For profit "professional" guardians
are allowed to be compensated from their wards' accounts for the services they
provide, and many have seized the economic opportunity presented by the
incapacity of others by making a business of acting as a guardian. They have
cooperative business financial relationships with a variety of service providers
such as doctors, hospitals, lawyers, courts and government agencies responsible
for mental health care. Emergency placements are prone to abuse by the
professional guardianship industry and professional guardians making financial
decisions for their own self interest. Professional guardians know how to
manipulate the medical and court system to use procedural loopholes of the
emergency guardianship procedure to gain legal and financial control over the
ward's rights and assets and total control over the ward's medical care. With
no notice at all to the ward or ward's family, the entire life savings can be
stolen, their home sold at fire sale prices and all valuables and personal
possessions plundered and sold often at action. In addition attorneys acting as
guardians may charge exorbitant fees or commissions to the ward's estate thus
bankrupting the life savings and assets of the ward.
The use of guardianship power can be used to
ensnare the vulnerable elderly and disabled patients into substandard nursing
homes and Medicaid fraud schemes. Guardianship abuse can involve situations of
clinical medical human subject experimentation -- thus using guardianship to
get past the requirement of informed consent necessary for human subjects
protections by having the guardian blanket endorse any medication without
question that the treating physician wants to use. This permits kickbacks to
the prescribing doctors to go unnoticed by medical authorities and by passes
that pesky paperwork required by National Institute for Health for human
subjects -- in addition it gives cart blanche to use "off label"
medications -- especially psychiatric medications which are routinely used for
chemical restraint of patients. This trend is of course, encouraged by the
blossoming pharmaceutical market in drugs for dementia, Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's as well as other mental disorders like depression. In the United
States governmental agencies which legally participate in human
experimentation, like the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and its
subsidiaries like the National Institute on Health (NIH) and the National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) must have legal policies and regulations which
include standard "human consent forms" to be filled out by participants
to acknowledge that they are participating in human experimentation, thus
keeping the United States government in compliance with the Nuremberg Code of
International Law and other international human rights standards. Thus in
clinical or research studies additional informed consent must be used to
protect the human rights of the subjects. Informed consent is a requirement,
not a courtesy. This is especially true if the human subject is going to
undergo any evaluation, testing, treatment or procedure that is not part of
standard medical care.
The principle of Free, Prior and Informed
Consent is an important human right which has been addressed in many
international and domestic laws and practices. When treatment is initiated
against the wishes of the patient and without informed consent then it must be
determined that the treatment itself does not constitute punishment and that
the medical necessity has been shown to convincingly exist. Many in the field
of human rights believe that forced psychiatric treatment can be humiliating
and degrading and leaves lifelong stigma and emotional trauma to the patient
and can impact the patients' life in a negative way permanently. Essentially,
people have the right to make treatment decisions. Principle 19 of the UN's
"Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness"mandates
that:
"Informed consent is
consent obtained freely, without threats or improper inducements, after
appropriate disclosure to the patient of adequate and understandable
information in a form and language understood by the patient on:
(a) The diagnostic
assessment;
(b) The purpose, method,
likely duration and expected benefit of the proposed treatment;
(c) Alternative modes of
treatment, including those less intrusive;
(d) Possible pain or
discomfort, risks and side-effects of the proposed treatment."
Under the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities -- General Principles (CRPD Article 3)
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