ON THE HOSPICE MOVEMENT

The Rev. Mr. E. L. Hebden Taylor’s treatise entitled “First Legalized Abortion Now Legalized Euthanasia” in the June 1980 issue of the Outlook contains statements upon which I must comment.

My perspective is that of a Christian, professional critical care nurse with thirty years of nursing experience. For me, the challenge of “saving” the critically ill patient from death is stimulating and rewarding. I agree with the Rev. Mr. Taylor that the Christian should have no part in abortion or mercy killing. In fact, I have at one time, experienced having to put my professional job on the line in a successful effort to keep from having to participate in abortion procedures.

The Rev. Mr. Taylor misrepresents the Hospice Movement when he says, “Those deemed terminally ill are not merely left to ‘die with dignity’ but are fed Bromptom’s mixture every three hours until the patient dies.” Bromptom’s mixture and also Slessinger’s solution are pharmaceutical combinations of pain reliever, tranquilizer and anti–nausea medications which allow terminal cancer patients to live out their final days with a consistent degree of mental lucidity and relative comfort. The preparations in solution for oral intake allow for more lucidity than do the traditional intramuscular injections. The medications are not prescribed to “kill the patient” as the Rev. Mr. Taylor seems to imply. Instead the patient is allowed the dignity or freedom from intractable pain, and thus the ability to communicate with his loved ones and his God while moving toward his natural earthly end into eternity.

Surely anyone who has witnessed a family member or friend experience the agony of terminal cancer pain is sympathetic to the patient’s profound discomfort. Pain, anxiety and nausea relief are accepted humane as well as Christian approaches to the medical care of the terminally ill patient.

The Hospice Movement scarcely fits into a killer troika (abortion, euthanasia, hospice). The Hospice Movement founded in England and now modeled in the United States is dedicated to helping the terminally ill patient to live out his days at home with the dignity of relative mental lucidity and comfort. Actually, the Hospice Movement is a return to our original Christian roots of care for the terminally ill at home by family and friends yet under medical supervision.

As a nurse of the Reformed persuasion, I regard it as extremely unfortunate that an individual in the position of Christian leadership occupied by the Rev. Mr. Taylor should so thoroughly confuse the distinctions between euthanasia, and death with dignity, and should undertake to speak ostentatiously about medical matters of which he is manifestly uninformed. In no way can the Hospice Movement be linked with euthanasia or abortion; medically, morally, theologically or otherwise.

One wonders what the Rev. Mr. Taylor thinks the motives were for the Christian sisters who in the Middle Ages and afterward dedicated their lives to the care of the terminally ill. Perhaps political bias is interfering with scholarship.

Wilhelmina Hiemstra, R.N.

Intensive Care Unit Supervisor, Chowchilla District Memorial Hospital, Chowchilla, California

REPLY:

Thank you for allowing me to reply to Nurse Hiemstra’s reply to my article published last month “First Legalized Abortion Now Legalized Euthanasia,” in your excellent magazine.

It has been truly said that the path to hell has been paved with good intentions. I do not for one moment question the sincerity nor the dedication to duty of Nurse Hiemstra, RN. I fully agree with her desire to do everything possible to help terminally ill patients from suffering any more pain than is necessary.

However, I still stick with my assertions that the Hospice Movement is both anti-Christian and anti–scientific. I base my convictions upon two sources (a) Karen Steinherz and Marie Mendez, “The Hospice Movement-Taking the Pain Out of Genocide,” New Solidarity, VoL IX, No. 62, October 6, 1978 and (b) Sandol Stoddard, The Hospice Movement (Briarcliff Manor, New York; Stein and Day, 1978).

According to these sources the Most Venerable Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem during the eleventh century organized hospices as a “death cult” where the sick were administered hallucinogenic drugs instead of medical treatment. The hospices became known as the dissemination point for drugs and lethal poisons, often targeted at the Knights’ humanist adversaries. (See also Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies, London, 1954.)

In 1967, the Order of St. John resurrected the 11th century Hospice Movement at St. Christopher’s Hospice in London, England. Here “patients” are administered a “pain killer” called the Brompton Mixture. As I pointed out in my article it consists of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, tranquilizers and chloroform water. It is administered every three hours—until the patient dies (for proof of this please consult the sources I have given above). According to my way of thinking I do not think administering such a poison to a patient is a very Christian thing to do even if as Nurse Hiemstra claims this “medication” is designed to “allow terminal cancer patients to live out their final days with a consistent degree of mental lucidity and relative comfort.”

In 1977, the Order of St. John launched a Hospice Movement in the United States. It advocates the decriminalization of heroin and cocaine—on the “humanitarian” grounds that everyone has the human right to die as he or she sees fit. Does Nurse Hiemstra subscribe to this apostate humanist doctrine? According to the Holy Bible only the Lord gives us life and only He can take it away (Job 1:21).

St. Matthew tells us that our blessed Savior was offered “vinegar to drink mingled with gall; and when he had tasted thereof, He would not drink” (Matt. 27:34). Would Nurse Hiemstra have offered Jesus a cup of the Brompton Mixture as He hung dying upon His Cross?

In the United States, The Hospice, Inc., is financed by the Kaiser Foundation, which includes on its board Kingman Brewster, a member of the Order of St. John. The Kaiser Foundation’s involvement in the movement to legalize opium, cocaine and heroin for general public use dates back to at least 1958, when Dr. Timothy Leary conducted his first experiments with LSD at the Foundation’s Kaiser Experimental Hospital in San Francisco (see Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Tarcher, 1980). The other institution currently involved in financing the Hospice Movement in the United States is the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics at Georgetown University (see Steinherz and Mendex, op. cit.), a Jesuit run institution.

The Order of St. John also maintains significant influence on the board of directors of the Ford Foundation, the world’s largest tax exempt funding conduit for dionysian and death cults. On the board are John Loudon , a Commander in the Knights of St. John, the chairman of Royal Dutch, and Eugene Black, another Knight and former director of the World Bank (see Who ‘s Who in America (Chicago: Marquis, 1974 and The Foundation Directory, 5th edition, New York). In short the Hospice Movement is just another front for the movement to legalize the use of drugs in this country, using dying patients as the thin edge of the wedge to break down the American people’s rightful opposition to such corruption (see “Decrim Alert”; in War on Drugs, Magazine of the National Anti-Drug Coalition, Vol. 1, No. 1, June, 1980,304 West 58th Street, 5th Floor, New York, N.Y . 10019).

As the father of five children I shall fight such movements whenever and wherever I come across them. It is time Christians in America woke up to those who want to play God over the people of America in deciding who shall live and who shall die (see Jay Katz, Alexander M. Capron and Swift Glass, Experimentation with Human Beings (1972) and Richard M. Restak, Pre· meditated Man; Bioethics and the Control of Future Human Life (1975).

Reverend E. L. Hebden Taylor Sioux Center, Iowa 51250