"Doctors For Life": Swiss Hospitals Agree to Help KILL PATIENTS

[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



http://www.earnedmedia.org/dfli0102.htm

[bryant69]

1. I'd be curious to know how many depressed people

the dutch doctors have actually killed.

Saying they are able to do it, makes it sound like they are willy nilly killing anybody who comes in their office. "OH you want to die? Well I'm not going to waste your time with a lot of boring questions to see if you are really ready to go through this procedure. I'll just blow you away right here." <BANG> "Nurse, please send in the orderlies; I just performed my medical duties."

Anybody who thinks about it for a moment realizes that's probably not what's actually going on. But this sort of article depends on not thinking it through.

I'm not saying there aren't real reasons to be concerned about this practice (I find it very troubling myself), but scare tactics like these arent them.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Hmmm.. let me ask you a question.....

Do you think people who are dying of a terminal illness that is debilitating or causing them pain, are not depressed due to the terminal illness or the pain?

I think people who are dying of an illness cannot exactly be joyful and kicking up their heels in happiness.

People must be permitted to take their lives, if that is what they decide to do. I think people who have mental retardation do not have their wits about them and therefore cannot decide for themselves. However, people who don't have some form of mental retardation, but are merely dying of, say, cancer, and depressed because they are dying, and want to get it over with, should have the right and the opportunity.

Again, this is an issue in which the religious feel they should have the right to manipulate others, and they should not.

[LisaL]

9. What if someone is perfectly healthy physically, but wants

to die, due to depression? Should Drs. off such people, instead of treating them for depression? Cause that is what the depressed people want to do.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

17. Why not?

As I mentioned, people who are dying of cancer or some other terminal illness, and are suffering every day physically or mentally from the coming loss, can't possibly be exhuberant, right? If you would want someone to stop you from taking your life, say so in a document you sign. However, not everyone feels the way you do. Adults who do not suffer mental retardation should have a right to do as they wish with their bodies. Anything else is an absence of freedom.

[LisaL]

20. Why not? Because the person can recover from depression

-and will not want to die if they get treatment. It's ludicrous to say they should be murdered, especially by a Dr. They should be treated for their disease, not murdered.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

23. Hmm

There really are people who, when faced with a terminal illness that is killing them slowly, do not wish to wait until they are in the care of someone, unable to do anything, and suffering.

Further, as I said before, people who are dying of illnesses, are not happy people. They are depressed people. Are they artificially depressed? Nope. They're correctly depressed, because dying, particularly of an illness, is a pretty horrific. There's often excrutiating physical pain, but even worse is the knowledge that one is dying and losing one's faculties quickly. That's not conducive to feeling hope or joy.

Should one be artificially medicated or made drunk so that they can live out till the day that their disease takes them, and therefore make religious people happy? Not if they don't want to, and they shouldn't have to.

I think people who wish very much to stay alive despite a terminal illness because it is their religious belief that they should only die at the hands of the terminal illness and no other way, should go right on ahead and draw up all manner of paper they want to, to indicate they wish to remain alive no matter what has to be done.

However, everyone else should be free to do with their body as they see fit and not subjected to other people's religious beliefs and desires.

Just my 2 cents.

[LisaL]

30. You argument isn't exactly valid.

If someone decides to kill oneself, then it's one thing. But we are talking about Drs. being allowed to kill people. So, it's not exactly people doing whatever it is they want to their own bodies, is it? You want someone else (a Dr) to do something to someone else's body.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

40. You mean you don't want doctors helping people to die? nt

[Ladyhawk]

42. Sometimes people don't recover from depression if treated.

This is a really interesting moral question. Even though I've been to the point of suicide because my depression is treatment-resistant, I don't think I'm quite ready to "okay" assisted suicide for depression just yet. I do support assisted suicide for the terminally ill. I hope something is in place when my time comes. Suffering for nothing is not noble or courageous and I would like someone to be with me should I ever decide to end my life because I'm terminally ill.

[bryant69]

36. I don't think you understood my point

Allow me to state it more simply.

The original post underlines that Dutch Doctors kill people who are Depressed and request being killed; I was pointing out that there probably is a process involved so as not to just kill depressed people willy nilly.

I do think one can have reservations about euthinization independent of religious fervor.

Bryant

[Ladyhawk]

41. I agree. People should be allowed to take their own lives.

And there should be regulated assistance for doing so. It must be hard on folks in the US who are terminally ill, don't want to die alone and don't want to muck it up. :( When my time comes I hope there is something in place to help me.

[freedom000]

43. this is unavoidable when the government pays

for health care. i'm making a slippery slope argument, but soon assisted suicide will be done without family approval. i'm not worried about evangelicals, i'd be worried what would happen when the govt decides it wants to save some money.

[LittleClarkie]

33. That was not the Kevorkian way, if I recall correctly

Didn't he draw the line at depressed as opposed to terminally ill? Or no.

I picture what the Swiss are talking about as being much like Kevorkian.

[madeline_con]

2. Teri Shiavo! Teri Shiavo!

:sarcasm:

[SPKrazy]

3. Quite an interesting link

I didn't realize that euthenasia had become so widely used.

I have been somewhat ambivalent about it as I see a lot of people that seem to be so miserable and are in the process of dying.

But then, I also believe that the process of dying is part of what people need. At least I believe that sometimes.

Euthenasia will continue to be an issue. I don't know that I trust medical ethecists (often employed by insurance companies, hospitals, managed care, etc.) or Pastoral types to make those decisions.

I think that somehow we, the people will have to make a consensus statement through our elected representatives (if that is possible) and let the society make that decision.

[confuddled]

21. Perceived by whom?

"...the categories of people deemed expendable steadily expands to include those perceived to have a diminished value to society or to themselves."
I can think of a lot of people, some of which you have already listed, whose perceptions I wouldn't care to be subjected to especially when it comes to determining my value to society.

[SPKrazy]

37. I guess you are responding to the OP?

otherwise, I don't know what you are referring to?

[confuddled]

38. Was referring to the excerpt I quoted from the OP

which I thought related somewhat to your post. Apologies if I misinterpreted your post/posted in the wrong place.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. I applaud Switzerland

If we cannot control what we do with our own bodies, we have no freedom.

[LisaL]

5. By the way, did you see the mention of "involuntary euthanasia"?

If true, HTF can you applaud that?
And depressed people are sick. Many can and do get better. To say that they should be murdered because they want to die at some particular moment of time is ridiculous.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Teri Schiavo all over again.

That was involuntary, was it not?

[LisaL]

12. As far as I can tell, no one knows what she would have wanted.

But if you believe her husband (which I don't) it was voluntary on her part.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

15. Everyone should leave a note regarding what their wish is

Aside from that, I believe all religions should keep their noses out of everyone else's business.

I wouldn't want some religious person to be trying to keep me in anguish, agony, or some humiliating state just because they have some specific spiritual belief they wish to carry out by forcing it on me.

[Bluebear]

8. "if true"...I wouldn't trust anything this "Christian Media Service" says

[LisaL]

10. If the article is completely un-trustworthy, it shouldn't be discussed

at all.

[Bluebear]

11. I think the way the religious right frames these topics is quite notable

Euthanasia = "killing people" is a horizon talking point.

[REP]

34. Highly Biased Article

That is a highly biased article from a group well-known for not being well acquainted with the truth. I would want to see documentation from an objective source without an agenda about patients with only depression receiving physician-assisted suicide before I would believe it.

[Straight Shooter]

13. Very inflammatory article.

I also believe the C.S. Lewis quote is inappropriate, that perhaps he was referring to those who make their plans for profit though it may involve horrendous deaths of thousands.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

18. It's inflammatory because it was written by a religious person.

I'm happy that Switzerland has gone ahead and provided people with the freedom to do with their body what they desire.

[Straight Shooter]

26. I agree.

We can't decide how or when we're born (unless we get into a metaphysical discussion here), but at least if someone is in terminal agony, they should be allowed the freedom to decide their fate for themselves.

I do not believe that euthanasia is as rampant as this article suggests. Pure hyperbole. I live in Oregon. Supposedly we are allowed physician-assisted suicide, but that may change. Switzerland sounds like a nice place to live, and die. :)

[depakid]

14. What a bunch of alarmist crap that post's headline was

Maybe we should call the group- "doctors for prolonged suffering."

[SidDithers]

16. Doctors for Life?...

Now, any chance they're trying to advance their own agenda with this release?

Sid

[Sarah Ibarruri]

19. Here's a more pragmatic article about that

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/12/60II/main540332.shtml


..."60 Minutes II took an extraordinary look at the process of assisted suicide in February, and told the story of an 81-year-old German man named Ernst Aschmoneit, who is dying of Parkinson's disease. Correspondent Lara Logan reports.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ernst Aschmoneit is flying from his home in Germany to Zurich, where he plans to be dead by nightfall.

“It’s not very easy to say and to know this is my last day," says Aschmoneit. A retired mechanical engineer and childless widower, he travels alone to Switzerland.

He’s afraid if he waits any longer, he’ll be incapacitated by the disease and trapped in Germany, where assisted suicide is against the law.

A few months ago, Aschmoneit decided to take his own life as his symptoms got worse. The only way to feel better, he says, was “to say good-bye before it was too late.”

Looking back, he says he has had a good life. What’s ahead after this life? “Nothing,” he says "

snip

[johnaries]

22. Here's an interesting response to a similar article,

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2000/04/07/opinion/686.shtml

It is true that a Dutch government-initiated study, the Remmelink Report, has indicated that Dutch physicians have sometimes terminated the lives of their patients without their consent. This was, almost invariably, when the patients were very close to death, and no longer capable of giving consent. In other cases, there had been discussions with the patient in which the patient had expressed a wish to die, but there had not been a formal request. This fact can legitimately give some ground for concern.

What the Dutch report cannot possibly show, however, is that the introduction of voluntary euthanasia has led to abuse. To show this, one would need either two studies of the Netherlands — made some years apart and showing an increase in unjustified killings — or a comparison between the Netherlands and a similar country in which doctors practicing voluntary euthanasia are liable to be prosecuted.

In fact, such studies do exist, but they do not support Peter Harrell's conclusions. First, there has been a more recent update of the original Dutch survey. This second study, carried out five years after the original one, did not show any increase in the amount of non-voluntary euthanasia happening in that country.

In addition, to discover whether there has been more abuse in the Netherlands than in another comparable country, my colleagues and I at the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics — where I worked before coming to Princeton — conducted a study to discover how many Australian deaths are preceded by medical decisions that are intended to hasten death, or foreseen to be likely to hasten death. Using the same survey questions as the Dutch report, translated into English of course, we asked doctors about decisions involving foregoing medical treatment (for example, withholding antibiotics or withdrawing artificial ventilation) or supplying, prescribing and administering drugs.

Our findings suggest that while the rate of active voluntary euthanasia in Australia was slightly lower than that shown in the most recent Dutch study (1.8 percent as against 2.3 percent), the rates of non-voluntary euthanasia in Australia are significantly higher. Our study thus refutes earlier speculation that the open practice of active voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands had led to the practice of non-voluntary euthanasia. Our findings also suggest that making euthanasia illegal does not prevent doctors from practicing it.

Thus, there is no evidence to support the claim that laws against physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia prevent harm to vulnerable people. It is equally possible that legalizing physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia will bring the issue out into the open, and thus make it easier to scrutinize what is actually happening, and to prevent harm to the vulnerable.

~more at link~

[Sarah Ibarruri]

24. Interesting article. What really scares me is ...

Being relatively healthy, not having a terminal illness, and having some doctor, hospital, or nurse make the wrong decision, resulting in death. Mortality rates of the non-terminal as a result of mistakes are huuuuuge, at least here in the U.S. That's scary.

[prolesunited]

25. Christian Wire Service?

I'm sure there is no slant here. :eyes:

What I don't get is the same people who are so alarmed with doctors interferring with the "will of God" seemingly are all for taking every measure imaginable to extend and maintain life what is well beyond possible without intervention.

If you are hooked up to breathing machines and feeding tubes, the "will of God" was likely that you would be dead. And funny that in places like Texas, it's the will of God that you die once you run out of money or go beyond your insurance limits.

This article is quite biased and written in a very one-sided, inflammatory style. Doctors do not murder their patients and kill babies. Of the cases of babies cited, what were the conditions and prognosis? Was this not done with the parents' consent?

[ninkasi]

27. Very difficult subject...

yet in this country, people who can not afford medical care will die regardless of their wishes. If they have no insurance, and hesitate to burden their families with astronomical bills, sometimes they refuse treatment. Where does this category fall in the equation of life and death? Some of these people might prefer to live, but not at the expense of placing the burden of paying for their care on others.

[mopinko]

28. i call bullshit

the whole thing reeks.

[LittleClarkie]

29. We're kinder to dogs and kitty cats

My first thought was Teri Schiavo. But she wasn't sentient. All we had was her husband's word. But if someone in her state had a living will, I'd say let them go.

But it would have been kinder, having decided to let someone go, to just go ahead and euthanize them rather than the slow starvation method.

[LisaL]

31. Considering that perfectly healthy cats and dogs, who

have shown no desire to die are euthanized daily, it's not exactly a valid comparison, is it?

[LittleClarkie]

32. Well if you take apples to apples

ie sick kitties and puppies with terminal illnesses and such, compared to sick humans with terminal illnesses and such, then maybe yes.

But you have a point in one way, since if an owner can't afford to cure a very sick pet, meaning seriously ill but curable, the pet will be put down. We wouldn't do that to humans, would we?

Oh wait, yes we would. Andy, bless his heart. No treatment for him unless he coughed up some money. So yeah, we will let a human die if they can't pay for treatment, won't we.

[Horse with no Name]

35. I'm not particularly keen on the depression aspect of it

However, working trauma and seeing some botched do-it-yourself suicides...I can understand it.
Offhand I can think of three botched suicide attempts in particular that left the person totally incapacitated to try again and certainly more depressed than when they started--of course you have to figure in now the trachs, half blown off heads, quadriplegia, etc.

[whosinpower]

39. My doctor and I just discussed this subject yesterday!

She and I are good friends. We got on to the subject of cancer, death and dying. I looked her in the eyes and told her - you know....if I was terminally ill - please try to understand....but I would ask you a difficult thing to do. Put me out of my misery. I watched my sister die in front of me. My request - I told her had nothing to do with me.....it had everything to do with not wanting to put my family through hell watching a loved one die. You know dying is not like in the movies where you close you eyes and just not wake up. At least, it wasn't for my sister and I would never ever ever ever want to submit my family to have to face that. It is an ugly slow visceral thing. It was just horrible.

My doctor told me - you don't know how many times I have been asked to do just that and I DO understand totally....but the law is clear and I cannot. She went on to say that there are many terminal cancers that lead to a really ugly death to witness. If she could - she would comply......