Let's be Just Like The Netherlands!!

[Bonnie]

In the Netherlands, 31% of pediatricians have KILLED infants. A fifth of these killings were done without the consent of parents.

First, Dutch euthanasia advocates said that patient killing will be limited to the competent, terminally ill who ask for it. Then, when doctors began euthanizing patients who clearly were not terminally ill, sweat not, the soothed: medicalized killing will be limited to competent people with incurable illnes or disabilities. Then, when doctors began killing patients who were depressed but not physically ill, not to worry, they told us: only competent depressed people whose desire to commit suicide is "rational" will have their deaths facilitated. Then, when doctors began killing incompetent people, such as those with Alzheimer's, it's all under control, they crooned: non-voluntary killing will be limited to patients who would have asked for it if they were competent

And now they watn to euthanize children.

In the Netherlands, Groningen University Hospital has decided it's doctors will euthanize children under the age of 12, if doctors believe their suffering is intollerable or if they have an incurable illness. But what does that mean? IN many cases, as occurs now with adults, it will become an excuse not to provide proper pain control for children who are dying of potentially agonizing maladies such as cancer, and doing away with them instead. As for those deemed "incurable" ---This term is merely a euphemism for killing babies and children who are seriously disabled.

For anyone paying attention to the continuing collapse of medical ethics in the Netherlands, this isn't at all shocking. Dutch doctors have been surreptitiously engaging in eugenic euthanasia of disabled babies for years, although it technically is illegal, since infants can't consent to be killed.

According to a report, doctors were killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. that amounts to 80-90 per year. the study also found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.

It took the Dutch almost 30 years for their medical practices to fall to the point that Dutch doctors are able to engage in the kind og euthanistic activities that got some German doctors hanged after Nuremburg................more

www.lldf.org
Wesley J Smith

Is this whats to come in our country???

 

[MissileMan]

While it looks like the Dutch want to keep modifying their euthenasia laws to encompass more and more patients, I believe there needs to be a way for a terminally ill patient here in the U.S. to arrange for an end to their suffering with the assistance of a physician. Simply making a patient as comfortable as possible, which in a lot of cases means severe agony, while waiting for them to die is not good medicine. It's inhumane.

 

[freeandfun1]

While it looks like the Dutch want to keep modifying their euthenasia laws to encompass more and more patients, I believe there needs to be a way for a terminally ill patient here in the U.S. to arrange for an end to their suffering with the assistance of a physician. Simply making a patient as comfortable as possible, which in a lot of cases means severe agony, while waiting for them to die is not good medicine. It's inhumane.

If somebody wants to kill themselves cuz they are in pain, they don't need doctors to do it.

 

[Joz]

Simply making a patient as comfortable as possible, which in a lot of cases means severe agony, while waiting for them to die is not good medicine. It's inhumane.

I agree with this. We will euthanize an animal to end it's suffering but we'll let grandma die an agonizing death.

But what if you find out that a child is severely handicapped before it it born? We're right back to the abortion issue.

 

[freeandfun1]

I agree with this. We will euthanize an animal to end it's suffering but we'll let grandma die an agonizing death.

But what if you find out that a child is severely handicapped before it it born? We're right back to the abortion issue.

I tend to give human life much more value than that of a dog or cat.

 

[no1tovote4]

I tend to give human life much more value than that of a dog or cat.

I tend to give human dignity more value than that of a dog or cat. We euthanize our dogs because they cannot live in dignity or without pain but do not show the same respect to those who can actually tell you the pain is unbearable and having their son/daughter change their diapers undignified.

 

[MissileMan]

If somebody wants to kill themselves cuz they are in pain, they don't need doctors to do it.

True statement, but why make someone blow their brains out instead of offering them a peaceful slip out of this world?

 

[Joz]

Well, you surely missed my point. I was not equating animals to humans.

 

[freeandfun1]

True statement, but why make someone blow their brains out instead of offering them a peaceful slip out of this world?

I don't believe that those that take oaths to heal, shoud get involved in killing. I figure everybody has a right to do what they want to themselves, so if they want to hire an assasin, then so be it. But don't ask doctors to do it. If that means creating an entire new career group called "life enders" or whatever, again, so be it. Just don't force doctors to do something that goes against their oath.

As is shown in the case of the Netherlands, it is already getting out of control when doctors just start deciding whom should live and whom should not.

Plus, there are many ways to kill one's self without having to blow your brains out.

 

[no1tovote4]

I don't believe that those that take oaths to heal, shoud get involved in killing. I figure everybody has a right to do what they want to themselves, so if they want to hire an assasin, then so be it. But don't ask doctors to do it. If that means creating an entire new career group called "life enders" or whatever, again, so be it. Just don't force doctors to do something that goes against their oath.

As is shown in the case of the Netherlands, it is already getting out of control when doctors just start deciding whom should live and whom should not.

Plus, there are many ways to kill one's self without having to blow your brains out.

The Hyppocratic oath hasn't been given or taken in the US in decades. There are a few doctors who take it regardless, but it is a choice and not required.

 

[MissileMan]

Medicine is more than the science of keeping people alive...there are quality of life issues that need to be considered too.

As is shown in the case of the Netherlands, it is already getting out of control when doctors just start deciding whom should live and whom should not.

I wasn't talking about empowering doctors in that manner. I was talking about empowering individuals to decide when and how they die if they have become terminally ill.

 

[Annie]

I am probably just a throwback to another era. I pray that I don't have some long, lingering illness that takes me out. I may though. My mom did. There isn't a day though, that I wish I didn't have with her, though some were pretty bad. My dad feels the same and he had many more, before me and while they lived in FL, without my brother or me around much. Even in pretty bad shape, she added to our lives and our understanding of living. My kids feel the same and had a very sick grandma living in our too small home for over a year. We are talking 'curtains' being hung in the living room and a hospital bed too. Bedpans and 24 hour nurse. Pretty grim and very uplifting, once one got past the grim.

Another take can be found here, with a much younger person's eventual death:

http://theanchoress.blogspot.com/

Have to hunt for them, her 'brother's' name is "S". Long and lingering and comforting.

 

[Johnney]

** note to self**
dont get sick in the Netherlands

 

[Bullypulpit]

While it looks like the Dutch want to keep modifying their euthenasia laws to encompass more and more patients, I believe there needs to be a way for a terminally ill patient here in the U.S. to arrange for an end to their suffering with the assistance of a physician. Simply making a patient as comfortable as possible, which in a lot of cases means severe agony, while waiting for them to die is not good medicine. It's inhumane.

Pain management in this country generally sucks unless a terrminal patient has the good luck to get enrolled in a good hospice/palliative care program. Granted, many of the meds used for pain control can hasten a patient's death via respiratory arrest, that's a risk that the caregivers, patients and their families accept.

As for physician assisted suicide, Oregon passed a voter referendum legalizing that option, not once, but twice. The full text of the law can be found <a href=http://www.hospicepatients.org/oreg-death-act.html>here</a>.

It requires a written request by the patient as well as certification by the attending physician as well as a consulting physician that, within reasonable medical judgement, the patient's disease will lead to their death within 6 months. This is similar to the certification process patients go through for acceptance to hospice.

While the taking of their own life is an act harmful to themselves, it must be weighed in the balance of the suffering and pain both they and their families will experience as the disease process takes its toll. And, as I see on a daily basis, that toll can be high indeed. It is ultimately up to the patient to decide...Do they wish to live as long and full a life as their disease permits, and then end their lives at a time of their choosing? Or, do they wish to ride it out to the very end? I can understand both choices. It is up to us to honor those choices.

There are those which hold that such an act is inherently wrong and should never be permitted, and that it puts on a slippery slope to the horrors of euthanasia. This is not the case. But how we die is as important as how we live, and if disease will prematurely end that life with a long course of agonizing pain and suffering for both the patient and their family, then the choice is theirs to decide if and when it is appropriate to end that suffering.

 

[Johnney]

Pain management in this country generally sucks unless a terrminal patient has the good luck to get enrolled in a good hospice/palliative care program. Granted, many of the meds used for pain control can hasten a patient's death via respiratory arrest, that's a risk that the caregivers, patients and their families accept.

As for physician assisted suicide, Oregon passed a voter referendum legalizing that option, not once, but twice. The full text of the law can be found <a href=http://www.hospicepatients.org/oreg-death-act.html>here</a>.

It requires a written request by the patient as well as certification by the attending physician as well as a consulting physician that, within reasonable medical judgement, the patient's disease will lead to their death within 6 months. This is similar to the certification process patients go through for acceptance to hospice.

While the taking of their own life is an act harmful to themselves, it must be weighed in the balance of the suffering and pain both they and their families will experience as the disease process takes its toll. And, as I see on a daily basis, that toll can be high indeed. It is ultimately up to the patient to decide...Do they wish to live as long and full a life as their disease permits, and then end their lives at a time of their choosing? Or, do they wish to ride it out to the very end? I can understand both choices. It is up to us to honor those choices.

There are those which hold that such an act is inherently wrong and should never be permitted, and that it puts on a slippery slope to the horrors of euthanasia. This is not the case. But how we die is as important as how we live, and if disease will prematurely end that life with a long course of agonizing pain and suffering for both the patient and their family, then the choice is theirs to decide if and when it is appropriate to end that suffering.

personally i think it should be up to the person whose going to be laying there in pain whether they want to live through it all doped up not knowing whats happening, or go with some dignity with some type of assisted suicide.

 

[manu1959]

have any of you watched a loved one die a slow agonizing death? and when you vist them they ask you to kill them?

when i was 16 (1976) i went to vist my favourite uncle 24 at the time...he was dieing of bone cancer...he got up to hug me and both his legs broke under him...he told me evry day he wished they would just put him to sleep...

my dad and a ruptured stomache...my grandmother and and brain cancer....my great grandmother and two broken hips at 90...my grandmother in law with breats cancer...bed ridden for 15 years....

they all begged to die .... nope .... they all paid 10s of 1000s of dollars to stay alive because letting them pass would be the wrong thing to do...

my wife and i have a deal....if ya can't move and ya can't talk and ya can't blink and you "look like ya want to die" pull the plug

 

[Bonnie]

True statement, but why make someone blow their brains out instead of offering them a peaceful slip out of this world?

Because doctors take an oath to save lives not end lives.

And those that wish to kill themselves can do it just as peacefully without having to put a gun to their heads. It's selfish to put someone else in a position of taking someone else's life. No one can play God but God.

And this article shows how easily a "humane society" can become a culture of death...

 

[Bonnie]

have any of you watched a loved one die a slow agonizing death? and when you vist them they ask you to kill them?

when i was 16 (1976) i went to vist my favourite uncle 24 at the time...he was dieing of bone cancer...he got up to hug me and both his legs broke under him...he told me evry day he wished they would just put him to sleep...

my dad and a ruptured stomache...my grandmother and and brain cancer....my great grandmother and two broken hips at 90...my grandmother in law with breats cancer...bed ridden for 15 years....

they all begged to die .... nope .... they all paid 10s of 1000s of dollars to stay alive because letting them pass would be the wrong thing to do...

my wife and i have a deal....if ya can't move and ya can't talk and ya can't blink and you "look like ya want to die" pull the plug

And I agree with the way you have that arrangement..It's one thing to not wish for extreme measures to be used to keep someone alive that doesn't want to be so, to actually administer poison and kill the person, is a whole different matter entirely. Letting someone die, and making it happen are two very different things.

And I do understand the tragedy you have seen in your life, it is heartbreaking, and most of us have been there unfortunately. No words can take away those images of watching suffering, but taking life is not the answer either.

 

[MissileMan]

Because doctors take an oath to save lives not end lives.

And those that wish to kill themselves can do it just as peacefully without having to put a gun to their heads. It's selfish to put someone else in a position of taking someone else's life. No one can play God but God.

And this article shows how easily a "humane society" can become a culture of death...

First, I don't think you can equate euthenasia with murder, if for no other reason than the motive. There are situations where the taking of a human life is justifiable, self-defense being the most recognized. To allow a person who is terminally ill to gather their loved ones and pass peacefully and with dignity is an act of kindness, not an act to be loathed as someone playing God.

 

[acludem]

I went to the link posted with the original story but was unable to find this on their website. I was curious as to where they got their information. This site clearly has an agenda so I wanted to double check their information. I would do this with a site from the opposite viewpoint as well. I am a strong supporter of the Oregon Assisted Suicide Law and firmly believe that if someone who is verifiably terminally ill wants to die instead of suffering they should have that right.

acludem