CPR can crack ribs and only succeeds longterm in restarting a heart 20% of the time --

[MADem]

134. Well, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's fine and dandy

for the older person to make their own decisions, craft a DNR and let their family know what they want, but I don't like some 66 year old know-it-all with a "Shock Thrice" tattoo imparting "wisdom" to Boomer Children about what he thinks Ma and Pa might want.

It just smells bad to me...like the whole story is a forward scout, sniffing out how receptive the middle aged folks are towards "letting ma/pa go" -- it's almost like saying "Yeah, I see ma is out cold on the kitchen floor and turning blue, take your time dialing 911, or just wait a bit and call the coroner instead!"

Not sure if I'm expressing myself well, but time will tell--if this starts to be a theme on the talk shows, where the "sale" is that it's "OK" to pull the plug on Granny, "for her own good, of course," I'll start to smell a rat.

After all, the deader they are, the less they cost the health care industry! Makes room in the nursing home warehouse, too, so that they can milk a new patient dry at full cost before the "state aid" price tier kicks in.

Here is another view of the same issue:

Lorraine Bayless, 87, died later in the day on Feb. 26 after a Glenwood Gardens worker defied pleas of a 911 dispatcher to perform CPR. The worker cited a company policy that instructs Glenwood Gardens employees to call 911 and wait in if a resident is having a “health emergency.”
While a bias persists that the elderly might fare worse after a heart attack, studies find that an active 80-year-old who plays tennis, say, can better recover from cardiac arrest than a bedridden 50-year-old on dialysis.
Injuring the patient also shouldn’t be a worry, even with a very old person, said Dr. Benjamin Abraham, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Ohio State University.
“With adequate or vigorous CPR, we may break a rib or two, but the benefit of doing that is to increase the likelihood of survival,” ...That’s true even for tiny infants, Abella said.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/03/05/heart-experts-dont-think-just-do-cpr/