Comments on: More Reasons to Keep Euthanasia Illegal

By: Bill Muehlenberg

Bill Muehlenberg — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:34:16 +0000

Thanks Albert

But you simply mix apples and oranges here. There is a big difference between banning Christianity and the unwarranted killing of sufferers.

As to hastening of death, the key here is intentionality. Sometimes a move to alleviate pain (say by administering a dose of morphine) will have the unintended side-effect of hastening death. But the intention was to reduce pain, not bring on an early death.

And to be honest, I really am not sure what you are getting at in your last paragraph, so I can’t properly comment!

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By: Albert Gondring

Albert Gondring — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:16:11 +0000

You seem to like the “hard cases make bad law” line. Indeed…it would be bad law to restrict euthanasia from those who desire it just because of the hard case of the possibility of it being used on people against their will. The (fallacious) logical construct to make *your* argument, however, is similar to the age-old attack on Christianty by pointing out that some Christians are {fill in the blank here…hypocritical, Crusaders, etc.} Do we ban Christianity because it has sometimes been a slippery slope to abuses?.

Two additional points:
1) “Hastening a patient’s death” doesn’t equal euthanasia, though anti-euthanasia activists often try to imply that. A physician friend of mine spoke of how the use of palliative care can hasten death, so she responded affirmatively on a survey that she had given treatment that hastened death, even though she has never euthanized anyone. She was appalled that her answer (as a statitistic among those of others who answered) was twisted by “pro-life” groups using the survey results.

2) The doctors violating the law are the same ones who did these things before the law–there’s nobody sliding down a slippery slope when they started at the bottom.

I respectfully suggest that you follow Jesus’ teaching of what to do when others reject your view on things, which I believe was *not* to “convince the friendly Roman authorities to force others to do as you want”…but was instead to shake off the dust and move on, leaving people to their own freedoms and consequences.

Regards,
Albert Gondring, USA

By: Gail Gifford

Gail Gifford — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:00:04 +0000

Re. Patricia’s comment “(Christian Rossiters euthanasia bid) looks a bit like a set up”
I have been following this in the papers and also found a lot of the media circus around this case seems a bit “set up” in that the debate has been swayed towards something that it is not actually about.
If you look into the details of Mr Rossiters situation – which are invariably buried in the mass of highly emotive details about Mr Rossiters tragic existance – it seems to me that the facts are;
Mr Rossiter is not terminally ill. He medical prognosis is similar to many other hundreds of quadraplegics in Australia and would have a similar life expectancy to them. Some years ago my husband had a serious accident and very nearly became a quadreplegic. During this episode of treatment in WA spinal injury wards I found out that about 50 people per year suffer paralysis due to accidental spinal injury in WA alone. Spinal injury wards are constantly busy places! That is an awful lot of people who could be/are in a similar situation to Mr Rossiter but we have not heard any others demanding this right to be allowed to die because they consider their lives not worth continuing.
A recent report mentioned that Mr Rossiter has tried to commit suicide before – before he became a quadraplegic that is. This was apparently due to the effects (chronic pain and depression) from his first accident (a 30m fall) that he recovered from (it seems a later second accident resulted in his quadraplegia). This rings alarm bells for me and I imagine would for Mr Rossiters carers. If he has a history of coping poorly with pain and depression (ie becoming suicidal) this current request for suicide would need to be considered in that light. His constant comments about the hopelessness and emptiness of his existance would have to raise questions about his mental state and whether a renewed approach to pain management and improvements to his range of daily activity/occupation should be more actively pursued rather then medical treatment withdrawal.
Overall I believe the pro-euthanasia lobby have misused Mr Rossiters case to argue for a legalised mercy kill. The real issue that needs debating in Mr Rossiters case – and the more informed commentators on this case constantly reiterate this – is the right of patients to choose to refuse life saving medical intervention that they find burdensome.
Current laws do allow anyone who is or appears to be a competent adult the right to informed refusal of medical treatment – this is already considered a basic right in most medical circles and can be linked to moral objections to medical treatment – eg Jehovahs Witness’s refusing blood products though this may result in death.
Obviously there are difficult grey areas here but the arguments about the right to refuse medical treatment are different to the argument about a supposed right to be actively euthanased and need to be seperated out from the tangled issue of deliberate voluntary euthanasia/assisted suicide that has been presented as the main debate in Mr Rossiters case.
Gail Gifford

By: Patricia Halligan

Patricia Halligan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:51:35 +0000

Dear Bill , In WA we have a hard case coming before the courts. The 49 year old quadraplegic man wants to have his feeding tube removed so he can die as he says he has absolutely no quality of life although a polititian who has visited him thinks it is possible that his quality of life could be improved a little. The nursing home where he is being cared for say there is a conflict between their duty of care for him and his wish to discontinue being fed through a tube and the law is not clear on it so to protect themselves they are taking his case to court to let the magistrate decide.I suppose the law has to decide whether feeding him through a tube in his stomach constitutes a medical procedure. Decades ago this would not have been an issue because if he could not take sustenance via his mouth he would have died but advances in medical technology is keeping him alive. I remember a friend of mine who was in her eighties was taken into hospital a few years ago with a salt deficiency.It was high summer but she had enjoyed a reasonable quality of life up to then although she had become increasingly frail. Over two or three weeks she ate and drank very little until she finally stopped altogether except for the odd teaspoon of water to moisten her lips and throat. After two more weeks or so she died very peacefully.No one offered to tube feed her.Indeed it would have been an unneccesary thing to do in my opinion because her life was coming naturally to its close.This man’s case could be seen as being used to get voluntary euthanasia legalised because the voluntary euthanasiaists are making hay while the sun shines claiming that 80% of the public support them. The print media is giving his case maximum coverage and there have been letters for and against in the letters pages.Both Labour and Liberal have refused to bring the matter up in Parliament but a Greens senator is putting forward a private members bill in a few weeks so it looks a bit like a set up. I agree with you that there is such a thing as a slippery slope and voluntary euthanasia could lead in time to involuntary euthanasia with medical and nursing staff expected to collaborate euthanasing patients who haven’t asked for it.After all most people accept legal abortions now if they even think about the issue at all and I am old enough to remember the first debates on it so euthanasia could follow the same pattern as abortion.Old people tend to be out of sight in nursing homes just as unborn babies are.God bless Always and thankyou for your columns.
Patricia Halligan

By: Bill Muehlenberg

Bill Muehlenberg — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:18:24 +0000

Thanks Tanner

I had not considered this before. I guess I will have to look into it. Thanks for the tip.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By: Tanner Sewell

Tanner Sewell — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:49:59 +0000

Bill, please get a twitter account!
Tanner Sewell, US

By: Mark Rabich

Mark Rabich — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:38:13 +0000

I know it’s not local, but I’ve just become aware of some of the details of the current Obama regime ‘reform’ of health care in the US. In the proposed bill they make it mandatory for elderly people to have an interview every 5 years to assess and discuss “end-of-life services” and “advance care planning.” But Obama and his family, nor those of Congress, won’t ever have to worry about this, they won’t be participating in any of it. But it’s good enough for the plebs.

Leftist extremists (here in Australia, they’re called the greens and the alp) should be banned from going anywhere near issues that have to do with people’s lives. It’s clear they just love death, be it the unborn, the sick, the elderly and others who can’t fight back. Death is not tragic, it’s part of their ‘solution.’ The most dangerous thing is that they truly believe they are doing good, but you can never discuss actual outcomes with them and face them with the true consequences and horror of what they advocate.

Leftists make a big deal of private business and profit motive being part of health care, but a company in that industry will not stay in business very long if people start dying en masse or even just consistently deliver worse health care than a competitor. What they fail to realize is that government is the biggest and worst business of them all, nowhere near accountable enough, nowhere near as motivated to be efficient (after all they can just raise their income stream – ie. taxes, at will) but they still have to balance the budget. This means higher taxes and rationing of services, eventually. And ending people’s lives prematurely, since that also saves money.

If it’s not Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World, it’s Soylent Green.

fredthompsonshow.com/premiumstream?dispid=320&headerDest=L3BnL2pzcC9tZWRpYS9mbGFzaHdlbGNvbWUuanNwP3BpZD03MzUxJnBsYXlsaXN0PXRydWUmY2hhcnR0eXBlPWNoYXJ0JmNoYXJ0SUQ9MzIwJnBsYXlsaXN0U2l6ZT01

www.defendyourhealthcare.us

Mark Rabich

By: Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:18:08 +0000

Good article Bill. At university there seems that a large majority are in favour of euthanasia… especially in the health department I am in (go figure). David S. the last sentence of your post ‘We are our own gods…’ really sums up the secular humanist person and their belief on life or death. It certainly is something that follows on from the premises that they hold so dearly.
Keith Jarrett

By: david skinner

david skinner — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:12:02 +0000

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8177343.stm

The lady in this BBC report talks about her right to life and therefore, I suppose, her right to take that life. So this is where human rights take us. We are our own gods who have the absolute right to dispense with life however we see fit.
David Skinner, UK

By: Donna

Donna — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:23:21 +0000

Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger warned 20 years ago in his book, “The New Genocide of Handicapped and Afflicted People”. A Holocause survivor, Dr. Wolfensberger trained nurses to work with Handicapped people at Syracuse University; he is in a unique position to document that American hospitals and senior care facilities are killing more people than Adolf Hitler ever did and for the same reasons.

Dr. Wolfensberger: “In hospitals (even those run by religious bodies), mentally retarded .. people with other handicaps, and elderly people are commonly denied relatively elementary life supports such as antibiotics, basic resuscitation, the simplest medical procedure, or even food and water. In fact, the likelihood is relatively high that persons afflicted with multiple devalued conditions will not leave a hospital alive … In many locales in North America, it is dangerous to admit to a typical general hospital a moderately retarded person who is above the age of sixty … Often, the only way to assure the safety of such afflicted persons in hospitals to place at their bed a twenty-four hour guard …” (Pages 60-63)

www.cuttingedge.org/detail.cfm?ID=8

Donna Opie