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A high proportion of deaths classed as euthanasia in Belgium involved patients who did not ask for their lives to be ended, a study found. More than 100 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in 'terminations without request or consent'. Although euthanasia is legal in Belgium, it is governed by strict rules which state it should be carried out only by a doctor and with the patient's permission. The disturbing revelation - which shows that nurses regularly go well beyond their legal role - raises fears that were assisted suicides allowed in Britain, they could never be...

Many old people now fear Dutch hospitals. More than 10% of senior citizens who responded to a recent survey, which did not mention euthanasia, volunteered that they feared being killed by their doctors without their consent. One senior-citizen group printed up wallet cards that tell doctors that the cardholder opposes euthanasia. The path to the death culture began when doctors learned to think like accountants. As the cost of socialized medicine in the Netherlands grew, doctors were lectured about the importance of keeping expenses down. In many hospitals, signs were posted indicating how much old-age treatments cost taxpayers.

to death on the NHS Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today. In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death. Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. But this approach can also mask the signs...

Conservatives in the United States are generally opposed to what they believe are Obama’s health-care plans. It seems to this observer (who, admittedly has not had time to examine the matter in as much detail as he would like), that some of the opposition is definitely misdirected.

first heard Dick Morris make this point. The main reason, electorally, that Obamacare is falling apart is that the elderly are rejecting in great numbers. Morris cites a poll in which elderly reject the plan by about 16 points. This is a massive political problem because folks over 65 have about a 70% voting attendance. About 30% of all health care expenses are spent on the last year of someone's life. So, it is the elderly that are the most affected by any health care reform idea. Frankly, the elderly are rejecting Obamacare with good reason.

Here's a way for America to cut its spiraling healthcare costs: ice floes. This idea isn't mine. It's President Obama's. Or rather, it's where we're likely to end up if the president prevails on Congress to pass the adventurous healthcare reform proposal currently being discussed, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That's on top of Medicare's annual $327-billion budget, whose massive deficits, if they continue at the same rate, are predicted to bankrupt the Medicare system by the end of the next decade. In looking for a way to fund...

A Canadian judge is due to decide this week whether to renew a temporary injunction against Winnipeg's Grace General Hospital, whose doctors want to detach an 84-year-old Orthodox Jew from a respirator and hasten his death, against his family's wishes. However, it was learned Sunday that the patient, Samuel Golubchuk, regained consciousness several days ago and appears to be improving. Although a hospital doctor treating Golubchuk wrote "Awoke" on his chart, the hospital did not disclose this to the court. The family said the hospital had been trying to make the patient appear to be dying and with minimal brain...

A woman who has been in a coma-like state for more than six years awoke for three days this week to talk with family members and eat her favorite foods before relapsing. “She was smiling and grinning and told my staff she wanted to go to a club, even doing a little chair dance in her wheelchair,” said one of her doctors, Randall Bjork. The woman, Christa Lilly, 49, suffered a cardiac arrest in November 2000. Since then, her mother, Minnie Smith, has been caring for her at home. Ms. Smith said Ms. Lilly had awakened five times, sometimes for...

The California Legislature has been on a one month hiatus after six months of session. I have often compared the legislative process to a roller coaster ride, and following that analogy, the first six months of session are sort of like the part of the roller coaster where the ride takes the riders higher and higher with the chain underneath. Everyone on the ride knows that the higher the ride goes, the wilder the ride will be when the car finally goes into free fall. This year the roller coaster ride had a couple of interesting dips, the largest being...

The case of Terry Wallis, an Arkansas man who suddenly woke up from a 19-year long coma, has raised new questions about the death of Terri Schiavo, who died last year after a court ordered her feeding tube to be disconnected. Wallis fell into his coma in 1984 after a serious car accident. At the time he was 19. According to LifeSiteNews.com, the doctors who have studied the Wallis case have published their initial conclusions in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The report explains that during the car accident Walls’ nerve connections in his brain were severed, putting him in...

Senior doctors have joined the opposition to Lord Joffe's Bill that would allow them to help terminally ill patients to die. Twenty-four consultants who specialise in palliative care say that the attempt to legalise assisted suicide is a "bad solution to a difficult problem". In a strongly argued letter to The Daily Telegraph they say that the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, which has its second reading in the Lords on Friday, is deeply flawed. They say the Bill "overturns without a thought the medical ethic of avoiding malevolence and the criminality of assisting suicide" and they fear...

The Florida judge who presided over the Terri Schiavo case and ruled her feeding tube should be removed told a bioethics symposium that lawmakers are ill-equipped to make right-to-die decisions. Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, in brief remarks at the University of Pennsylvania on Monday, said that 30 state and federal judges painstakingly reviewed the many volumes of testimony and evidence submitted in the divisive case. But state lawmakers who passed "Terri's Law" to have the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube reinserted did so with "little to no debate" and with "significant arm-twisting," he said. "Do you want that...

For hundreds of years, doctors have been involved in executions. But their efforts to get out of this grisly business put them on a collision course this week with a federal judge who ordered that they assist in killing a California inmate. "There's been an attempt to medicalize executions all the way back to the French Revolution," when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented the guillotine as a humane method of death, said University of Minnesota bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles. "Doctors then got involved again in designing electrocution for the same reason in the United States," he said. "The medical profession has...

As the yearslong battle between Michael Schiavo and Bob and Mary Schindler came to a head in March, the case drew in Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Vatican and the White House. National TV networks chronicled every twist of the hot-button issue. Michael Schiavo wanted to carry out what he said were his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially. The Schindlers disputed their daughter had such end-of-life wishes and had held out hope that she could have improved with therapy. They said she had interacted with them. The dispute nearly created a constitutional crisis. Congress, the president...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Three days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, staff members at the city's Memorial Medical Center had repeated discussions about euthanizing patients they thought might not survive the ordeal, according to a doctor and nurse manager who were in the hospital at the time. The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating allegations that mercy killings occurred and has requested that autopsies be performed on all 45 bodies taken from the hospital after the storm. Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard said investigators have told him they think euthanasia may have been committed. "They thought someone was...

Doc's outrage on disabled Outburst ... Owen Lister     By JOHN COLES A RETIRED GP sparked fury yesterday by saying disabled kids should be guillotined to save cash. The outburst by Owen Lister, 79, a Tory councillor and deputy mayor, came in a council meeting over funding to care for such youngsters.Mr Lister said it was too expensive to look after severely disabled children — and the money should be used elsewhere.The Disability Rights Commission said: “It’s chilling that an elected representative with responsibilities for deciding on support to disabled children should view the slaughter of innocents as legitimate...

In his first public comments since his wife's death, Michael Schiavo said today that ''I never, in my entire life, thought I would be thrown into such a national debate.... All I wanted to do was carry out my wife's wishes.'' Schiavo spoke at a conference in Minneapolis on medical ethics as several dozen protesters marched outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel where the conference was being held. Wiping away tears, Schiavo described his last moments with his wife, Terri, who died in March after a dramatic court battle to remove her feeding tube. ''Terri didn't die an awful death,'' he...

Michael Schiavo is co-writing a book with author Michael Hirsh to tell his side of the end-of-life case that divided much of the country. Schiavo's wife Terri suffered a brain injury in 1990 that left her in what some doctors called a "persistent vegetative state." She died March 31 after a bitter court battle between her husband and her parents. Hirsh expects the 280-page book, "Terri: the Truth," to be available just before the first anniversary of Terri's death. Dutton Publishing publicity manager Jean Anne Rose confirmed that the company is publishing the book in March. Michael Schiavo's decision to...

I was just dozing off and thought I heard (o FOX) that doctors in NOLA were giving patients lethal doses of morphine?

DORAL, Fla. - (KRT) - He has been rebuked by the Vatican, castigated by Congress and slandered on the Internet, but Michael Schiavo was welcomed as a hero Friday by a state organization whose members make end-of-life decisions for people unable to make them for themselves. The Florida State Guardianship Association bestowed its Guardian of the Year Award on Schiavo for carrying out his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially despite a drumbeat of withering criticism. In a rare public appearance, Schiavo, 42, modestly accepted the award at the association's 18th annual conference at the Doral Golf Resort...

The politicization of Terri Schiavo prompted the American Medical Association on Tuesday to adopt policy opposing any legislation that presumes patients would want life-sustaining treatment unless it is clear that they would not. Tuesday's action at the annual meeting of the nation's largest doctors group also reaffirms existing AMA policy that says it is ethical in some cases to discontinue life-sustaining treatment if it is in the patient's best interests.

Burke has launched a legal battle in Britain that has far-reaching medical and ethical implications, raising questions about patient autonomy, doctor responsibility and resources. His case, simply put, is that he demands that the state give him nutrition and water to stay alive once he is no longer able to feed himself, even if the quality of his life might seem poor to an outsider. The lawsuit plays into the worldwide debate, especially since the Terry Schiavo case in the United States, about when life should be sustained and when it can be allowed to end. "I think the Leslie...

Rami (RAH-ME) is a retired American Veteran who served in the United States Army for many years, was an honored civic leader and has made his home in sunny California. Rami is a married and successful businessman, and has recently been diagnosed with a syndrome called Aphasia, making it difficult for him to communicate effectively. In October 2003, Rami approached his family for help, stating the physical, financial and mental abuse inflicted on him by his wife, Robin, of three years, that he was afraid of her and desperately wanted a divorce - she is 20 years his junior. Rami's...

Compassion & Choices - which advocates a "peaceful and humane death" for braindamaged patients, such as the late Terri Schiavo - can't give praise where it believes it is due. The organization is trying to honor CNN "NewsNight" anchor Aaron Brown at its May 19 star- studded benefit for his coverage of the Schiavo story. But according to actress and right-to-die activist Ally Sheedy, the '80s-era "Brat Pack" member, CNN barred Brown from showing up at the event for fear it would taint the network's objectivity. "It doesn't make any sense to me!" the 42-year-old Sheedy told Lowdown yesterday. "We...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A legislative committee Tuesday approved a measure modeled after an Oregon law that would allow the terminally ill to end their lives with a doctor's assistance. The bill cleared the Assembly Judiciary Committee after more than a dozen hours of testimony and debate spread over three hearings. It now moves to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, and finally to the floor. The Senate would then have to take up the legislation. Supporters said the measure would give people with no more than six months to live the choice to end their lives with a self-administered drug prescribed...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Johann Gross survived three years of Nazi laboratory experiments under an extermination program that called for snuffing out "worthless lives." That trauma shapes the Austrian's view of Terri Schiavo's death. "No people in the world have the right to kill another. It's murder," said Gross, 75, while visiting an exhibit on wartime experiments at a Vienna psychiatric hospital. "It's the same as the Nazis did." Gross' reaction may seem extreme, but there are many in Austria and Germany whose attitudes toward euthanasia are clouded by Hitler's horrors. Until recently, even talking about it was difficult because...

As medical technology concentrates on prolonging life, a group of people in Kerala are looking for the right to commit suicide -- not because they are sick or despondent but because they are completely content. Turning the definition of euthanasia, or mercy killing, on its head, these people want to follow their motto of "live well and leave well". They have been shown the way by Thomas Master, an 85-year-old schoolteacher who hanged himself to death in Thrissur earlier this week because he had accomplished what he had to in life.And the leader of the pack that wants to determine...