Doctors Who Refuse To Kill Patients

DOCTORS who refuse to help terminally ill patients to kill themselves when they request to die are "genuinely wicked", a leading ethics expert has told a public debate in Belfast.

Speaking in favour of euthanasia, Baroness Mary Warnock also said that doctors and nurses should encourage terminally ill patients to decide, while still relatively healthy, whether to be helped commit suicide when they reach a seriously ill state.

Baroness Warnock, who last year caused worldwide controversy when she said that some dementia patients had a "duty" to seek death, said last night: "I think that people should be able to beseech their doctors, nurses to end their life when it is no longer worth living (in the patient's eyes]." - Newsletter.co.uk

It's a doctor's duty to, uh, not harm a patient.

Man's Suicide Broadcasted

SKY TV will broadcast a British television first tonight -- an American man committing suicide.

Craig Ewert, who had been living for many years in Yorkshire, North England, ended his life in 2006 in an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland, rather than live with motor neurone disease that had left him paralyzed. He also invited Canadian filmmakers to capture his final moments, which will be broadcast this evening.

The documentary will show Ewert, 59, swallowing a lethal mixture of sedatives and switching off his life-support machine with his wife by his side.

The final exchange between husband and wife, who spent 37 years together, is captured on camera. His wife Mary Ewert says: "Can I give you a kiss?" He replies: "Of course." - ABC

Sad that assisted suicide is legal.

Grand Duke Henri Opposes Euthanasia

Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg is to be stripped of his executive power to veto laws passed by parliament after threatening to block a Bill to allow euthanasia in the tiny state.

The hereditary sovereign, 53, who is the last Grand Duke in the world, caused a constitutional crisis when he gave notice that he objected to Luxembourg following its neighbours Belgium and the Netherlands in permitting euthanasia before a second-reading vote in the Chamber of Deputies next week.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister, also opposed the Bill but decided that the Grand Duke had overstepped the mark in threatening to deny the will of parliament. - Times Online

I learned about these guys last year for my french project! I did think Grand Duke Henri was a good man at the time, but this is further proof.

52% of Americans Would Choose Death

July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - More than half of people in the US would rather be dead than disabled says a new survey. A US website for disabled people ran the survey which asked, "Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?" 52 per cent of the respondents chose death.

The survey, run by the online community and website Disaboom, found that differences in attitude toward disability were based on age, income, geographic location, and level of education. 63 percent of younger Americans chose death over disability, while of those of the so-called "boomer generation" (people between the age of 55 and 64 years) 50 percent chose death. 56 percent of Americans 65 and older would rather die than live with a disability.

Those with more education and higher incomes were more likely to choose death and the numbers were slightly lower, 45 percent, in the southern states. 57 percent of those with a college education said they would rather die than live with a severe disability, while only 30 per cent of respondents who have not completed a high school education chose death. - LifeSiteNews

We live in a culture of death no doubt.

Oregon Offers Suicide As Treatment

State officials have offered a lung cancer patient the option of having the Oregon Health Plan, set up in 1994 to ration health care, pay for an assisted suicide but not for the chemotherapy prescribed by her physician.

The story appears to be a happy ending for Barbara Wagner, who has been notified by a drug manufacturer that it will provide the expensive medication, estimated to cost $4,000 a month, for the first year and then allow her to apply for further treatment, according to a report in the Eugene Register-Guard.

But the word from the state was coverage for palliative care, which would include the state's assisted suicide program, would be allowed but not coverage for the cancer treatment drugs.

"To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel," Wagner told the newspaper. "I get angry. Who do they think they are?" - WorldNetDaily

Sad times, sad times.

Looks Like Kevorkian Has Some Buddies

OLYMPIA, Wash. — There isn't much John Peyton can do on his own except speak,
and soon he'll lose even that.
The former Boeing computer programmer has Lou
Gehrig's disease, which progressively paralyzes its victims. His doctor gives
him three to six months to live.
He is using his last months to oppose a
ballot initiative that would allow physicians in Washington state to help
terminally ill patients end their lives. Only Oregon has such a law.
"What
we're really doing I believe, is attempting to eliminate the sufferer so we
don't have to deal with them," Peyton said.
Supporters need to collect about
225,000 valid voter signatures by July 3 to get the "Washington Death with
Dignity Initiative" on the November ballot. The campaign has raised more than $1
million, more than enough for a successful signature drive, setting up a
fiercely fought and emotional campaign.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-16-2603942430_x.htm

Wait, if the patients support it, and they're terminally ill, then what's the problem?