http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/euthanasia/ en-us Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:35:32 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2417449/posts In some of the rooms in the hospice unit at Franklin Hospital, in Valley Stream on Long Island, the patients were sleeping because their organs were shutting down, the natural process of death by disease. But at least one patient had been rendered unconscious by strong drugs. The patient, Leo Oltzik, an 88-year-old man with dementia, congestive heart failure and kidney problems, was brought from home by his wife and son, who were distressed to see him agitated, jumping out of bed and ripping off his clothes. Now he was sleeping soundly with his mouth wide open. “Obviously, he’s much... NYT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2417449/posts#comment Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:35:32 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415890/posts I was crossing the Jacques Cartier Bridge on my regular Saturday-morning run recently when I began to think about suicide. Not for myself, but because of the 10-foot high fences that line either side of the bridge. Each picket is bent into an n shape at the top so scaling is, effectively, impossible. It's a barrier that means business, which is why it was installed years ago to prevent people jumping into the St. Lawrence. Its message is blunt: "We don't want you even thinking about committing suicide here." As such, it stands as a metallic contradiction given that Quebec's... National Post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415890/posts#comment Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:47:24 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415713/posts ... While the national health coverage debate has been roiled by questions of whether the government should be paying for end-of-life counseling, physicians [...], in consultations with patients or their families, are routinely making tough decisions about the best way to die. Among those choices is terminal sedation, a treatment that is already widely used, even as it vexes families and a profession whose paramount rule is to do no harm. Doctors who perform it say it is based on carefully thought-out ethical principles in which the goal is never to end someone’s life, but only to make the patient... New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415713/posts#comment Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:01:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415570/posts LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His most recent book is the Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World. This opinion column originally appeared in the Church Report.Terri Schiavo continues to prick our collective conscience, our sensitivity to the way she died -- deprived of all food and water, even the balm of ice chips for nearly two weeks -- as raw today as on the day she drew her last breath five years ago next March. Usually, the trauma remains... Life News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415570/posts#comment Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:22:59 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2413604/posts The Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center, one of the nation’s most highly regarded academic hospitals, has earned a reputation as a place where doctors will go to virtually any length and expense to try to save a patient’s life. “If you come into this hospital, we’re not going to let you die,” said Dr. David T. Feinberg, the hospital system’s chief executive. Yet that ethos has made the medical center a prime target for critics in the Obama administration and elsewhere who talk about how much money the nation wastes on needless tests and futile procedures. They like to note... The New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2413604/posts#comment Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:44:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2413111/posts As republican senators at last get a chance to read the health crimes bill being rammed through by the politburo, Obama’s boss, unrepentant Nazi collaborator, George Soros is poised to celebrate a major triumph in the advancement of his euthanasia agenda. “The bill changes some Senate rules to say we can’t vote in a future Congress to repeal the IMAB (death panels). A senate rules change would require 67 votes for cloture on the bill, but the parliamentarian decided it’s a ‘procedural change’ not a ‘rules change’ so they only need 60… Makes no sense. Anyway, it’s likely we could... www.joytiz.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2413111/posts#comment Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:50:14 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411778/posts Elmira, N.Y. - Bobby Schindler watched his sister die in one of the most publicized end-of-life cases in the nation’s history. Now, he’s hoping a similar case in Chemung County has a different ending. Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo, was in Elmira Monday to show his support for Sara Harvey, who is attempting to regain custody of her injured husband, Gary Harvey. “We’re trying to support her efforts to bring her husband home,” Schindler said. Chemung County is the guardian of Gary Harvey, who has been in a persistent vegetative state since he fell down his basement steps in... The Corning Leader http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411778/posts#comment Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:20:56 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411773/posts (Warning: This story contains content that may offend some readers.)Elderly people are now buying their loved ones suicide kits as Christmas gifts, according to a prominent euthanasia physician nicknamed "Dr. Death." Dr. Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International and author of "The Peaceful Pill Handbook," has explained the use of legal drugs, inert gases, plastic bags and other methods for committing suicide to audiences all over the world, including in U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Calif., and Anaheim, Calif. He told Australia's Herald-Sun a so-called "peaceful pill" is being developed from Nembutal, the favored drug for ending life. Nembutal... WorldNetDaily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411773/posts#comment Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:06:43 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411663/posts A new approach to organ donation doesn’t require waiting until the donor’s brain death.... New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411663/posts#comment Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:09:10 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411249/posts In a submission to a consultation on relaxing the rules on assisted suicide - which ends today - a coaliton of five disabled groups, said that “to see suicide as the right solution is to abandon hope. Severely ill and terminally ill people do no deserve society to give up on them.” The group, which is lead by Baroness Campbell, accused others who were pushing for the change as “seeking to change the law by the back door by creating the impression that those who assist in a suicide will be immune from prosecution”. Over the past 10 years 100... UK Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411249/posts#comment Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:59:35 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2409547/posts New guidelines on assisted suicide prosecutions issued following the case of Debbie Purdy, the multiple sclerosis sufferer, will ‘legalise killing’ a group of MPs and peers have warned. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well has written to Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, protesting about interim guidelines he was forced to draw up after Mrs Purdy won a legal challenge demanding that he make explicit the grounds on which those who assist someone to die would be charged with a criminal offence. The group, who include Ruth Kelly and Lord Patten, Labour and Conservative former education secretaries,... The Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2409547/posts#comment Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:02:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2409140/posts The Vatican (LifeNews.com) -- In a Wednesday address, Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against abortion, euthanasia, and casual genetic testing that could lead to abortion decisions. The pontiff said more legislation is needed to protect human life form these very real threats and that laws are only just when they protect the vulnerable. The only just laws "are those laws that safeguard the sacredness of human life and reject the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and unrestrained genetic experiments," Benedict said. Failure to recognize a respect for human life in the law leads to a "dictatorship of relativism which does not... Life News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2409140/posts#comment Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:56:30 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2405835/posts LifeNews.com Note: Center for Bioethics and Culture consultant Wesley J. Smith, is also a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the associate director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. He is the author of the Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World.   "Flash Forward" is a new and interesting television drama presented on the ABC Television Network. The premise is brilliant - due to reasons still unknown, everyone in the world (except the bad guys) blackout for two minutes seventeen seconds. Planes crash, people collapse on the streets, swimmers... Life News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2405835/posts#comment Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:51:37 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2404212/posts As the battle rages in our nation about a government take over of healthcare, one issue that has been a big part of the debate is how to handle the abortion question. It confounds me that we would even mention abortion in the same conservation as healthcare. Abortion and healthcare are diametrically opposed to each other. Abortion goes against the laws of God. Abortion deprives the most innocent and defenseless among us the basic right: the right to life. This is a right that our founding fathers fought and died for. Remember these words from the Declaration of Independence: “We... Town Hall http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2404212/posts#comment Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:24:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404139/posts BRUSSELS, December 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Belgian judge has decide not to prosecute a doctor specializing in euthanasia after he was accused of murdering a woman who came to him seeking death, but who was not terminally ill.Dr. Marc Cosyns of Ghent euthanized the 88-year-old woman on January 5, 2008 after her own doctor had opposed the request for euthanasia. It was reported that the woman had an incurable disease that was not terminal and suffered from several other ailments.The woman's son filed a complaint with the public prosecutor after he learned of Dr. Cosyns part in his mother's... LifeSiteNews http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404139/posts#comment Wed, 9 Dec 2009 23:53:19 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2403282/posts AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, December 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Dutch health researcher has called on the nation's government to allow physicians to euthanize newborns based on foreseen suffering, rather than only actual suffering, reports the Dutch medical journal Zorgkrant.    Hilde Buiting, maintains that such an amendment would only conform the law to the current practice among physicians.   "The current guidelines state that there must be actual grave suffering on the part of the newborn," she said, as quoted in Zorgkrant.  "In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave... LifeSiteNews http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2403282/posts#comment Wed, 9 Dec 2009 00:14:33 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401594/posts Over the past fifty years, the purposes and practices of medicine have changed radically. Where medical ethics was once life-affirming, today’s treatments and medical procedures increasingly involve the legal taking of human life. The litany is familiar: More than one million pregnancies are extinguished each year in the United States, thousands late-term. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and, as this is written, Montana via a court ruling (currently on appeal to the state supreme court). One day, doctors may be authorized to kill patients with active euthanasia, as they do already in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.... First Things http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401594/posts#comment Sun, 6 Dec 2009 18:20:47 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401184/posts The case of Terri Schiavo--who died five years ago next March, deprived for nearly two weeks of food and water, even the balm of ice chips--continues to prick consciences. That may be one reason the case of Rom Houben, a Belgian man who was misdiagnosed for 23 years as being in a persistent vegetative state, is now receiving international attention. In 1983, Houben suffered catastrophic head injuries in an automobile accident. He arrived at the hospital unconscious. Doctors eventually concluded that his case was hopeless, and his family was told he would never waken. But the Houben family, like... Weekly Standard http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401184/posts#comment Sat, 5 Dec 2009 22:18:12 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2400626/posts LifeNews.com Note: Christopher O. Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He is the editor of Artificial Nutrition and Hydration: The New Catholic Debate (Springer 2008). Tollefsen sits on the editorial board of Public Discourse, where this article originally appeared. Having spent 20 years wrongly diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state, Rom Houben reminds us that disabled persons are capable of many more substantive opportunities for human fulfillment than we are initially inclined to believe. But is bodily life just as such worth preserving? Can care-givers... Life News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2400626/posts#comment Sat, 5 Dec 2009 00:07:15 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396393/posts It is remarkable how frequently we underestimate the most powerful force in the known universe: a mother’s love. The story of Rom Houben is further proof, if proof were needed. Houben spent 23 years in what doctors regarded as an irreversibly vegetative state after a car crash at the age of 20. His mother, Fina Nicolaes, a nurse, was at all times convinced that her only son was sentient — alive, in the fullest sense of the word. Yet all the experts involved in Houben’s care declared her son was simply a breathing cadaver. Nicolaes even took Houben to the... London Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396393/posts#comment Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:42:29 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2396387/posts I interviewed Dutch lawyer Eugene Sutorius in 1996 for my book Forced Exit.  I found him gracious, intelligent, and a quick legal mind.  I liked him a lot.  But he’s Darth Vader.Sutorious is absolutely committed to using the law as dynamite to create the broadest possible euthanasia license in his country, and indeed, I interviewed him because he represented the psychiatrist who won a Dutch Supreme Court ruling that assisting the suicide of the depressed is in keeping with euthanasia law.  Since then, Dutch doctors have been allowed to kill their mentally ill patients, but according to Sutorious and others,... First Things/Secondhand Smoke http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2396387/posts#comment Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:28:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2396383/posts A lot of people seem emotionally invested in Rom Houben not actually being conscious. But all the evidence is on the other side.  Now, his doctor Steven Laureys is interviewed in the New Scientist about his diagnosis.  From the interview: Can you say what makes you so sure he is conscious?When I first saw Rom three years ago, he had been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. We used the Coma Recovery Scale – Revised (PDF), which is a bedside behavioural assessment done in a very standardised way, and which you do repeatedly so as not to miss... First Things/Seconhand Smoke http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2396383/posts#comment Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:19:42 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396077/posts The family of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was artificially kept alive for 15 years, say they feel both heartbreak and vindication over the news this week that a Belgian man thought to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) was fully conscious for two decades. Schiavo, who had been diagnosed with a profound brain injury, was at the center of a seven-year legal tug-of-war that involved Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and even President George W. Bush before a judge granted her husband the right to allow her to die in 2005. In a strikingly similar case... ABC News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396077/posts#comment Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:36:46 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396074/posts If Rom Houben's case proves anything, it is the arrogance of those who think they can pronounce upon the state of a patient's consciousness, and determine his subsequent fate--when humility should force them to admit they cannot possibly know what that patient may be experiencing. Houben is the Belgian man who spent 23 years misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state when he was actually conscious and suffering from locked-in syndrome as the result of an auto accident. Locked-in syndrome means the individual is paralyzed, but retains full consciousness. The misdiagnosis was discovered thanks to state-of-the-art brain scanning technology... Calgary Herald http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2396074/posts#comment Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:25:51 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395557/posts Friday November 27, 2009 French National Assembly Rejects Euthanasia Bill by Wide Margin By Hilary WhitePARIS, November 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The French National Assembly has rejected an attempt to legalize euthanasia in a 326 to 202 vote. "Euthanasia is not a medical act. The right to die is not a medical act," said Union for a Popular Movement party deputy Jean Leonetti, author of a 2005 law on dying that promotes the use of palliative care. The Alliance for Human Life welcomed the vote, saying that the bill "played on the ambiguity of the word 'dignity'" and "contributed... LifeSiteNews http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395557/posts#comment Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:56:24 GMT