Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...right -- Brophy's wife or the hospital? Should the sanctity of human life override suffering, indignity, even a patient's own wishes? Such agonizing dilemmas were at the heart of two days of discussions in Boston last week by 70 health administrators and scholars from 28 states and Canada. Their topic: the morality of removing feeding tubes. The meeting's sponsor was the Catholic Health Association, whose membership includes 615 hospitals that admit 6 million patients a year and 267 nursing homes that care for 74,000 aged patients...
...estimated 10,000 comatose Americans who cannot swallow are now kept alive by feeding tubes, usually inserted into the stomach directly or through the nose. The claim that such patients -- or proxies acting on their behalf -- have the right to halt nutrition was endorsed a year ago by both the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. Seriously debilitated but conscious patients who are unable to swallow are claiming the same right. Last month a Colorado court granted a no-feeding request from a patient who was conscious but paralyzed from the neck down. He died two weeks...
...patients died within five days of falling ill. Cities were decimated in a matter of months. The scourge was so contagious that, according to Guy, "no one could approach or even see a patient without taking the disease." By the time the epidemic subsided a few years later, at least a quarter to a third of all Europeans -- perhaps 25 million people -- had perished...
Doctors generally agree that they will need a two-pronged approach in order to treat AIDS effectively. In addition to eliminating the virus, they must rebuild the patient's ravaged immune system. That may turn out to be the most difficult goal to achieve; researchers have had little success so far with such natural immune boosters as alpha and gamma interferon. Indeed, AIDS therapy may ultimately prove to be most effective in patients whose immune systems are not yet destroyed -- those who show only early symptoms of the disease or perhaps are symptomless carriers. With drugs like AZT, says Broder...
...first line of defense against AIDS in most countries is the state-run health-care system. Many poorly equipped facilities are already badly strained by a flood of AIDS patients. One study noted that the cost of treating ten AIDS patients in the U.S. -- about $450,000 -- is more than the entire budget of one large Zairian hospital. Clinics and hospitals are now routinely discharging AIDS patients after emergency treatment to make room for those who can be effectively treated. Doctors often have to make painful decisions. A case of bacterial pneumonia can be cured with $5 or $6 worth...