{"id":249454,"date":"2021-07-21T06:40:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T11:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=249454"},"modified":"2021-07-20T18:47:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T23:47:51","slug":"computer-canada-seniors-predict-months-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/computer-canada-seniors-predict-months-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Disturbing: Canadian computer program hopes to predict when elderly have just months to live"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

(National Review<\/a>) As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal<\/a> has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live.<\/p>\n

From the Global News story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Amid a lack of proper support for Canadians receiving home-based support towards the end of their lives, a new risk calculator is helping predict how long seniors have left to live.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Risk Evaluation for Support: Predictions for Elder-Life in the Community Tool \u2014 dubbed \u2018RESPECT\u2019 for short \u2014 can predict death within six months, and was developed using data from more than 491,000 community-dwelling adults aged at least 50 years who used home care between 2007 and 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n

READ: \u201cVulnerable groups in Canada plead: Don\u2019t expand assisted suicide\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Always with the acronyms to hide utilitarian protocols and procedures. Euthanasia in Canada is called MAID (medical assistance in dying), and now, RESPECT. Good grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe RESPECT calculator allows families and their loved ones to plan,\u201d said Dr. Amy Hsu, investigator at the Bruy\u00e8re Research Institute and lead author of the study.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, it can help an adult [or] child plan when to take a leave of absence from work to be with a parent or decide when to take the last family vacation together.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Or it could be used to restrict care and\/or push euthanasia. As one Canadian bioethicist noted:<\/p>\n

If the calculator would ever be introduced to Canada\u2019s healthcare system, Bowman believes that it would be interfaced with the country\u2019s medical assistance in dying (MAiD), and could possibly shape the attitude of palliative care and end of life decisions.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt will also shape the attitude of health care workers and it also raises a deeper question of who will interface with the broader question of what types of life are worth living and who decides, which is profoundly important stuff,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ya\u2019 think?<\/p>\n

READ: Canada faces pushback over expanding assisted suicide for those with mental illness<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

People don\u2019t die by the numbers. Much depends on the kind of care they receive, their mental states, and individual differences that can be immeasurable. Even the study\u2019s authors note a very big problem.<\/p>\n

As with many prediction models, RESPECT is less well-calibrated at the extremes of the distribution. In particular, we found that RESPECT overpredicted the mortality risk of patients in our top 3 risk bins.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oops.<\/p>\n

The idea that crucial and intimate decisions about patient care could soon be driven by a computer-modeling system \u2014 rather than individual assessments \u2014 is very alarming. And it will often be wrong. I know of several patients given six months or less to live who got kicked out of hospice because their health improved unexpectedly. This includes the humorist Art Buchwald<\/a>, who left hospice when he didn\u2019t die from kidney failure and lived long enough to write his last book.<\/p>\n

But then, with the quality-of-life ethic taking hold in medicine throughout the West, a \u201cfollow the science!\u201d approach would make it much easier for clinicians, socialized-medicine bean counters, and family to abandon frail patients to comfort-care-only regimens \u2014 or worse \u2014 and still get a good night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n

LAN Editor’s Note<\/strong>: This article was published at National Review<\/a> and is reprinted here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(National Review) As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live. From the Global News story: Amid a lack of proper support for Canadians receiving home-based support towards the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":245434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077,5],"tags":[1303,11177,154,2719,11176,10289,2318],"yoast_head":"\nDisturbing: Canadian computer program hopes to predict when elderly have just months to live<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Canada is continuing to put the vulnerable at risk, debuting a computer program that can predict when elderly patients have less than six months to live.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/computer-canada-seniors-predict-months-live\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Disturbing: Canadian computer program hopes to predict when elderly have just months to live\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Canada is continuing to put the vulnerable at risk, debuting a computer program that can predict when elderly patients have less than six months to live.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/computer-canada-seniors-predict-months-live\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-07-21T11:40:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-07-20T23:47:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Canada-March-for-Life-2021.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Wesley J. 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