…The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is to poll its 35,000 members, on whether, in its words, ‘they would help a terminally ill patient to die and whether the law should be changed to allow assisted dying’. The current official position of the RCP is one of opposition to a change in the law: in …
Why we must fight this misguided drive to force through assisted suicide Read More »
The Netherlands was the first to cross this particular Rubicon. It legalised euthanasia in 2002 for people who doctors judged to be experiencing unbearable suffering. Children as young as 12 are entitled to have their request to be killed considered. Parental consent is required up to 15, but parents have no veto once their child …
Christine Allison and her husband, Troy, were watching television in their Columbus, Ohio, home last July when his breathing became erratic. She dialed paramedics and fetched her husband a paper bag to calm him while they waited. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said in those frantic moments when the ambulance arrived. “I’m on …
A great deal of media attention was given to 104 year-old Australian scientist, David Goodall, last year when he decided that he was ready to die, even though he had no terminal illness, and traveled to Switzerland to commit assisted suicide. Masazo Nonaka chose a different path, illustrating the impact that family support can play …
World’s oldest man Masazo Nonaka dead at 113 just months after claiming title Read More »
The airwaves are buzzing with the story about an Ohio hospital and doctor and deceased patients. Death by fentanyl? Incompetence or negligence? Intentional to reduce prolonged suffering? “Mercy killings?” Physician-assisted death is not legal in Ohio. However, Ohio State Senator Charleta Tavares, D-Columbus, introduced SB 249, Ohio Aid in Dying Act, on …
Intentional ending of a patient’s life more than ‘ medical error’? Read More »
In response to the excellent article on what we can learn from the expanding practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands (Death on demand: Has euthanasia gone too far?, 18 January), we would like to add our assessment of the effects of assisted dying legislation on vulnerable patient groups. As experts in the fields of …
A group of doctors and other health care professionals gathered inside the Capitol on Tuesday to speak out against legislation that would allow terminally ill patients in New Mexico to seek a doctor’s help to end their lives. They said “assisted suicide” could lead to elderly or incapacitated patients feeling pressure to end their lives …
In her Jan. 18 counterpoint (“Further discussion on medical aid in dying”), state Sen. Chris Eaton wrote: “Anyone who has sat at the bedside of a slowly dying loved one knows that the deterioration of the body with an intact mental state is its own kind of suffering.” As someone who accompanied her mother through …
Assisted Suicide: Simply put, it sends a message we shouldn’t want to send Read More »
…Even as law and culture make euthanasia seem more normal, it remains among the most unfamiliar acts a society can condone. It isn’t enough that the legal niceties be observed; there needs to be agreement among the interested parties on why it is taking place, and to what end. Without consensus on these basic motivations, …
Are insurance companies exploiting assisted suicide? Kristen Hanson of the Patients Rights Action Fund shares how existing laws abandon vulnerable patients. Watch the full interview at Fox News…