The British invented the "Brompton cocktail" about 100 years ago to deal with severe pain associated with cancer and TB. It's been considerably improved since then, to eliminate pain, avoid nausea, and provide the patient with the freedom to seek either alertness or sleep via patient-administered doses. The Archbishop admits that advances in modern medicine have ensured that nobody has to die in unbearable pain.
Pain is not really the issue, and hasn't been for a long time.
Here's the money quote:
"While drugs might be able to hasten the end more quickly and painlessly, sophisticated medical science also offers people the chance to be kept alive far beyond anything that would have been possible only a few years ago. Yet our laws have not caught up with the science."
Meaning: "We already have the way to keep people pain-free. It's working all too well. Our laws have not 'caught up' with the 'problem' of patients over-staying their welcome."
Every nation that has legalized euthanasia "under strict conditions" --- only people with a terminal illness and a prognosis of less than 6 month's life expectation, only people in intractable pain, only with the patient's consent, only adults, yada yada --- has seen it morph quickly into "anyone, anytime, at any age, on doctor's orders or for sufficiently good reasons."
A National Socialist system of healthcare that is quickly going bankrupt, always has "sufficiently good reasons."
In Belgium they're already euthanizing "special needs" infants and --- even more shocking in my view --- the occasional adolescent for "emotional reasons."
Teenager moody or depressed? Here's the ticket...
An old retired "Archbishop" without God quickly turns to death as his savior.
Bingo. Nothing more tragic than the culture of death enveloping the clergy as well. These men have lost their faith but are either in denial or despair, or both. Oh Sheperd, turn over your flock to those whose faith remains, and wander the earth lost,for the remainder of your days. Tragic, but no longer uncommon.
‘...former archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, announced his support for the proposal as a way of preventing “needless suffering”.’
If we wanted to avoid needless suffering we would never allow anyone to be born. Life is full of suffering, a great deal, if not most, often seems needless. What we do not understand is what suffering does to bring us closer to Christ. After all few suffer as Christ did in abject humiliation and pain, yet he is God.
“Do I have the rights for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”
“Yes.”
“I have the right to life, then?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want it. I want to kill myself.”
“Sorry, but that is illegal.”
“So I am required to avail myself of the right to life?”
“Evidently.”
“Do I have the right to keep and bear arms?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am required to carry a weapon?”
“Uhm...”
What is going on with supposedly Christians? Makes me wonder f they are.
“In the end times, many will fall away”
It's the choosing the time yourself where the problem arises.
**right to die**
Another idea that the Catholic Church repeatedly has stood against. Life is holy — from the womb to the tomb.
Everyone has the right to die. Many would prefer that the exercise of that right be somewhat delayed.
What is being asked for here is the right to be killed by someone else.
No physician has ever been convicted by a jury for hastening death by administering pain medicine. Every once in a while, an ambitious DA will indict a doctor, that's about all.
I think "mercy killing" should remain illegal. Anyone who claims therapeutic privilege in the terminal setting should be willing to face a jury.
As far as what really happens at the bedside - those who know don't say, and those who say don't know.
Organ-donation euthanasia: a growing epidemic
Democrats Crank Up Death Panel Talk Following Obama Win
Cut state funding to terminal patients so they "can die quickly"
Deaf Twins Going Blind Euthanized
Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told.. [ Death by NHS]
Doctor disputes common acceptance of ‘brain death’
UK Hospitals Paid To Put Patients on Death “Pathway”
What Would Hippocrates Do?
Dutch euthanasia: psychiatric and dementia patients killed
Wesley J. Smith: The International Suicide Industry
Quebec government reveals plan to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide
Socialized medicine: Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards
Hippocrates’ Last Stand (Will we stop doctor-prescribed suicide in Massachusetts?)
Assisted dying: who's to decide when a life is not worth living?
Physician-assisted suicide poisons the mission of medicine
What America Would Look Like under Obamacare
Oregon Offers to Pay to Kill, but Not to Treat Cancer Patient
Do No Harm? Should Patients Still Trust Their Doctors?
Mother pleads to doctor to restore son's food and water
Doctor secretly denied 12-year-old trauma victim food and water
She's "only" 88 years old. She'll live another 10+ years!
After Henry VIII, the new Christians of the Anglican Church have been allowed all the license of folks unfettered by the stigma of sin, confession, penance...all those MOST inconvenient rules of those nasty ole Catholics.