5/11/2010 – Thomas Sowell –
One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die” rather than become a burden to others.
This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.[Read more…]
The Netherlands has the world’s most liberal euthanasia law, which is even more radical in practice. Its doctors assist the suicides of the depressed and the grieving, a practice long since approved by the country’s Supreme Court. Some “terminate” patients “without request or consent.” Babies born with serious disabilities are subjected to eugenic infanticide. Doctors whose patients may not qualify for euthanasia refer patients to an on line “auto euthanasia” how-to-commit suicide” site. Doctors who decide it is too difficult to kill patients directly, put them into terminal sedation so they don’t do the deed directly and in person. [Read more…]
Imagine that you have lung cancer. It has been in remission, but tests show the cancer has returned and is likely to be terminal. Still, there is some hope. Chemotherapy could extend your life, if not save it. You ask to begin treatment. But you soon receive more devastating news. A letter from the government informs you that the cost of chemotherapy is deemed an unjustified expense for the limited extra time it would provide. However, the government is not without compassion. You are informed that whenever you are ready, it will gladly pay for your assisted suicide.
Think that’s an alarmist scenario to scare you away from supporting “death with dignity”? Wrong. That is exactly what happened last year to two cancer patients in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. [Read more…]
Euthanasia is back in the headlines. The US Supreme Court has reviewed Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. The UK’s House of Lords is debating a private members bill for euthanasia. And the Dutch government has approved a plan for the involuntary euthanasia of terminally ill infants. Shocking? Perhaps it depends on your point of view. In some places euthanasia is looked upon as a “progressive” cause. [Read more…]
I am having trouble keeping up: Every day now almost, it is one once unthinkable thing after another. In the UK, a woman tried to commit suicide by swallowing anti-freeze, and doctors refused to save her! [Read more…]
Voters approved Initiative 1000 on Tuesday, making Washington the second state to give terminally ill people the option of medically assisted suicide. The ballot measure, patterned after Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law, allows a terminally ill person to be prescribed lethal medication, which would be self-administered. [Read more…]
Oregon seems to have found a surefire way to lower health care costs: Tell the patient you’ll pay for drugs that will end her life, but not those that would extend her life. Here’s how it works:
In May 2008, 64-year-old retired school bus driver Barbara Wagner received bad news from her doctor. She found out that her cancer, which had been in remission for two years, had returned. Then, she got some good news. Her doctor gave her a prescription that would likely slow the cancer’s growth and extend her life. She was relieved by the news and also by the fact that she had health care coverage through the Oregon Health Plan. It didn’t take long for her hopes to be dashed. [Read more…]
The recent debate on euthanasia is impossible to examine apart from the main problems in the dialogue between the religious world-view and Western secular humanism over the values which should lie at the foundation of the ‘new world order.’ In our opinion, these arguments demonstrate the anti-human essence of atheistic humanism, which lays claims to being a universal ideology and openly opposes itself to the traditional notions of life and death. [Read more…]
Sophisticated brain scans of a woman diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state has revealed startling levels of activity. Indeed, it may indicate that she is aware.
The description of the patient in question is startlingly similar to Terri Schiavo: “Scientists don’t even agree on whether the woman had some real awareness–she seemed to follow, mentally, certain commands–or if her brain was responding more automatically to speech.”
Ed. This is the reason why we have to keep the euthansia crowd away from the infirm. They would argue that Terry Wallis should be dead. Note too how quickly the reporter points out the same cannot be hoped for someone like Terri Schaivo; clearly an implicit defense of her killing given how early it appears in the piece.
Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash.
Terry Wallis, 42, is one of the few people known to have recovered so dramatically so long after a serious brain injury. He still needs help eating and cannot walk, but his speech continues to improve and he can count to 25 without interruption.
Wallis’ sudden recovery happened three years ago at a rehabilitation center in Mountain View, Ark., but doctors said the same cannot be hoped for people in a persistent vegetative state, such as Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who died last year after a fierce right-to- die court battle. Nor do they know how to make others with less serious damage, like Wallis, recover.
