"Informed Assent"? A DuPage County (IL) DNR in Spring 2020
Whether "doctor decision" or democide-directed, this was done in the name of COVID
A story from DuPage County, Illinois,1 early in the ‘pandemic emergency’ illustrates how government-directed messaging and protocols influenced doctors to make ethically questionable decisions.
Here it is, as reported on 7 April 2020 (emphasis added).2
A Wheaton man who tested positive for COVID-19 died in a matter of days. His family was devastated and upset and said the hospital where he was treated didn’t follow their wishes and do more to try to save his life.
Dimitrios Katsaros, 70, known as Jimmy by his friends and family, started to get sick three days ago. Katsaros was diabetic, and was also going through chemo for leukemia. On Sunday things got worse.
"As we were continuing to give him things to increase his blood sugar his eyes closed and his breathing became shallow,” Melpo Katsaros, his daughter, said. Katsaros’ daughter called 911, and he was rushed to Northwestern Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield."
The doctor in the ER spoke to his family by phone, and said Katsaros was being intubated, and then transferred up to the intensive care unit. The family then got another call from the attending physician in the ICU.
“She didn’t feel it was worth treating a person with COVID-19 because he had co-morbidity. That it wasn’t worth the risk to her staff to get infected is what she told us,' Chris Curdes, Katsaros’ sister-in-law said.
Melpo Katsaros said she explained the family wanted to make sure they did everything to keep her father alive.
Dr. Nathan Goldfein, CMO for Wakefield Brunswick in TAZ, just published an article called “The black art we practice in white coats,” discussing disaster medicine and the tough calls doctors are making in COVID cases, particularly when it comes to elderly patients with underlying conditions.
Goldfein said even with elderly patients, they try to resuscitate them. He said the problem with COVID-19 is that by doing so, all the resuscitators, the doctors and nurses, are then exposed to the deadly disease.
The Katsaros family said the doctor asked them multiple times to sign a DNR, or do not resuscitate order, but they refused. On Monday, they got an update from a charge nurse."
“She said, ‘Even if your family doesn’t want DNR we have two doctors that will override it,’” Melpo Katsaros said. “So at this point your dad is DNR. This is a couple hours before the phone call that his heart stopped. She said that was at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning."
The family, including Katsaros’ wife of 47 years could not be at his bedside.
“It’s not worth 10 minutes of CPR to give him a chance?” Curdes said. “To be told you’re basically not worth the effort. Vets do more to save dogs than Northwestern said Jimmy was worth. That makes it that much more painful.”
WGN reached out to Northwestern about this case. The hospital said due to patient privacy laws, they could not comment.
One attorney WGN spoke to said it is possible for two doctors to sign off and override a family’s DNR wishes. Legally the doctors can do so if the patient does not have an advanced directive, or physical copy of a health care power of attorney.
Notice what happened (and how it fits the model outlined here):
Dimitrios Katsaros, a 70-year-old man with diabetes and leukemia who was going through chemotherapy gets sick during an illegal mass quarantine. (In the broadcast version of the report, below, his daughter says they were trying to raise his blood sugar and his breathing became shallow.)
An ambulance is called and takes him to the hospital; his family is not allowed to be with him.
The hospital tests him for the “new” virus. He tests positive.
The hospital proceeds to “treat” him for the “new” virus - i.e., sedation, intubation and mechanical ventilation. No family member is allowed to witness his treatment.
Doctors decide he isn’t worth treating due to his co-morbidities and because he presents an infection risk to staff.
The hospital asks the family multiple times to sign a DNR. The family says no, and the hospital overrides it.
Melto Katsaros told WGN News,
“Nobody should go through this. And I’m sure maybe it was their first COVID patient? There’s not a lot in DuPage County. But they will be getting more, and there shouldn’t be a family that the last hours of their loved ones life, they’re fighting with medical staff over a DNR order.”
Commentary
This is one of many news reports from spring 2020 that I have revisited.3 The nature and timing make it rather unusual — and important to document. Many “COVID-related” reports about hospital deaths during the “first wave” of excess mortality functioned, whether intentionally or not, as propaganda for “selling” the dangers of the newly-named virus Contemporaneous accounts of family directly accusing hospital staff of maltreatment were rare.4
While Mr. Katsaros’s family didn’t question whether he “had COVID” they could not be expected to do so, given the level of brainwashing from federal, state, and local officials at the time. There was nothing unusual - or even specific to the laundry list of COVID symptoms - about them calling an ambulance, considering his health condition and the fact that he was having difficulty breathing. At the time, everyone coming to - and already in - the hospital was being PCR-tested for SARS-CoV-2 (which helped create the appearance of sudden viral spread). Mr. Katsaros tested positive and regarded as being “sick” with COVID, in addition to his preexisting ailments. Considering the context, it’s remarkable that the family took their concerns to Chicago media - and that the media reported on it.
Also remarkable was the apparent willingness of doctors to “follow orders”. Whose orders? At a minimum, they adhered to guidelines issued via health agencies, professional organizations, and hospital systems on diagnosing COVID-19 and managing patients labeled as “having it” - which included the idea that COVID patients would require mechanical ventilation.
As for unilateral DNRs, just a week before Mr. Katsaros’s hospitalization, the Journal of the American Medical Association5 (JAMA) published a piece on 27 March 2020 - the same day the CARES Act was signed into law - titled The Importance of Addressing Advance Care Planning and Decisions About Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders During Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19).
Medical professionals with relevant experience are best positioned to critically analyze this advisory, but there’s little doubt that what the authors recommended a) is not normal or typical practice, and b) provided tacit moral or ethical permission for unilateral DNRs. One relevant excerpt below:
…in extreme situations in which CPR cannot possibly be effective, clinicians in some health care settings may unilaterally decide to write a DNR order. This [approach] is not uniformly accepted &, prior to COVID-19, it rarely had a role.
During this pandemic, however, in extreme situations such as a patient with severe underlying chronic illness and acute cardiopulmonary failure who is getting worse despite maximal therapy, there may be a role for a unilateral DNR to reduce the risk of medically futile CPR to patients, families, and health care workers
A distinction between informed consent and informed assent is made and a model for the recommended process provided.6
The assumptions and principles underlying this framework are controversial, and the fact that this—and similar guidance—was influencing patient care during an unsubstantiated pandemic emergency is deeply troubling. (I’ll revisit Dr. Nathan Goldfein and his article, cited in the WGN News report, in a separate post.)
According to a reliable source within the health system responsible for Central DuPage Hospital, unilateral DNRs in the spring of 2020 were not uncommon, and a policy had to be issued to safeguard against those from continuing to occur, lest numerous lawsuits be filed.
Residents of DuPage County (my fellow taxpayers) may be interested to know that federal data and records obtained from the county health department show that if you died in 2020 in DuPage County with COVID-19 on your death certificate, you most likely died in the hospital. Moreover, the majority of nursing home resident COVID-blamed deaths in DuPage occurred at the hospital and the majority of COVID-blamed deaths that occurred at the hospitals were nursing home residents.7
Dimitrios Katsaros was not a nursing home resident. He was being cared for at home, by a loving family - a family that should’ve been by his side. They weren’t allowed to witness or object to his care, thanks to a near-nationwide policy of barring visitors from healthcare settings during '“lockdown.” Their wishes were ignored, and a father and husband died alone, without his children and wife of 47 years being able to say goodbye.
The mindset and individual responsibility of the doctors who treated Dimitrios Katsaros is beyond my ability to ascertain, as is whether the death would’ve occurred regardless of the (alleged) unilateral DNR.
His case was early in the ‘pandemic’ event, but it was neither the first, the only, nor the last. This is what makes it, for me, a prototype of the democide carried out in the name of “COVID.”
Next Post
If you think you have to go back to much darker and sinister period in history to find this level of abandonment of ethical norms in the face of an emergency, think again:
I grew up in DuPage County (Chicago metro) and live there now, not far from hospital where Mr. Katsaros was DNR’d against his family’s wishes. I became aware of this incident in 2023. When the incident occurred, I was living in Cook County, not DuPage.
Family Says Northwestern Central DuPage Hospital Did Not Do Enough to Help Save Loved One | This story is something of an outlier for the timeframe because it captures an iatrogenic death without aggrandizing COVID-19.
I first became aware of and posted a thread about it in April 2023.
Cases like the medical homicide of Grace Schara occurred later.
The American Medical Association is headquartered in Chicago.
The authors also cite this curiously-titled 16 March 2020 article “The coronavirus is a chance to have the end of life conversations we need”
I see no evidence of outbreaks involving SARS-CoV-2 “viral spread” in nursing homes - including at the “first” nursing home outbreak in DuPage County in early 2020 (which I may write about in the future).
Important info. No one was more propagandized then the medical establishment. They had no problem throwing away the lives of fragile (and some not so fragile) people, because they thought it was well worth it to save their own asses from exposure to the "deadly pathogen." That's how "sick" the medical establishment was during the heat of the propaganda blitz, and they are still traumatized. Not by what they observed, but by what they were told and to varying degrees by what they know they did out of fear as a result. Conveniently, "rules" prevented any outside observation of what were likely many thousands of similar acts.
R.I.P.