I remembered to update my tagline. Just a couple minor edits, and it's good to go.
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Posted on 05/30/2014 12:59:22 PM PDT by wagglebee
The “death with dignity” and bioethics crowds grow increasingly extreme. Now, they are pushing starvation.
First, it was removing feeding tubes from the cognitively disabled, slow killing excused as removing medical treatment. Do it to a dog and go to jail. Do it to Terri Schiavo and it’s merely “medical ethics.”
Now, euthanasia types push VSED, e.g. voluntary stop eating and drinking. Not only that, they want nursing homes and hospitals to be forced to starve dementia patients to death who willingly eat.
I’m on the case in my biweekly column over at First Things. From, “Starvation as the New Death with Dignity:”
But what about people who can eat and drink by mouth? Assisted suicide advocates argue that it isn’t fair that they can’t die too. So, activists promote a form of “self-deliverance” that they call “voluntary stopping eating and drinking,” (VSED), by which suicidal people declare their wish to starve to death.
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As a matter of respecting autonomy, doctors won’t force feed these suicidal people. Some even agree to facilitate the death by helping palliate the potential agony that can be associated with starving and dehydrating.
I believe a doctor who helps someone starve him or herself to death is akin ethically to one who helps a suicidal person find the artery to cut and guides the scalpel.
A lawsuit was filed to force a nursing home in Canada to starve a dementia patient to death. That lost and is on appeal. But the drive to force medical personnel to starve patients to death who eat, if they so instructed in an advance medical directive, was boosted recently in the Hastings Center Report:
Bioethicist Paul T. Menzel and physician M. Colette Chandler-Cramer create a sophistic argument to justify their conclusion: People have the right to commit VSED; people also have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment in an advance medical directive; hence, people have the right to order themselves starved to death (commit VSED via advance medical directive).
Here’s the thing: They are called an “advance medical directive,” for a reason–to control medical interventions. But spoon feeding isn’t a “medical treatment!”
Spoon-feeding is considered “humane care”—not the same thing at all. Thus, under Menzel and Chandler-Cramer’s theory, a patient should also be empowered to order the non-medical withholding of other forms of humane care to hasten their deaths.
For example, why not permit a directive to order that blankets be removed during a cold snap to increase the chances of contracting pneumonia? Less certain, to be sure: But basically the same idea.
The advocacy point of the starve-them-to-death campaign should be obvious to all:
Finally, once we can starve patients, even though they willingly eat, the obvious question arises: “Why not just give them lethal injections?”
Actually, I believe that has been the goal all along. The starvation agenda is merely the horrid means intended to lead us to that horrible end.
Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?
Actually, I believe that has been the goal all along. The starvation agenda is merely the horrid means intended to lead us to that horrible end.
Exactly, the death mongers are hoping that we will eventually just throw up our hands and say, "please, just bring back the gas chambers and ovens."
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The activist should lead by example.
I will provide the cage. We can put them on display in the town square while they die with dignity.
Funny how they never seem to do that.
Hell, I’m all for letting these humanitarians lead by example. Sadly I am a slow learner sometimes, so it may take every last one of them dying with their so called dignity before I start to understand their point. But damn it, I’m up for the task if they are!
When will people understand that the government loves you, cares for you, and has your best interests at heart? Are we there yet?
These people are sick cowards. They rationalize murder. In truth it is a passive-aggressive act. Withholding food and water is torture. As mentioned above you’d go to jail for doing it to a dog, and no state would allow this form of execution of prisoners. A torturous painful death is not humane no matter how many times they say it is. It would be more humane and noble to put a shotgun in their mouth, to sneak in and slit their throats at night, to commit hari kari, or even to administer an overdose of opium.
There is only one way of stopping the actually murderers, and that is with the threat of retribution.
Their preferable prey are those without families, or whose families are far away or indifferent.
And truthfully they exist in many cases, because there is no dignified end to many of the elderly. To visit “nursing homes” for the elderly who are mentally inhibited is truly a horrifying experience. Corridors of mostly old women in wheelchairs, either staring blankly at the block wall in front of them, or sitting while asleep or in a near coma.
Until there is a better way for such people to live until they die naturally, there will be many who will want to “put them out of their misery”.
And once used to killing, as you can see in Europe, they want to kill more and more people. Not just the helpless and alone, but almost anyone who gets caught in their clutches.
So the way to stop this now is to threaten to kill the murderers. In an organized and orderly way, to let them know that if they murder, they will be hunted down and killed. Properly speaking, by “vigilantes”.
But the purpose is not to kill them, if possible, just to stop them from murdering others.
Sounds like a Stalin quote
I watched someone who received “comfort care” after a heart attack. Basically, he was starved to death. His kids were tired of taking care of him in their home.
Watching someone as their eyeballs dehydrate into a film, and their lips and mouth are cracked..Oh, yeah, it was real dignified.
If starving someone to death is humane, use it as a method of execution for murderers.
Right to Die very quickly becomes Duty to Die.
With Schiavo we were told that she was happy, in a blissful state, a state of euphoria.
This is the left. They never stop. They are never satisfied. When they get one thing they go right on and demand another.
This is horrifying.
OK Activists, you go first.
the same lethal injection drugs that are “too terrible and inhuman” to be used on mass murderers and serial killers will be just fine for granny...
Anyone ever get the flu and get really dehydrated? How did you feel? Pretty bad, right? Downright painful - body aches, muscle aches, headaches, everything HURTS!
Did you go to the ER and get an IV to get rehydrated? Notice how quickly you felt better, like a light switch?
And they want us to believe that death by dehydration (that’s the reality of death by starvation, the dehydration is what kills) is a comfy, euphoric way to die?
Sorry, but we can’t let this BS go unanswered.
Yep, I had it about a year ago, not a damn thing about it felt "euphoric" or whatever other line of crap the culture of death puts out there.
I remembered to update my tagline. Just a couple minor edits, and it's good to go.
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