Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 05/09/2009 10:35:42 AM PDT by wagglebee
Good medical care to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients makes assisted suicide unnecessary, experts said at a European conference in Vienna.
Physicians at the meeting of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) also called for improved services across Europe, as the infrastructure varies widely across the continent.
Patients asking for assisted suicide should be taken seriously, said professor Franco De Conno of Italy's National Cancer Institute in Milan.
'But we have to keep in mind that requests for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are often altered by the provision of sufficient and comprehensive palliative care,' he said. Such patients should therefore get access to such treatment.
Palliative medicine tries to help the terminally ill or dying by providing pain treatment and other therapies, including psychological help.
In a study carried out in Vienna among 778 patients receiving such treatments, only 2 asked for assisted death, according to the Vienna physicist Hans-Georg Kress, who also took part in the meeting of some 3,000 experts.
EAPC President Lukas Radbruch criticised that in some countries, structures were lacking and palliative care was in the hands of a few individuals.
'The possibility to die with dignity should not depend on the country in which a person lives,' said Radbruch, a professor at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
While Britain, Ireland and Sweden had top-ranking care resources, Portugal, Slovakia and Estonia are lagging behind, he said.
However, the problem is even bigger in developing countries.
According to data by the World Health Organization, patients in over 150 of its 193 member states have no access to drugs such as morphine, while nearly 90 per cent of such medicines are consumed in Europe and North America.
This is proof of the need for palliative care, NOT ways to kill.
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They're all criminals, as well as the doctors who prescribe the palliative doses.
We don’t need government deciding what we can have, based on government’s determination of what’s “necessary” for us. That should apply to assisted suicide, as well to medical care. Free people should be able to choose what they WANT, as long as they can pay for it or find someone else to voluntarily provide or pay for it. And they should be just as free to choose the quick exit of assisted suicide, as to choose the slow exit of stuffing themselves with transfat-loaded junk food. Government should not be coercing people into to doing what government thinks is “good” for them.
The death mongers don’t want others to have access to palliative care. They want their victims to suffer as much as possible, so they’ll beg to be murdered.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
And then a few years down the road, National Health deems palliative care too expensive...
People are free to commit suicide NOW, you are asking government to make laws FORCING OTHERS to participate.
Btw, some of them will claim they don’t want the government involved in the decision, but they do want court ordered executions of innocent people for the “crime” of being disabled.
There is no doubt at all that palliative care is woefully underapplied in this country and others. There are too few programs in palliative care for doctors to do residencies/fellowships (I know, because this topic is near and dear to my heart and I know doctors who have looked into it).
But the cold hard fact is that, this study notwithstanding, many people who commit suicide without assistance are already under psychological care. Many who receive palliative care beg for release. Who thinks that those other than the "2" were not given morphine at such high doses that it shortened their lives? Only the gullible, or those who are ghouls who want to control other peoples' lives, claiming them as their own to decide for.
No, I am not asking government to make laws to force anyone to participate. Just because certain countries’ socialist healthcare systems might end up implementing something like that, doesn’t mean I endorse it. I oppose socialist healthcare systems too. Medical professionals, like anyone else, should be free to offer services they want to offer, and not offer services that they don’t want to offer. But medical businesses and institutions (which *should* be overwhelming private AND privately-funded entities) should also be free to set their own policies re what services their employees must provide, and employees who don’t want to comply with the requirements of a given institution should seek employment elsewhere, or become self-employed.
Suicide for medical purposes is logically absurd. Life is temporary and death is forever. The only way one can have a “reason” for suicide is if he despairs of life itself, not just life’s conditions. If you have absolute despair of everything in the world, then you’re pretty much dead already and it won’t make much of a difference anyway.
Even though my mind tells me that euthanasia is morally wrong, my heart wants it to be legal and available to we who are ready to go.
Why can’t they just start selling cyanide pills instead of trying to force doctors to kill people?
Please provide the specific laws which prohibit hospitals and hospice programs from providing adequate levels of morphine for the terminally ill.
The DEA don't need no steenking laws.
The DEA makes its own law.
Just like our Manchurian President.
Chronic pain IS NOT a terminal condition. I’m not saying that it is right to deny necessary medication to chronic pain sufferers, but there is a difference.
There is not a difference.
Denying treatment to patients based on superstition is criminal, even if you don't give a shit about the target.
Denying treatment to patients based on superstition is criminal, even if you don't give a shit about the target.
Yes there is a difference.
In post #4 you said this:
The War on (Some) Drugs doesn't believe in "palliative" drug therapy for the terminally ill.
They're all criminals, as well as the doctors who prescribe the palliative doses.
This thread is about palliative care vs. euthanasia/assisted suicide.
There is no evidence that the terminally ill are denied ample pain medication.
I'm not going to argue with you about drug laws because they have NOTHING to do with this thread.
Yes! O, what brilliant logic! </sarc>
The TRUE slippery slope is when we take away the Right to Die, giving The State power over The Individual. Once we've declared that The Individual cannot decide for himself, it's all downhill from there. Those who are fighting against the freedom of the individual to choose how and when he dies are acting in the most unAmerican way possible, chiseling at the very foundation of the Republic.
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
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