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My sister and I are nurses who are disabled by life-shortening diseases. As a result, we know from first-hand experience about both the limits of modern medicine at life's end and the challenges of living with disabling medical conditions. I'm 61 and have suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years. It has invaded my lung tissue and requires me to wear an oxygen tank most of the day to breathe. I've had 18 surgeries. I plan to fight my illness for as long as I can. I enjoy life. But at the end stage of my disease, I do not want...

LONDON, England, April 13, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A UK judge has ruled it is in a child's best interest to “die with dignity” rather than to allow his parents to seek additional medical treatment. Connie Yates and Chris Gard want to take eight-month-old son Charlie to the United States for treatment of a rare disease. A GoFundMe account has given them enough money to do so. But Charlie needs to remain on life support to make the trip and Justice Francis determined it is in the "best interests of the child" to withdraw his feeding tube and breathing machine. Charlie...

The head of the Congressional committee that oversees District of Columbia affairs says he’ll block a city bill that would allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives with a doctor’s help. Media outlets report that Rep. Jason Chaffetz told reporters Monday that he fundamentally disagrees with the “Death with Dignity” bill, which Mayor Muriel Bowser signed last month. It would allow patients with six months or less to live to request lethal medication from their doctors. …

Flanked by the family of a brain cancer patient who left California to end her own life, state lawmakers Wednesday introduced a bill to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill people who want to die.

A 29-year-old terminal cancer sufferer who had previously spoken of her right to die has ended her own life surrounded by her family. According to friends and family of Brittany Maynard, she passed away in her Portland, Oregon, home after her condition worsened and the tumor took over. However she was able to choose to die before she lost her ability to function. People.com said she wrote on Facebook : 'Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. 'Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness,...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

The phrase "Death with Dignity" may or may not be familiar to many citizens of the United States. However, it is yet another new term our society has had to learn and face in order to keep up with the polarized ethical debates which mark our time. It is the idea that as humans, we deserve to pass away in a dignified matter. However, for many citizens in our society, dignity means control. Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) is the practice in which a physician provides the means by which a patient takes his or her life. The most common manner...

Dear Concerned Supporters Of Terri Schiavo: Please take time look at the following report. REPORT: IN DEPTH: ANALYSIS: HUMAN BIOLOGICAL FACTS IGNORED TO PUT TERRI SCHIAVO TO DEATH/ Forty Thousand Word Critique Of What Was Done To Terri Schiavo: Basic Knowledge; Basic Reasoning; Ignored Biological Facts; Ignored Medical Knowledge; Absence Of Biological Facts And Medical Knowledge; Absence Of And Destruction Of Evidence, Both Physical And Medical. There are many, many more points in the actual report. Some pages may seem similar to pages you have read before, but there are also many pages that go into depth with biological and...

A momentous article, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," by Dr. Leo Alexander, the Chief U.S. Medical Consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, first printed in the July 14, 1949 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, has been reprinted as a monograph, and it could not have been reprinted at a more opportune moment. Today, the concept of managed care, cost containment, and rationing threatens to eradicate the ethics of Hippocrates in medical practice, with the physician less beholden to his individual patient than to the managed care entity which employs him or pays his salary. In fact, many...

I have to give my left-wing friends some credit. They are really good at making up touchy-feely names for some really bad ideas. Whether it is “contributions” as a word for tax increases, or “protection of the environment” to justify complete and total control over your property and business, or “investments” for out of control government spending (e.g. “I want to invest in our schools for our children” is another way of saying “I want to steal your money, give it to the teachers’ union bosses, who will then give it back to me, so I can stay in power,...

Sacramento -- The California Department of Corrections spent $1.27 million in just six months on medical care for six comatose inmates last year — and that's not counting more than $1,000 per day for each guard it cost for security. The debate raging in Florida over whether Terri Schiavo wished to die — and who should decide her fate if she is unable to — is the same debate going on in the California prison system, said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero. One inmate who was at Delano Regional Medical Center from Nov. 7, 2003 until he died Jan....

A summary would not do this column justice ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL PIECES WE'VE EVER RUN!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal lawmakers reached an agreement on Saturday on a compromise bill to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead Florida woman whose feeding tube has been removed, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said. "We are confident that this compromise addresses everyone's concerns," DeLay, a Texas Republican, said at a news conference. "We are confident it will ... restore nutrition and hydration to Miss Schiavo." Senate leaders earlier had reached a deal to push forward the legislation that would put Schiavo's case into federal court, a Democratic aide said. The agreement would allow the House of Representatives...

"Basically we are going to fight tooth and nail to save Terri from starvation," Terry said. "Part of this has to do with who has the will to save her and who has the will to kill her and whose will is stronger."

Catholic hospitals are reassuring patients they'll honour living wills in the wake of a papal pronouncement that hospitals should never remove feeding tubes from patients in persistent vegetative states. Pope John Paul II said last month that feeding and hydrating such patients is "morally obligatory" - and that withdrawing feeding tubes constitutes "euthanasia by omission". Since then, US bishops, theologians and ethicists have been studying the issue closely to see what the pope's words will mean for hospital operations in the United States. For now, many hospitals are deferring to the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services"...

Authorities in Germany arrested a respected hospital physician yesterday in what is being called the biggest criminal medical investigation in postwar German history - possibly involving 1500 morphine deaths. Investigators in Hanover said Dr Mechthild Bach was being held in connection with the death of eight patients under her care at a pain clinic at the well-known Paracelsus Hospital in suburban Hanover. But they said they had also confiscated the records of 76 clinic patients who died under unusual circumstances. And there were unconfirmed reports of more than 250 cases in the past four years and hundreds more dating back...

Terri Schiavo shown here with her mother, Mary Schindler (Photo:Newscom)An old story is told about Pope St. Pius X and his war against modernism. After promulgating his papal encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, and purging from the Church the blight of modernism, one of his friends congratulated him on finally destroying this pernicious heresy. "We have not destroyed it"; the saintly pontiff replied. "We have merely succeeded in driving it underground for the time being. Unfortunately, it will surface again."; Through divine providence, the present authors were blessed with the opportunity several months ago to be present at the prayer vigil...

The story of Terri Schindler-Schiavo will break your heart. This poor woman collapsed in her Florida home some thirteen years ago and suffered severe brain damage. Ten years ago, a medical malpractice case awarded $750,000 for her rehabilitation. But her husband (and guardian) has since forbidden any attempts at rehabilitation. For years, Terri has been languishing while her husband seeks court approval to kill her. In fact, he’s spent over half her rehabilitation money paying attorneys in an attempt to starve and dehydrate Terri by removing her feeding tube. Her parents’ heroic determination to fight Mr. Schiavo has helped Terri...

<p>When Trudy Harris went to work in 1981 as a nurse for Community Hospice, the organization was tiny and struggling against both a lack of resources and a lack of acceptance within the medical community.</p> <p>In those days, the staff worked out of an office at Methodist Hospital, serving half a dozen clients. Many medical professionals regarded the whole hospice concept with suspicion and treated those working in hospices with condescension, Harris remembers.</p>

Death by Dehydration: The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Case Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2003 The Terri Schindler-Schiavo case is not a "death with dignity" issue. So says Jane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), who issued this statement in response to the emergency action of the Florida legislature to reinstate feeding and hydration of Terri Schindler-Schiavo: "Terri Schindler-Schiavo has won a temporary stay from execution by a method too cruel to be used for convicted criminals. And yet her husband's attorney is trying to spin it into a...