euthanasia. It was usually because they were lonely, because they didn't have interactions, because they didn't have that human contact, because they didn't feel engaged or they were worried about being a burden or they didn't want to put their family through any more difficulty, either financially or otherwise. It's a lot of these other things that go on. And when you have someone who says, hey, I'm going to do hospice, and the family's supportive and they're in there and they're willing to support that process and be engaged and make the person realize that their life has value still and that we're going to do what we can toward the end of your life. It seems like that makes a big difference.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah. The only other situation there is a subset of people who basically, who want their autonomy, and they tell you and they don't even want to listen to you. Okay. They, you know, they're telling you. And so there's, and I think that's what the people who really drive that, I think that's, that's their attitude. Okay.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, that's a big argument.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: We have to have autonomy. I want to be able to do it when I want to do it, and no one should be able to tell me differently.
But unfortunately, like you're saying, that affects a lot of other people. Like, they feel this duty to die and, you know, and I. Right.
And then if a physician brings it up, you know, and I really don't know how it gets applied in, you know, in these states. I mean, I have a concern because I ask myself if, if I had this as my part of my toolbox.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Right. Exactly. How would that impact your, your advice, if you knew you could throw that out there as an option?
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And I can't, you know, I haven't done it, and I'm sort of just guessing. But just to give you an idea of what I do, I mean, here's a simple thing. You know, a patient walks in and it's something simple. And when I had, you used to have an office practice, so they've got like an upper respiratory infection. I'm pretty sure this is viral. There's nothing going on. And this is the art of medicine. And you're saying to yourself, is this the patient who's going to demand to have an antibiotic no matter what I say? And I said, I used to joke, you know, if I give you an antibiotic, you'll get better in a week, but if I don't, you'll get better in seven days, you know, but that applies right across all of medicine. So then, but let's, let's go forward into the more complicated patients. And so as a physician, when I'm seeing a patient in the office, even when I do hospice, because now I deal with multiple medical problems. So even though, even if I've had several patients come on with cancer, but they weren't dying of that, they were dying of pneumonia or heart failure. So I treat that, solve their problem, but they still have the cancer. But when you're seeing a patient, you're asking questions and trying to figure out what's going on with them, and you're trying to gauge, you're getting to know them. You have to develop a relationship very quickly. But at the end of the day, after I examine the patient, maybe I'm going to run some tests, etcetera. And when you finally say to them, okay, here's what's in my mind. I have to sort of register what's the most important thing here, you know, 1st, 2nd, third and fourth. What, what am I going to do? In the back of my mind, I'm always thinking of, well, if this doesn't work, I'm going to do that. That doesn't work, etcetera. So then if you get a patient, now we're talking about a person who's in and out of hospital several times. They're sort of talking about, you know, they're getting tired out of this. They're not sure they want to go back to the hospital or let's say they have cancer, etcetera. Now that's where the h word comes in. I always used to joke in the office, patients hated the c word cancer. But in cancer clinics, they hate the h word, which when the cancer doctor says, I need to send you to the hospice.
But when I'm in the office, I'm thinking, okay, if they got cancer, maybe it's time to talk about hospice.
But if physician assists, suicide is part of my toolbox. Where am I going to put that in that, you know, in that list? Is it going to be, is it always going to be the end for me, it's never there. Right.
But when you're seeing patients with multiple medical problems, you have a barrage of complaints. Okay.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Lots of things going on, and rightly so. Okay. But the thing is that there may not be a lot you can do, and so you get it. You get used to not ignoring it. I answer all the questions, but walking them through it and them realizing and recognizing the limits. And as a physician, I'm just like everybody else. I like to have happy customers. I'd love to be able to say, hey, I can solve that problem. In fact, the heart failure thing with the fluid oval is great. They love when I'm able to do that.
So I see physicians assisted suicide as sort of an easy out. As for my job, it's like someone cheating on a test or using AI to write a paper.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: I can't judge my colleagues in the states that have physicians assisted suicide, but to me, you just don't go there. You're always, at the end of the day, it's always hospice. That's the best type of care. That's the proof that you really care about the patient you want to give them.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: So share. Maybe, I don't know if you have a personal experience with a patient that you could talk about, but I was thinking if you could share, Howard, maybe an experience that you've had of somebody who.
Who would have been the kind of person that maybe you'd look at and say, gee, they're really going through a lot here. This is incredibly challenging, either pain wise or emotionally or otherwise, and how they've hung in there and how that's been a positive impact on their family or friends or themselves by going and saying, I respect life. I'm going to go through this process and experience this, rather than cutting it short with assisted suicide.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: I wish I could give you a specific case. I think I'm just.
My recollection is that we have cases like this every day, so I've had numerous. There's just so many of them where you're dealing with families and you're dealing with patients that come in. In that setting, it's really hard to know what they're going to.
They may not mention it, that they want physicians to suicide. I mean, in hospice, yeah, we have patients who really have a lot of pain problems and symptom problems. We have what's called a hospice house or an inpatient unit where they can get treated for that, and if necessary, they can be put on morphine drips or other types of drip. We even have palliative sedation if necessary. So if someone is really that bad that you have to almost knock them out, really for a while and then bring them back. It's so rare that we have to do that. That's the whole point. I can only think of one case in the 13 years where I practiced in hospice before. I wasn't involved in it, but I was aware of it. It's so rare that you have to do that. Everybody else we pretty well have under control. So I do remember one patient I had, to me, it's sort of almost humorous. I mean, she lived on her own, but this lady, she had the fluid overload heart failure problem. And I went to see her and started solving her problem, getting the fluid off, but she kept complaining about different things. I remember sitting there and I said to her, you know, I've been doing this a long time, and when I take 20 pounds of fluid off the patient and they're able to run around and not use oxygen, they're usually pretty happy about it. I said, yeah, I'm going to put you on some Zoloft, sertraline. It's an antidepressant. Because maybe you're depressed and you have chronic anxiety because she has so much other medical problems. I came back about ten days later. She goes, I should have been on this all my life. But anyway, we ended up discharging her from hospice alive. But then she came back and she kept wanting to die. She kept talking about it, but then she kept letting me cure her.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: She'd stop her medication. We put her back on eventually. I think she came on a fifth time, and they didn't get me involved. Cause she wanted to die, so.
But, you know, I think you were saying, you know, of someone that you've had.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got a friend in my own personal life that has been wheelchair ridden almost her entire life.
Really severe, severe physical impairments and even some mental impairments, but primarily just extreme physical impairments. And I just look at her, and she would be the kind of person that somebody would hold up if they're a proponent of assisted suicide or euthanasia and say, what is your life for? You have to be cared for. You have to have somebody come in every day and take care of you. You have to have people give you rides anytime you want to go anywhere because you can't have. Take care of yourself. You have to have somebody come in and dress you and bathe you. What is your life for? Right? That's the argument that you kind of hear, is there value in your life? And yet I look at this dear friend, and she has been such an inspiration to hundreds of people that know her and have been associated with her and have had an opportunity to serve her over the years, that I just look at that and I said, boy, that would be a real tragedy if for sake of feeling neglected or feeling like her life didn't have value, if she had decided to end her life with assisted suicide. And I'm so grateful she hasn't and just really appreciate the opportunity that the rest of us have had to get to know her and see her struggles and her perseverance and her efforts to be an example to the rest of us. And it's been a real blessing in our lives.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Well, I would add that I've had many cases with Lou Gehrig's disease or any sort of multiple sclerosis, people with chronic neuro neurodegenerative problems on hospice. And besides the patient, it's the family. To me, it's the same thing that I said. I got to get some of that when I came to my faith, is that it's just really heartwarming to see the family involved. So you have these two extremes.
We have patients that, like you're saying, people would say, what's the use of them being alive? But the family doesn't believe that. Or they could even have. They could even have next door neighbors that are looking after them. I was joking with a nurse this morning, telling her that sometimes, a lot of times what you'll see is people that have been divorced a couple times, and both wives are there. You know, they're on there. It's a guy that typically, it's a guy, he's on his own. He's got nobody. He's estranged from his kids. He's a stranger. But both of his ex are three. I went. Had guy. I once had, like, five ex wives.
And this guy was pretty well off, you know, he was well known in the community, and he had five ex wives all, you know, and they were doing fine. They're all getting. They got along fine.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Helping to care for and to see.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: To see the care this person was getting was just incredible. I mean, so, you know, so sometimes the patient's not aware of it, but.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it goes back to the general principle that you brought up when you were talking about your conversion story.
There's the question of the sanctity of life and how life is valued, and there's the question of how you die and the sanctity of life and the respect that you give that, I think, impacts your thoughts on death and your thoughts on how that should be approached. Let me take the conversation just a slightly different angle now, because you were one of the co authors of your designed body, along with Steve Laufman. So there's an impact on this debate, and I'm not arguing that this is the primary impact, but in talking with Richard, it's very. There's a very clear mental thread between sort of a materialistic evolutionary type of thinking and the idea that euthanasian assisted suicide should just be a natural outgrowth of that type of thinking. So if we switch that around a little bit, Howard, how does the idea that our bodies are exquisitely and remarkably designed, intended and designed, rather than just a poorly assembled kludge from aeons of evolutionary thinking? How does that idea of design tie into this issue of human dignity and respect for life and respect for our bodies?
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Well, the first thing I would say is, you're right. I mean, when you. I think it's the last name, Harari, you know, about homo sapiens sapiens. And also, I think, a recent thing where Richard Weichard, I think, had a debate with Peter Singer.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: They always quote. They always say, oh, yeah, science, quote, unquote. Science. Of course, that's the new priesthood, the science. You know, science tells us that, you know, we were just. We just evolved. So.
So when you.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing unique or special about human beings. We're just maybe a little more intelligent or a little more, you know, social or a little more this or that or the other than the. Than the animals, but not really qualitatively any different. That's. That's the. That follows directly from the theory.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Right. And so that. And that's how they use their support, their theory. But. But when. When I'm. You know, when I'm writing about. In fact, I have a series now on evolution news where I'm going through multicellular organism.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: And highly recommended, by the way. Check it out, everybody.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a new one coming out soon on the sodium pump, but.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah. But the thing is that when you. When you. When I'm writing about these things, I'm having to explain how things work. I mean, it puts you on your knees. I mean, this stuff is just so complex. Okay.
And you're sort of praying, I mean, this moment, like, lord, you are just awesome. I mean, this is just phenomenal. This, you know, you can't believe how this stuff works. And people, this is, of course, this is what prompted Steve and I to write the book in the first place. That's the focus, is that I forget about the Darwinists. You know, I want to educate the average person about how body works so that they will not be misled by the science. And the same thing with respect to physicians assisted suicide as well, knowing about hospice care and dignity. And just to say that there's a gentleman, as I told you, I was just on the phone with a gentleman I heard from Canada who does have cancer. And just a few days ago, he was having some anxiety problems and he was seeing a psychiatrist. And I was interested through somebody, I heard that he had this meeting, and the idea of this ma, idea, maid medical assistance and dying had been suggested to him.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: What's that stand for?
[00:30:26] Speaker A: What does that mai medical, that's physician assisted suicide. In Canada, it's called medical assistance in dying.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: I see.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: So it's a euphemism because they try to take the word out of that, basically a suicide. Okay. They're trying to get rid of the word suicide.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: But I wanted to talk to him because I wanted to know exactly how this was presented to him. And he's a person of faith, and it turned out he saw a psychiatrist, and of course, part of his anxiety is related to him having the cancer. And he made the comment to me, it was so perfect. He goes, you know, I'm a person of faith. And he goes, you know, if I. He basically said, the psychiatrist said to him, by the way, you know, just letting you know that we have this maid program that's available, and he's going to be referred to hospice as well. But just letting you know it's available. The very fact that you mentioned this to the patient, I mean, there's, there's a certain authority like, oh, maybe he's thinking I should try it, whatever I. But this gentleman said to me that, he said back to the psychiatrist, well, I'm a person of faith. My faith says I can't do that, but I probably would have been interested.
He also said to me, which I thought was the best line, he goes, I made it all this way and I'm going to screw up at the end.
And I said, oh, that's a perfect line.
The idea is if you don't have any faith, you don't believe in God, you don't believe there's a, there's a life after death, and that you're judged, and that judgment is for what you do here on earth. If you don't really believe you're being judged, then yeah, like, I think Dostoevsky. Didn't he say, if there's no God, then anything's possible, everything's allowable type of thing.
So that's why that's so important. The darwinism sort of supports the atheism materialism that there is no goddess. And so I can live a life the way I want to. I can be my own God, which is basically this idea of what's going on in our culture is the tower of Babel all over again. Everyone's playing God. You know, if I'm going to kill myself, then I'm playing God to myself. So, yeah, that's the reason why those are important.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that experience with a friend of yours in Canada. I do want to just mention, as we kind of close here or get close to the end, you know, this is an incredibly serious and painful topic. I know for a lot of people, probably most of us have been touched by somebody who has been in a situation like this where they've either been considering or maybe even taking their own life. And so we want to be respectful and thoughtful of that and understand that there's lots of different circumstances. But what we're trying to do is lay out some broader principles for the culture at large and how this is impacting and what some of the options are. As you talked about with hospice and having good care, having family around, having those who support doctors and nurses and others around you as you approach end of life, and how that's certainly an option that's there that people need to be made aware of. So appreciate that.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Can I just add just one thing? It was very important because probably the commonest reason, the way this came into play in the last few decades is the idea that up until 50 or 60 years ago, you know, cardiopulmonary arrest, you know, until we had ventilators and defibrillators, etc. And all these things we could do, there was no end of life issues. Okay. But. But then with everything we were able to do, people were concerned about being kept alive forever.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Okay. That's. That was probably the biggest issue. And that's. And that's. That's some of the lies that are told them. They take advantage of them. But, you know, if you have an advanced directive and you have a healthcare surrogate and you make sure that they know what you want in a given situation, then it just shouldn't happen. You shouldn't be. All you have to do is be a do not. Probably the commonest thing that a person has to do to prevent them being kept alive is be a do not resuscitate.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: And it's important to distinguish, again, we won't spend time on it here, but I would encourage listeners to go listen to my interview with Richard Weichardt. He does distinguish very carefully between withholding of things like, you know, the ventilator and keeping people on machines versus the active act of prescribing something with the intent to kill. You know, if you took somebody off the ventilator and they recovered, you'd be thrilled. Right.
So that's very different than a situation where you're purposely making the decision to go ahead and end the life. And so he talks about that a little bit more in our other.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that would be very helpful for them. Yes.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: So, Howard, just since we're at the top of the hour here, any final thoughts or things that from your experience you think our viewers ought to know about?
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Well, I think as a summary, it's just what I just said. I think having an advanced directive and healthcare surrogate speaking to family, knowing that they're there for you and that they will speak for you because an advanced directive only kicks in if your physician decides that you have a terminal disease or end stage disease and you can't speak for yourself. If you can speak for yourself, you can say, hey, I don't want that even may cause your death. And the second thing, though, is that hospice, I think, is really the, that should be what we should be promoting and palliative care.
That type of stuff is the best and should replace physicians. This is suicide. I mean, I think the doctors, I think, I'm very concerned that for some physicians, some of them may be very good at using the maid, but for some physicians, it may be like giving a three year old a loaded gun. It can be just become, well, okay, as I said, where does that come into my toolbox?
Where am I going to apply that and how that affects you? Patients are vulnerable, so it's very important that they become educated about this and not fall for the lies of the euthanasia movement.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Good. Good. Well, howard, thank you so much for being with us today to help us better approach what I think really is a very serious and important topic. But I appreciate you helping us approach this in a thoughtful and respectful way.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Thank you very much. It was great being here.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Eric, thank you for listening to id the future. Join us
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