Euthanasia/ Assisted Suicide (Revised Title)

Foxfyre wrote:

people that spread disinformation underr the guise of being knowledgable.

It's disgusting isn't it? These people make me sick as well. If ignorance is the greatest crime, then what these people do should warrent the death penalty.

I tend to believe the doctor.

I definitely think a person over 18 years old has the rite to decide when they are going to die under any circumstances, but as far as receiving assistance, it should only be when the person is terminally ill and has put something in writing.

But, I don't consider removing a feeding tube Euthanasia. I think the family should be able to make that decision even if the person has nothing in writing and can't communicate. Euthanasia is only when a drug is administered by a doctor to end a life. Removal of the feeding tube allows the person to die of natural causes so it's not suicide.

If we're going to say that people who are brain dead are "alive" how does that effect organ donation?

You believe the doctors in this case, but not the Schiavo case?

Removal of the feeding tube allows the person to die of natural causes

Some stats Geli might find interesting:
http://www.cureresearch.com/p/parkinsons_disease/basics.htm

When the doctor says somebody has died of Parkinsons and/or complications of Parkinsons, and I've watched that same person go from a healthy adult to one that is pretty well incapacitated, I tend to believe the doctor. Especially when the cause of death is written on the death certificate.

Nevertheless though I know you do not want the disease, Geli, I am glad that you are in the majority of those who can be effectively treated and I wish for you nothing but the best. I do know a couple of other people who have had the disease for years and do pretty well. My brother-in-law and my other friend did not respond to treatment and it progressed very quickly. Now if the information I have been given is wrong, so be it. But I can only go with what I have read and what I have been told.

You just do not understand that of which you speak

Swiss suicide clinic sees number of British clients rise by 700 per cent

By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent
04 April 2005


The number of Britons signing up to the Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas has soared by 700 per cent in the past two years, with 30 of them ending their lives with the charity's help.

The findings from the charity based in Zurich are higher than previously thought and come as peers prepare today to consider the laws on mercy killing in the UK. They show that more than 630 people from Britain have joined Dignitas - which offers assistance to the chronically ill who wish to commit suicide - since Reg Crew was helped to end his life there two years ago. Of those, 30 have travelled to Switzerland, where mercy killing is legal.

Not all of those who have died at Dignitas have been terminally ill. Most were facing prolonged death and suffering from degenerative neurological disorders. The confidential figures analysed by James Plaskitt, a Labour MP and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Compassion in Dying, shows that an increasing number of patients with severe degenerative illnesses were signing up with Dignitas because voluntary euthanasia is illegal in Britain.

Helping a terminally ill person to end their lives is a serious offence that can bring charges of manslaughter or murder and unless the law is changed in the UK, experts predict a huge increase in so-called "death tourism".

Within four years there are expected to be 1,865 British members of the clinic, which helps people die by administering a lethal dose of barbiturates; 100 of those are expected to travel to Switzerland to die. The figures, based on confidential information from Dignitas, will put new pressure on the Government to review the law.

Today's report by a special House of Lords committee set up to examine whether doctors should be given the power to help terminally ill people end their lives will consider plans put forward by the crossbench peer Lord Joffe. He wants Britain to introduce a system like the one in the US state of Oregon, where doctors can help people who are certified as terminally ill and within six months of dying to end their lives.

A spokesman for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society said: "A negative report on Monday from the Lords will fuel an increase in death tourism."

In 2003, Reg Crew, 74, became the second British man to travel to Zurich to commit suicide, the first to do so publicly. Mrs Z, a woman suffering from an incurable brain disease, was not stopped by the courts in December last year from travelling to Switzerland. There was an inquest after Bob and Jenny Stokes, who were seriously but not terminally ill, committed suicide there.

Lesley Close travelled to Zurich to be with her brother, John, who suffered from motor neurone disease, when he died. Ms Close, who has also seen the Dignitas figures, said yesterday: "If you had seen my brother ... He couldn't speak, stand or swallow. His fervent wish was to have control of the last moments of his life. I am driven by John's death at Dignitas to try to change the law in Britain. He would have preferred to die in the bay window of his flat at sunset with the help of his own GP."