Posted on 03/04/2010 7:38:34 PM PST by DemonDeac
" At least 36 terminally ill people died last year after taking lethal medication prescribed by doctors under Washington State’s new physician-assisted suicide law, according to a state report released Thursday, the first since the law went into effect a year ago.
A total of 63 people filled prescriptions for lethal medication, but not everyone took it. All those who did take it died. Some people who did not take it died from other causes."
"Oregon, whose law went into effect in 1998, also released its annual report this week. The Oregon Public Health Division said 59 people died last year from lethal medication prescribed under the law; 95 prescriptions were filled. A total of 460 patients have died under the law in Oregon."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
But do we know that those who supposedly bought it were the patients? Do we know that those who died weren’t murdered?
Here’s the problems with assisted suicide. First off, it’s murder, second it’ll do just what abortion did. Abortion started out to be only in the first trimester and only under strict terms. Now it’s a free for all and you can have an abortion at anytime for any reason. When will assisted suicide be a government mandate for certain reasons? And from a person who has known illness and felt horrible at how it was affecting my family. It would be really easy to talk someone in to suicide when they are the most vulnerable.
Someday, the government will quietly begin withholding medical treatment from, say, fathers who haven't paid their child support, or some other group everyone hates. And bit by bit...
Doctors who get a taste for killing their patients will, given the opportunity, kill even more of them than allowed.
Do we know they didn’t get these poisons and kill others with them, or sell them to others to poison other people?
The news in Washington must be keeping it all under wraps because I have not heard of any.
Don’t medicos have something analogous to “Oath Keepers”? This is a political issue. Probably most actual doctors there are aghast.
I need a shower just thinking about this story.
I figure honest doctors can figure out what to do with these creatures.
Thats simply wrong.
I hope and pray that if I become terminally ill and in constant pain, there is a zealot standing by to ensure that I die in mind rending agony rather than on my own terms.
Ironically, I, who would be willing to put up with such “agony” for reasons of my faith, would be denied a doctor who would honor MY wishes because he or she left an euthanasia state in disgust after attempting to roll back the situation. We have socialists here parading as heroes of freedom.
P.S. Grunt, a lot of people who find themselves in unbearable emotional or physical pain have not been adequately treated. Killing yourself is the chicken way out. I have no beef with treatments that may shorten life as a side effect if their primary purpose is the palliation of emotional or physical pain. I have a yakalo size beef with people who want to anti-constitutionally restrict the interstate practice of physicians in order to maintain some virtuous boycott.
Do not worry. I look forward to suffering wrenching pain so that your values are upheld.
How disappointed you would be if you just keeled over from a heart attack.
“How disappointed you would be if you just keeled over from a heart attack.”
Well it WOULD completely destroy my soapbox.
“As a practical matter we need to prohibit physicians who’ve worked in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington or Oregon from being employed elsewhere in the country.”
Why? The overwhelming majority of them have not participated in an assisted suicide. Why punish them too?
They know what they have to do to resolve the dilemma. They must be given every incentive to do so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.