Posted on 01/04/2009 11:25:43 AM PST by wagglebee
To talk about the issue of physician-assisted suicide, the first thing you have to do is sort through the words and phrases used in the debate - starting with "physician-assisted suicide."
The Rev. Milous "Mike" Repka doesn't care for the term. "I think of it as an assisted way of dying rather than suicide," he said.
Dr. Deric Weiss, who has been with Billings Clinic since 1997 and is board-certified in internal medicine and in hospice and palliative care, also favors calling it assisted death.
Writing in the Dec. 11 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Robert Steinbrook said designations like "death with dignity" and "physician-assisted suicide" can be considered "emotionally charged and judgmental," depending on which side of the issue you're on.
In Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide was legalized by the Death with Dignity Act, deaths under the law are not classified as suicides. "Although some prefer terms such as 'physician aid in dying' and 'physician-assisted death,' physician-assisted suicide remains a frequently used descriptor," Steinbrook wrote.
The issue is often muddied by language used on both sides of the debate, said the Rev. Richard Vettel-Becker, director of spiritual services for Rocky Mountain Hospice in Billings.
He said proponents of physician-assisted suicide sometimes create the impression that there are no other options for people in the last, painful stages of terminal illness.
"I see people die with dignity all the time," he said of his work at the hospice. "Assisted suicide doesn't have a corner on the market on death with dignity or dying without pain."
On the other side of the debate, opponents of physician-assisted suicide sometimes use terms like "right to life," as they do in arguments over abortion. The result, Vettel-Becker said, is the impression that without legalizing assisted suicide, people "afflicted with a terminal illness are at the mercy of the medical establishment and/or right-to-lifers who have the power to prolong their agony at any cost."
In reality, he said, hospice care and palliative care are available everywhere for those who "choose to live life to its fullest while they are dying a death with dignity."
Hospice care is for those nearing death and provides medicines to ease pain and increase comfort rather than medicines that seek to cure an illness. Palliative care basically refers to the same thing but not necessarily to those with terminal illnesses.
Vettel-Becker said there is an important distinction between passive and active euthanasia. Under passive euthanasia, death is caused by the natural course of a disease or trauma and life-sustaining medical interventions may be withdrawn, not so much to end life as to avoid prolonging the process of dying.
Active euthanasia involves taking measures that hasten or cause death. Typically, in a physician-assisted death, a doctor writes a prescription for a lethal dose of medication, like barbiturates or morphine, which the patient then self-administers.
But the definitions of active and passive euthanasia are general, carrying the sense of the original Greek word meaning "a good death." In legal terms, euthanasia involves actively ending another person's life, not merely providing the tools to allow a person to end his own life. As Steinbrook pointed out in his article, euthanasia in that sense is still illegal everywhere in the United States.
People who actually have dignity will still have it at the time of death no matter how undignified they appear.
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Lets just change what we call it and maybe people won’t notice. Like calling abortion and infant murder “choice”
My husband died of cancer in our home in his own bed, as his choice when it became clear treatment would do no good. The natural process of the disease was alleviated by good hospice care (ad lib pain relief) and the fact that he was in our home, we were together, our family and friends visited, our priest visited often, and his personal privacy and dignity were not assaulted.
There was nothing of euthanasia about it, although we discussed the possibility. He chose natural death among loved ones, cared for by loved ones.
A good death, our priest said. The death of a good man. I can only hope for something like that for myself.
That's what they've done when they started referring to euthanasia as "assisted suicide."
When a physician prescribes medicine that, if taken as directed, WILL result in death, there is NOTHING "assisted" about it, the patient is being "treated" with euthanasia. I had a sinus infection last month, my doctor prescribed an antibiotic, I took the antibiotic and the infection went away, there was nothing "assisted" about it.
What you describe is almost identical to my grandfather’s death of pancreatic cancer two years ago.
He was 87 years old and by the time the cancer was discovered, it was too far advanced for any treatment. He went home and had wonderful around-the-clock care from a hospice program run by a group of nuns. They made him as comfortable as they could and a month before he died he even had a birthday party.
Two days before he passed away, he became unconscious. The nuns took turns saying the Rosary at his bedside. About a minute before he died he regained consciousness, he saw the sisters and his family and smiled, he mouthed the words, “Mother of God” and then closed his eyes and died. NOTHING could be more dignified.
My husband was much younger, his cancer was everywhere and overwhelming when it was first found, he only lived 6 weeks. I am a retired nurse, so with the help of hospice I was able to take care of his meds and other needs, he had some palliative (pain-relieving) mild chemo and radiation, hospice came daily the last two weeks.
He was conscious the day he died, still able to walk a short distance with help, but that evening went into his final coma. He (and I) received the sacraments that morning, our children and grandchildren attended his dying.
We prepared his body for the funeral home. Arrangements were premade, no need for the authorities, hospice came and pronounced time of death and notified the doctor.
He was with us, until he died, then he was gone. Still, respect and love for the flesh which bore his heart and soul.
Comparing assisted suicide to abortion is comparing apples to oranges.
Physician assisted suicide involves a person deciding for themselves they wish to die, while abortion, on the other hand, is having death forced upon them by someone else.
Perhaps you are right, one is the murder of innocent infants, one is the murder of innocent adults.
Physician assisted suicide involves a person deciding for themselves they wish to die,
Except when it DOESN'T:
“Under passive euthanasia, death is caused by the natural course of a disease or trauma and life-sustaining medical interventions may be withdrawn, not so much to end life as to avoid prolonging the process of dying.”
I don’t see how they can call just plain dying “passive euthanasia”. I have a good friend who recently (in the last two or three months) was diagnosed with a virulent, incurable cancer. Within days of hospital admission, he was put on a ventilator, and thus under sedation. He could not breathe on his own. His wife was told that there was no possibility of cure or halting the spread of disease, and they needed his permission to withdraw the ventilator. So they un-sedated him, asked him, and he agreed. He left this world not long after. This was NOT euthanasia, passive or active.
And his departure was with dignity, regardless of his physical condition. He was fully prepared to meet God.
Thank you for sharing that, it is very beautiful and brings tears to my eyes.
That is a noble, dignified and inspiring death. Death is already assured for every creature. Dignified has nothing to do with people being “in control” of their depature date or method.
Thank you for telling of your husband’s departure. That is real dying with dignity.
Actually they are very similar.
Both involve non-natural death, and both involve the medical profession in killing instead of healing, and both involve large government meddling and beaurocracies and funding. And both are beloved causes of leftists.
You’re purposefully omitting the fundamental difference between the two; the choice of the person to end their own life. Physician assisted suicide involves adults making adult decisions involving their own life, while abortion simply takes the life of a person without their consent.
Two completely different things.
Not really. How many people decide they are going to have an abortion, and how many people “decide” because thats what everyone else wants them to do?
People can already kill themselves any time they want. We’ve hashed this out numerous times on other threads. I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, but here are the basics - people can find/get prescribed medications that will, if overdosed on, cause death. Easy as pie, even for a bedridden person. Voila! Suicide without doc’s or government intervention.
And if someone is not bedridden, there are the methods wagglebee noted as well as entire books written on the subject. And if a person is bedridden and can’t or doesn’t want to go the pharmaceutical route, they just stop eating and drinking, death occurs within a week or so.
That’s one thing.
The other thing is this (and I know you know this unless you are spectacularly ill-informed) that many people in the Metherlands have been killed, without their permmission, in the name of “doctor assisted suicide”. Without their permission. That is the slippery slide that does and will occur; as well as sick, helpless, elderly and infirm human beings being pressued to kill themselves.
Beyond disgusting. Just say you want to go for Soylent Green and be honest about your position.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Euthanasia
2276 Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible.
2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.
Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.
2278 Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of "over-zealous" treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.
2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.
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