Rahm Emanuel's physician brother, Ezekiel, has been smeared by the Right as an architect of government "Death Panels" - primarily because of his fraternal association and participation on health care reform advisory panels. The alleged "evidence" is out-of-context snipping from his extensive writings on end-of-life decisions and medical ethics, especially on questions that arise in the context of scarce resources such as donor organs for transplant. Time's Michael Scherer has an excellent piece on the "real" Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel here.
One of the most salient facts in the article - at least in the context of folks on the Crazy Train like Sarah Palin suggesting that health care reform proposed by Democrats in Congress, by the President or by health care advisors to the White House like Emanuel (who obviously has a "special relationship" with his Chief of Staff brother as part of a close-knit Orthodox Jewish family) entails "pulling the plug" not just on grandma (!) but on the disabled - is that the sister of Rahm and Ezekiel herself suffers from cerebral palsy. This is a bit of information on the Emmanuel family I'd never heard before - probably because unlike some partisan politicians the brothers don't see fit to use their family to justify their agenda. (I did know that Rahm's close friend, top Obama consultant David Axelrod has a daughter who suffers from severe epilepsy and that Axelrod's wife is a major fundraiser for epilepsy research.) The picture being painted of Doctor Emmanuel by "conservatives", as some Kevorkianesque character, lacking empathy and disconnected from the realities of the disabled is - aside from the falsity - cruel, slanderous and profoundly ignorant.
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