Euthanasia [mercy killing]

As an Oregonian I have had the opportunity to vote on phyisician assisted suicide twice - the first time they didn't belive we'd approved it.

Both times I voted in favor of the practice.

In my opinion, a person has every right to decide how to live their life and how their life should end.

Under the Oregon system, you must be diagnosed terminal within six months, you must then undergo a psychological evaluation and recieve a second opinion confirming the first. You can then be prescribed a lethal dose of sedative -- whether you take it or not is entirely up to you. So far, the system has worked very well.

Still, legal or not, doctors help people die all over this country and all over this world. Suffering is not an easy thing to witness and nobody knows better than doctors that some things are just not curable.

Infants present a different set of circumstance as they are unable to make such decisions for themselves. In those cases I can only assume that the parents are the only people capable of making the decision. And what a terrible decision it must be to make.

I do a lot of volunteer work with an organization that works with terminally ill children. I have had good friends lose their children to disease. It is truly a heartbreaking thing to see. Having never had to hand my child a morphine lollipop to ease their pain... I can only say that I hope I never have to go there, I hope I never have to visit a place that must surely tear your soul apart.

Who am I to judge?

I am in favor of physician-assisted suicide for terminal patients.

We do this for our pets, out of love and kindness. Because we don't want them to suffer needlessly. Don't people deserve to be treated just as well?

yes all true. I'm in favour as long as the safeguards are in place. The idea of keeping babies alive to suffer pain and terrible disabilities until finally they die anyway seems incredibly cruel. I would hope that I could make the decision when I'd had enough if I had a terminal illness.

If both the parents and the medical community agree that these unfortunate babies would otherwise be doomed to a short, pain-filled life, I agree completely.

Had these babies been concieved in a Third World country without modern medical intervention they might well be stillborn.

By allowing these babies to sleep their short lives away, the hospital is showing mercy to both children and their parents.

Does anyone believe that euthanasia would stand a chance of being legalized it the US? If not who and what would be the impediment?

This info as an aside:
Source

In America, people are too squemish to allow RU 486 - a drug that prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus and thereby preventing pregnancy. Murder, they call it.

In America, they would rather have frozen embryos thawed and washed down the sink than to use the cells for stem cell research.

In America, hospice is a relatively new concept.

Here in Oregon our PAS law has been under attack since the day it too effect. People think we're murderers.

So no, I don't expect anywhere in America to be practicing legal euthenasia anytime within the conceivable future.

Walter
That seems similar to what is in effect in the US. When you enter a hospital if you do not want to be resuscitated or the use of artificial or extraordinary means to keep you alive. All you need do is to sign a form stating as much. I know since I signed it before undergoing a serious medical procedure 12 years ago. However, if you can stay alive on your own no matter the pain or terminal nature of your condition. You are doomed to do so.

Re: Euthanasia [mercy killing]


No, I don't agree at all! They are not voluntarily giving up their life: someone else is making that decision for them. It's the first step down a slippery slope, my friends!

My newspaper had a very interesting article about this today:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/110233791495660.xml

I try not to post links but this article really addresses this issue very well.

a very balanced article. an incredibly difficult decision - there was a programme on this week about very prem babies that had been saved and showed the problems that many have and the severe handicaps they and their families had to cope with - as the children grew these totally dominated the life of the family.

But is euthanizing such children at birth the answer?

I don't think so.

And actually, in The Netherlands only terminally ill newborns are legally euthanised.

Source

"ROUTINELY"!

Vivien wrote:


Should inconvience be a criteria? Were that the criteria Euthanasia would be the norm rather than the exception in all walks of life.

I agree with you princess. We should not kill the babies because they are a "burden" on the families. That's like saying you're not perfect so we don't want you.

I agree that adults with capable minds should be able to decide if they live or die. If you are terminal and in pain, why not go easy and pain free?

I personally do not want to be kept alive by artifical means should something happen to me. That is not how I want to "live" my life nor how I want my husband to live his. And I don't want to be one of those people that is slowing dying inside behind a coma. But those babies aren't even given a chance to decide! They did not ask to be born, did not ask to be born "defective".

I am pretty sure the "routinely euthanized" are passively done- withhold life prolonging treatment vs. a lethal injection to shorten life, which is what is being legalized in the Netherlands, if I am not mistaken. There could be accidents where too much painkiller is given, but that would be grounds for a malpractice lawsuit... although perhaps grieving parents would not sue if they felt it ended a baby's suffering... Making such a practice legal is just plain wrong- especially in situations where the person is not voluntarily asking to die. If such a practice became legal, it would become more routine, then be used as justification for doing the same to other nonvoluntary candidates for life-shortening measures. Next would come babies with a "poor prognosis" for having a quality life, and old people and comatose victims, expanding to include any accident victims with serious life-altering injuries (brain damage, paralysis,) etc. etc. Off we go down a slippery slope. Society would be the worse for condoning such a practice. Jmo, fwiw.

Bookmark.....

GRONINGEN, Netherlands Bounding down a spiral staircase that resembles a sawed-off strand of DNA, Dr. Eduard Verhagen is wrapping up a tour of what is surely the world's most controversial pediatric ward. .
In the past two years, Verhagen, the clinical director of pediatrics at the University Medical Center, Groningen, has presided over the medically induced deaths of four extraordinarily ill newborns. .
For his efforts to end what he calls their unbearable and incurable suffering, he has been called "Dr. Death," a second Hitler and worse, mostly by American opponents of euthanasia. Slowing down to introduce a visitor to a few colleagues, Verhagen acknowledges his notoriety with a bit of black humor. .
"He's here to see what the mercy killer is really like," he jokes. .
His stab at self-deprecation hangs awkwardly in the air. His co-workers are not quite sure how to react - just about the only people around who are not voicing an opinion of Verhagen or his cause célèbre. .
The pope has condemned infant euthanasia and Verhagen, indirectly, for advocating it. Hate mail from the United States bombards the hospital with comparisons to the Holocaust. .
"My first reaction to most of the criticism is: ridiculous, uninformed," Verhagen said. "Then the question arises in me: How is it possible that people themselves feel free to say such horrible things about other people they don't know?" .
Verhagen is asking people to recognize something many would prefer not to even think about: A few babies are born with conditions so horrific, so excruciatingly painful, that their doctors and even their parents think they would be better off dead. .
His push for an open and detailed discussion of such cases could one day, some hope and others fear, lead to the formal legalization of infant euthanasia in the Netherlands. .
Euthanasia is legal here except for children younger than 12. But Verhagen has documented 22 cases of reported infant euthanasia in the past seven years. .
Those include the four in his own hospital, and there may be more. On the basis of past court decisions, in which doctors were acquitted on murder charges, prosecutors have chosen in recent years not to pursue similar cases. .
Verhagen, 42, wants a team of physicians, together with the baby's parents, to decide openly, in what are very rare, extraordinary cases, whether or not to end a child's life. .
Better that, he said, than a lone pediatrician behind a hospital curtain armed with too much pain reliever. .
"If you do this, the most important decision man can take, you must do it in a spotlight, you must do it with the curtains opened instead of closed, because it's extremely difficult and you can't be wrong," he said. .
A father of three who spent years tending to sick children in underdeveloped countries, Verhagen became a pediatrician with the sole intention of saving lives, not ending them. And that is exactly what he did until Sanne was born on his ward four years ago with a severe form of Hallopeau-Siemens syndrome, a rare skin condition. .
In the best-case scenario, she would live until her 9th or 10th birthday and then die of skin cancer. .
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Her skin would literally come off if anyone touched her, leaving painful scar tissue in its place. .
The top layers of mucous membranes inside her mouth and esophagus fell away any time she was fed, which was done by tube. .
Verhagen tried to evoke the kind of pain he says Sanne was in. He clenched his fists and mimicked the way she balled her tiny hands. Her cry was not that of a normal, healthy baby but the shriek of an extraordinarily sick one. .
And her vital signs - heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration - reflected those of a child in extreme stress, Verhagen said. .
Pain relievers seemed to be useless. .
Making matters worse, Verhagen and his colleagues had to bandage Sanne's scar tissue knowing they were contributing to a vicious circle: Every time they replaced the bandages, a little more skin fell off. Before long, Verhagen said, Sanne resembled a mummy. .
Her parents demanded an end to her suffering, which moved Verhagen to consider euthanasia. .
Fearing criminal prosecution, Verhagen and hospital officials refused and eventually sent Sanne home, where she died of pneumonia half a year later. .
Verhagen felt he had failed Sanne and her parents, believing all three had suffered longer than necessary. "We were very unhappy," he said. .
He and his colleagues started familiarizing prosecutors with difficult cases, even including them on daily rounds. .
And they developed a protocol, published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, that is both a checklist and a how-to-guide for Dutch doctors who are considering ending a baby's life and still want to stay out of jail. .
Now, he is suddenly in demand as an expert in the medical and ethical issues surrounding infant euthanasia and not exactly sure what to make of all the fuss. "It's weird," he said. "I want to be a normal pediatrician, not Dr. Death." .
The decision to end a child's life is obviously an emotional one, Verhagen said, and not just for the parents. .
Once everyone - doctors, parents and social workers - agrees there is nothing more to be done for a child medically, a time is fixed to start administering a deadly intravenous drip of morphine and midazolam, a sleeping agent. .
Advance notice of a couple of days is important, Verhagen said, so consenting parents have enough time to say goodbye and, in at least the instance of two devoutly religious families, to pray. .
Verhagen says he has watched one child die and was there moments later for the other three. All had severe forms of spinal bifida. .
"The child goes to sleep. It stops breathing," he said. "I mean it's difficult to give the right emotion there, but it's beautiful in a way," he said, somewhat aware of how this might sound to a layman. "They are children who are severely ill and in great pain. It is after they die that you see them relaxed for the first time. You see their faces in a way they should be for the first time. In that sense, but this is delicate, this is difficult, in that sense, it's beautiful." .
Verhagen does not admit to doubts about whether he is doing the right thing. It is what he would want for his own children, he said. "If my child would be so ill that it would fall into this category, I would ask someone else to end its life," he said, emphasizing that he could never do it himself. "At that moment, I would be a father and not a doctor.".
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Report finds physicians killing babies