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To: Ohioan from Florida; Goodgirlinred; Miss Behave; cyn; AlwaysFree; amdgmary; angelwings49; ...
The death mongers abhor facts.

Thread by me.

Alex Schadenberg: Getting the euthanasia facts straight

In article written by Neil Francis in the online opinion entitled Dying with Dignity, Francis claims to be setting the facts straight but he also gets the facts wrong. Link: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11084

Francis states:
Opponents also regularly point to 1,000 deaths in the Netherlands each year being a hastened death without a current request for assistance to die, and say that voluntary euthanasia laws promote this kind of behaviour. They offer this as evidence of the slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia but they ignore the facts.

First, the data they refer to - contained in the Remmelink report was collected in 1990. The Netherlands didn’t enact a euthanasia law until 2002.

The fact is that the Netherlands government do a report every 5 years. The last report was in 2005 and it stated that 550 people died in the Netherlands without request or consent. This number may seem much lower than the Remmerlink report of 1990 unless you are one of the 550.

A recent study that was published May 17 in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association stated that 32% of all euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region in Belgium are without request or consent.

To suggest that there is not a slippery slope is just ignoring the facts.

The fact is that for many euthanasia cases, choice is an illusion.


81 posted on 10/10/2010 9:40:21 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: Ohioan from Florida; Goodgirlinred; Miss Behave; cyn; AlwaysFree; amdgmary; angelwings49; ...
Wesley J. Smith explains why euthanasia can NEVER be considered safe.

Two threads by me.

Australian PM Right: Belgium Proves No Way to Create a “Safe” Euthanasia System

This is a real hoot.  Apparently OZ PM Julia Gillard has stated that she doesn’t see a way to create a euthanasia legalization system with safeguards that really protect.  A Belgian professor–Down Under for a convention of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies–claims that she should look to Belgium to learn how it is done.  From the story:

A PIONEER of Belgium’s voluntary euthanasia law has rebuffed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s statement that it could be ”almost impossible” to find appropriate safeguards for such a law in Australia. Professor Jan Bernheim, a cancer specialist who was instrumental in creating Belgium’s voluntary euthanasia law in 2002, said Australia could learn a lot from his country about how to create a safe system. Last week, Ms Gillard said she found it difficult to conceive how there could be appropriate safeguards for such a law, but Professor Bernheim said Belgium’s safeguards had worked very well for the past eight years. ”Ms Gillard obviously hasn’t looked at the data,” Professor Bernheim said. ”I think Belgium has a system that is well worth considering.”

Belgium???? Abuses abound!  Consider these stories covered by SHS and elsewhere:

I would say that Professor Bernheim is the one who hasn’t actually looked at the facts. PM Gillard is absolutely correct.  Guidelines do not–and cannot-protect against abuse.

___________________________________________________

Belgium Euthanasia: Only Half of Patient Terminations Reported as Required by Law

Euthanasia guidelines don’t work as advertised.  We’ve seen that truth evidenced again–in the Netherlands–and again–in Switzerland–and again–in Belgium–and again–in Oregon.  A new study published in the British Medical Journal shows that in Flanders, Belgium, only half of the euthanasia deaths are reported as required by the law.  From the study:

The reporting rate for euthanasia in Flanders in 2007 is estimated to be 52.8%. This means that only one out of two cases of actual euthanasia is reported to and reviewed by the Federal Control and Evaluation Committee, and one in two is not. The most important reason given by physicians for not reporting a case to the review committee was that the physician did not perceive the act to be euthanasia (76.7%).Alarge majority of the unreported cases (92.2%) were in fact acts of euthanasia as defined in our study but were not perceived or labelled as “euthanasia” by the physician involved. Unreported cases of euthanasia were generally dealt with less carefully than reported cases: a written request for euthanasia was absent more often; other physicians and care givers specialised in palliative care were consulted less often; the life ending act was more often performed with opioids, sedatives, or both; and the life ending drugs were more often administered by a nurse instead of a physician.

Not only is it against the law for nurses to kill patients, as we discussed here before, a study by the Canadian Medical Association found that nearly half of nurse administered euthanasia deaths in Belgium are without request or consent.

I also don’t buy that doctors don’t know when they are taking direct action to terminate a patient.   But be that as it may, this study demonstrates–again–that euthanasia cannot be controlled by doctor administered death regulations.  Once you let the vampire out of the coffin, it goes where it will.  Guidelines  are primarily there to give a comforting illusion of control.


82 posted on 10/10/2010 9:44:24 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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