"Doctors For Life": Swiss Hospitals Agree to Help KILL PATIENTS [View All]

[Bluebear]

MEDIA ADVISORY, Jan. 2 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Lausanne University hospital, Switzerland has decided to permit assisted suicides starting from January 1, 2006. Assisted suicide has always been considered a form of active euthanasia . In addition to Lausanne, other leading Swiss hospitals are now actively discussing permitting the procedure. Though Swiss law initially did not allow doctors to kill their patients the practice of euthanasia has been gradually extended from private groups into the public health systems.

Extensive experience with euthanasia laws in other countries has revealed a consistent pattern. Assisted suicide is presented to the public as a last resort necessary to alleviate human suffering. Once this becomes acceptable to the public, the categories of people deemed expendable steadily expands to include those perceived to have a diminished value to society or to themselves.

In the Netherlands, doctors have been allowed to practice active euthanasia since 1973. While Dutch death regulations initially required that euthanasia be strictly limited to the sickest patients, it has been steadily redefined with the protective guidelines gradually eroded. As a result, Dutch doctors now legally kill the terminally ill, the chronically ill, disabled people and depressed people, on demand. Furthermore, repeated studies sponsored by the Dutch government shows that a significant number of patients are murdered by their doctors every year as a result of involuntary euthanasia.

Consequently, eugenic infanticide has now become common in the Netherlands (even though babies cannot ask to be killed). According to a 1997 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, approximately 8 percent of all Dutch infant deaths result from lethal injections. An alarming 45 percent of neonatologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to Lancet surveys had killed babies. A more severe slide down this slippery slope has been well documented in Belgium with euthanasia advocates actively fighting to not only expand the categories of killable people but to also force health care workers with moral objections to participate in assisted suicides against their consciences.

Assisted suicide is not about caring: It is about the intentional ending of human life – an act barred by the Hippocratic Oath for more than 2000 years. One is reminded of C. S. Lewis' warning that the greatest evil is done, not in sordid dens of crime, or even in concentration camps. "In those we see its final result," Lewis noted. "But it is conceived and ordered … in clean … warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars … who do not need to raise their voices." This was so graphically demonstrated in the development of the Nazi T4 "mercy killing" program that ended in the Holocaust. Doctors For Life urges the South African government and health authorities to uphold the intrinsic value of life for all South Africans and keep euthanasia illegal in South Africa.

With the exception of the Netherlands, the World Medical Association voted on, and unanimously rejected active euthanasia a few years ago. At the same time DFL would like to call upon all institutions involved in the training of health professionals to improve training in palliative care especially training in pain management and the management of depression.

Doctors for Life International is a registered NPO comprising of 1300 medical doctors, most of whom are working in hospitals and private practise on several continents. Activities of DFL include terminal care for AIDS patients and orphan care. For more information, go to: www.doctorsforlifeinternational.com



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