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LONDON, January 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Speaking to a group in Belfast last night, Mary Baroness Warnock, a leading voice in British bioethics, said that doctors who refuse to cooperate in assisted suicide are “genuinely wicked.” Following a theme of previous comments in which she said that the elderly and people with dementia have a “duty to die,” Warnock said, “There are doctors, we know, who don't pay any attention [to a patient’s desire for suicide]. “But that seems to me a genuinely wicked thing to do – to disregard what somebody had quite explicitly said, that he wants to...

Dignitas, which is meant to be a non-profit organisation, is being forced to open its accounts to prosecutors in Switzerland and disclose how much money it is receiving from its controversial business of assisting suicide. The founder of the group is reported to have become a millionaire by helping at least 870 terminally ill people – an estimated 100 of whom were British – die. It is said to have taken as much as £61,000 from one woman, 10 times its usual fee. Swiss law allows Dignitas to provide patients with a dose of barbiturate and a room in which...

MILAN, January 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A petition has been presented to the Appeals Court of Milan to re-open the case of Eluana Englaro, the disabled young woman that the court agreed could be killed by dehydration.Epidemiologist and writer Paul Gilusano and Dr. Piero Pirovano, a journalist and president of the group Solidarity, Freedom, Justice and Peace, have asked the court to revoke its decree. They are arguing that Eluana’s case was decided without any medical determination of her condition, but on the word of her father, Beppino Englaro, alone. The Englaro case has been front-page news in Italy...

As we all know, this past Novembers election saw Washington States voters duped into passing the so called “Death With Dignity” initiative, making us the second state to allow “doctor assisted suicide.” The measure passed due to a massive campaign from out of state sources that see the death of others as “humane.” Or, as many refer to it, the “Culture of Death,” that group that sees suicide and abortion as peaceful and humane, but are virulently opposed to the execution of mass murderers. Fortunately for Washington’s citizens, the Washington State Medical Association reminds us that just because a patient...

To talk about the issue of physician-assisted suicide, the first thing you have to do is sort through the words and phrases used in the debate - starting with "physician-assisted suicide." The Rev. Milous "Mike" Repka doesn't care for the term. "I think of it as an assisted way of dying rather than suicide," he said. Dr. Deric Weiss, who has been with Billings Clinic since 1997 and is board-certified in internal medicine and in hospice and palliative care, also favors calling it assisted death. Writing in the Dec. 11 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Robert...

David Karnos retired last year after teaching philosophy for 31 years at Montana State University Billings. Every year, he taught a class on death and dying, exploring end-of-life subjects including euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. If we think such discussions are new, he said, it's worth remembering that the most famous philosopher in history, Socrates, killed himself by drinking hemlock in 399 B.C. "We've argued about it for 3,000 years," Karnos said. In Montana, the age-old debate over end-of-life decisions took on a new urgency early last month, when a state district judge ruled that Montanans have a right to doctor-assisted...

Within the Article: One member of the party said that at some point health care rationing will have to occur. The largest share of today’s health care dollars are consumed by people over 65, she argued. Not everybody should get every procedure or every technology they want, just because it’s available, she said.

Olympia, WA (LifeNews.com) -- One of the leading groups that tried to defeat the November ballot proposal voters approved to make the state the second to legalize assisted suicide is no trying to counteract the measure. The Coalition Against Assisted Suicide is working with hospitals and doctors to create assisted suicide free zones.Katie Martin of CAAS tells LifeNews.com that she is hearing from Washington citizens who want to patronize doctors and medical centers committed to refusing to be involved in assisted suicides."We have received calls from across the state from Washington residents concerned about their hospitals, care facilities or...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hinted at opposing a bill to legalize assisted suicide in England and, in a Tuesday interview, may that opposition solid. Brown engaged in an interview with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, a guest host of the Today program on Radio 4.Brown said he would block and legislation to legalize assisted suicide and he said he believed British law should make “absolutely clear” that it recognizes the value of human life."I am totally against laws [allowing assisted suicide or euthanasia]," Brown said. "It is not really for us to...

A recent survey carried out on Nurses.co.uk showed that only 20.9% of UK nurses think that assisted suicide should be legalised here. With the recent high profile cases of UK citizens opting for assisted suicide in clinics overseas it raises the question of whether it should be legalised here in the UK. European countries such as Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg already allow assisted suicide to take place legally and there are growing calls in other European countries including the UK to follow suit. "With Nurses being on the front line of care here in the UK we wanted to...

THE debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide is seldom far from the public eye. We have had a controversial documentary, "Right to Die", showing the death at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, of a patient with motor neurone disease. More locally, there has been a repeat TV screening of MSP Margo MacDonald's documentary about assisted dying and news coverage of the launch of her consultation paper which she ultimately hopes will lead to legalisation of assisted suicide in Scotland. Over the years that I have been involved in the debate, I have seldom if ever seen one side convincing the...

STRASBOURG, France, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Italian officials say they are taking a hands-off approach after a European court rejected efforts to block a father's efforts to let his comatose daughter die. Italy's ANSA news agency Tuesday said Beppino Englaro has been unable to find a clinic that will facilitate the death of his daughter, Eluana, who has been in a coma for 17 years. "Personally I hope that the woman continues to live, but I can't interfere with the decisions of her father,'' said Edouard Ballaman, president of the regional council of the Northern League. The European Court of...

Image caption: Assisted suicide patients drink a solution containing sodium pentobarbital (Rodrigo Carrizo Couto) Two high-profile cases of assisted suicide involving people in Britain have once again revived debate over the right to a dignified death. Swiss surgeon Jérôme Sobel, president of the Swiss assisted suicide organisation Exit, talks to swissinfo about the realities of assisted death in Switzerland and Europe.Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old motor neurone disease sufferer from Harrogate, Britain, died in Switzerland in 2006, having been helped by the controversial charity Dignitas. Last week television channel Sky News caused controversy when it showed a documentary of the last...

t is a criminal offence to 'aid, abet, counsel or procure' someone else's suicide. But last week the Director of Public Prosecutions said there would be no charges against the parents of Daniel James, who accompanied their son earlier this year to a clinic in Switzerland where, with assistance, he ended his life. ~snip~ To those who believe the ability to take one's own life is an inalienable right, such circumstantial differences hardly matter. The fact that assistance was required is purely technical. But the technical fact of assistance inevitably raises a unique set of ethical and legal quandaries. Even...

Euthanasia Comes to Montana Courtesy of judicial activism. by Wesley J. Smith 12/29/2008, Volume 014, Issue 15 On December 5, Montana District judge Dorothy McCarter ruled in Baxter v. Montana that the state law banning assisted suicide violates not only the right to privacy guaranteed in the Montana constitution but also the constitutional clause that reads, "The dignity of the human being is inviolable." McCarter found here a "fundamental right" for the terminally ill to "die with dignity"--meaning in the case at hand, to commit suicide by drug overdose. McCarter also ruled that doctors have a concomitant right to be...

ROME, December 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI yesterday expressed his "deepest concern" as Luxembourg draws near to adopting assisted suicide into law, which the Pope roundly condemned as contrary to true compassion.“Political leaders, whose duty is to serve the good of man, as well as doctors and families should remember that 'the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always evil from the moral point of view and can never be lawful,'" said the Pope, quoting the encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  Benedict issued his remarks as he received the new ambassador to the Holy...

SEOUL, S. Korea, December 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Doctors at Severance Hospital in Sinchon-dong are refusing to carry out the sentence of the Western District Court ordering doctors to remove life support, including feeding tubes, from a comatose woman. The physicians are appealing the ruling to S. Korea's Supreme Court.AsiaNews reports that the administration of Severance Hospital said that it would wait until December 17, the deadline established by the District Court for carrying out the euthanasia, before taking any action, and has now rejected the court's decision."This is a question concerning life, and requires the highest degree of...

ROME, December 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A high-level minister in the Italian government has called “illegal” the proposal to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients in the care of the country’s nationalised health service. The news comes within hours of Italian media confirming that Eluana Englaro, known as Italy’s Terri Schiavo, was to be moved this week to a clinic that is willing to participate in her killing by removing her feeding and hydration tube. Maurizio Sacconi, Italy’s Minister of Labour, Health and Social Policies, told a press conference that it is “illegal” for health care facilities funded...

December 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Anti-euthanasia groups in Canada and Oregon are calling physicians, caregivers, and concerned citizens across the world to "Take the Pledge" to pursue genuine care for even the most dependent patients, and never to consent to assisted suicide.Take-the-pledge.com, created by The Physicians for Compassionate Care in Oregon and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, provides links to several anti-assisted suicide groups and invites caregivers and other visitors to make a pledge that reaffirms the duty to “do no harm.”Rather than providing assisted suicide, by signing the pledge the signer affirms, “Whenever I help provide care for a...

LifeNews.com Note: Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. His current book is "Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World."   The similarities between the "suicide tourism" ongoing in Switzerland and Jack Kevorkian's death circus are just too striking to ignore. Both involved depressed people with disabilities, people with terminal illnesses, and some people who are not ill at all traveling from their homes to be made dead with the participation of strangers. Both involved publicity hungry vultures, Kevorkian and Dignitas' Ludwig Minelli (among others), who use their ghoulish fame...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- Following the controversial screening of an assisted suicide on a television program last week, a new poll finds Britons favoring euthanasia. The YouGov poll also shows a majority of English residents had no problem with televising the disabled man's death. The poll, conducted for the London Times, surveyed more than 2,000 people and found that half (61 percent) would consider an assisted suicide for themselves while 15 percent would not and the rest were undecided. The survey also showed 61 percent believed there was no problem with Sky TV showing the death of Craig Ewert, who...

The Netherlands, like most other European countries, has very strict gun control laws. Nonetheless, the Dutch murder rate is almost six times as great as the United States' overall homicide rate. > An estimated 5,981 people -- an average of 16 a day -- were killed by their doctors without their consent… And these numbers do not measure > several other groups that are put to death involuntarily: disabled infants, terminally ill children, and mental patients. [Notice that Hitler > began his genocidal programs with these groups, not Jews, Gypsies, or other ethnic minorities.] > …The path to the death...

It is traditional, when mounting a coup, to seize control of the airwaves. Last week the supporters of euthanasia did their best. Monday’s Panorama was entirely given over to a “report” on this topic by the Lothians MSP, Margo MacDonald; but since Ms MacDonald has already launched a campaign to legalise “assisted suicide” north of the border, the BBC’s attempt to promote her as an impartial reporter was disingenuous, at best. Two days later, Sky broadcast Right to Die, a 90-minute documentary that told the story of Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old Yorkshire-based American, who had travelled to the Dignitas clinic...

This battle will be won, make no mistake. It will be won before my generation, the baby boomers, go to our graves, just as we made sure no one could discriminate against us in middle age. We will refuse to be forced to depart life through the torture chambers of terminal diseases for lack of the right to die at the right time of our own choosing. It will be won because 80% of the public support it - and have done consistently in polls for the past 25 years. The power of the religious lobby that has such a...

If you have ever watched a loved one die, then you know that in the end most lives are narrowed down to a place of unrelenting suffering. Terminal illness can be fought for so long, but in the end there is pain, grief, distress - and not much else. Death can be a relief because it brings a release from all that torment. I would guess that anyone who has ever seen a loved one enduring the final days and weeks of their life will have watched Sky TV's Right To Die? with nothing but sympathy for Craig and Mary...

Helping someone to commit suicide is a matter of conscience, the Prime Minister said today. Gordon Brown condemned the idea of new laws to allow assisted suicide - but he did nothing to stop it in the wake of a landmark test case decision that paved the way for more deaths in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. His response in the Commons to the outcry over the televised suicide of motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert appealed instead for compassion for families agonising over the suffering of a loved one. The end: The moment motor neurone sufferer Craig Ewert, 59,...

LONDON, December 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The chief ethicist for the diocese of London in Ontario Canada recently admitted to LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in London has been performing "early induction" procedures in cases of diagnosed lethal fetal anomalies for twenty years, under his ethical direction. While Fr. Michael Prieur attempted to justify "early induction" for lethal fetal anomaly as not being abortion, the procedure has been condemned as illicit by the US Bishops' Doctrinal Committee and called "direct abortion" by the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC).In an "early induction" the mother is induced into labor at a point so early in the pregnancy that even a healthy...

Thursday December 11, 2008 Pro-Life World Coming to the Defence of Luxembourg Monarch’s Stand against Euthanasia By Hilary WhiteROME, December 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The US-based Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) has announced they will be launching a legal challenge to a new law in Luxembourg legalizing euthanasia. Last week, the world was shocked when the parliament of the tiny but venerable European state of Luxembourg proposed to strip its head of state, the Grand Duke Henri, of his veto powers when the latter announced he would refuse to give royal assent to the law. The ADF, a network of...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which "today's corrupt politicians and judges" could formally change the U.S. Constitution's "'problematic' provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society." "Don't for one second doubt that delegates to a Con Con wouldn't revise the First Amendment into a government-controlled privilege, replace the 2nd Amendment with a 'collective' right to self-defense, and abolish the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and the rest of the Bill of Rights," said the...

EDINBURGH, December 10, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Despite attracting little support from colleagues, Scottish Parliament Member Margo McDonald is continuing to fight for a bill to legalize assisted suicide. McDonald’s bill is so broad that it would entitle children of 12 and younger to choose to kill themselves. McDonald held a consultation yesterday on the End of Life Choices (Scotland) Bill in an effort to garner more support. So far, McDonald has the support of only three other Parliament members, whereas eighteen are needed for the bill to merit review at Holyrood. During the consultation, McDonald said that the age limit...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A national controversy in Britain has been sparked by news that a British television show will reveal footage of 59-year-old Craig Ewert taking his life at a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. Meanwhile, Ewert's family will escape any charges in connection with his death despite the UK's law against assisted suicide. Ewert had motor neurone disease, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's syndrome in the United States. The footage shows him putting his ventilator on a timer, taking a lethal cocktail and dying minutes later. Ewert's suicide at the Dignitas clinic was filmed for a documentary called...

Edinburgh, Scotland (LifeNews.com) -- The Scottish Parliament, the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, is not receptive to legislation to legalize assisted suicide in that portion of Great Britain. Margo MacDonald, the MSP behind the bill, failed to garner enough support to introduce the measure.MacDonald is hoping to get a private member's bill introduced at Holyrood next year but only has the backing of four out of the 129 that comprise the legislative body.That means she is 14 short of the number needed to get the bill introduced and well short of the level of support necessary to get...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- An attorney who won an award for representing Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife is now an advisor to the transition team of incoming president Barack Obama.Thomas Perrelli, who raised over $500,000 for the pro-abortion presidential candidate and is the managing partner of a Washington law firm, Jenner & Block LLP, is helping advise Obama on putting together a Justice Department team.However, Perrelli provided Michael Schiavo with legal advice during his response to the Congressional bill that President Bush signed allowing the Schindler fail to take their lawsuit seeking...

A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in the state, a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life. Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling late Friday in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer, who had sued the state with four physicians that treat terminally ill patients and a nonprofit patients' rights group. "The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill)...

 The UK's Independent has published an excellent feature story on the beliefs and theories of Lady Warnock, one of Britain's most influential moral philosophers. (We've discussed her views previously here at SHS.) Warnock is an enthusiastic purveyor of the culture of death, supporting not only euthanasia but a duty to die. From the story, byline Paul Vallely: Surprisingly, perhaps, she is quite happy with the notion of the "duty to die", which most people find a good deal more controversial. A couple of months ago, in an interview with the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work, she said:...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A new piece of legislation, the Coroners and Justice Bill, which British Parliament officials announced at the start of the parliamentary year, will deal with assisted suicide. The measure, would reportedly modernize the law "to increase public understanding."What that means, however, is another question.The bill could make it more clear when people would be charged under the law for aiding in an assisted suicide, as in the case of Debbie Purdy.In October, the British High Court ruled against Purdy, a disabled woman who wants to travel to Switzerland to kill herself at a euthanasia center...

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...

Seoul, South Korea (LifeNews.com) -- The Supreme Court of South Korea has issued a ruling allowing the family members of a terminally ill woman to remove her feeding tube and take her off life support. The decision is opening up the Asian nation to concerns that the ruling could lead to assisted suicide or euthanasia. The case apparently involved a family that did not have a dispute like the one that embroiled Terri Schiavo's family and her ex-husband. The debate in the Asian nation is not so much over the case itself but the effects of it. That's because lawmakers...

Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) -- A disturbing new poll from Canada finds an equal number of respondents would choose palliative care over euthanasia at the end of their lives. The results find death is increasingly becoming an alternative for pain relief for patients, the elderly or disabled.The Environics polling firm queried Canadians and found 44 percent would choose euthanasia and the same amount would choose palliative care. The final 12 percent were undecided.Dr. Delores Doherty, president of LifeCanada, the group that commissioned the poll, told LifeNews.com she is concerned by the results, which appear to show changing attitudes in different generations.Among...

Toledo, OH (LifeNews.com) -- A case involving some similarities to that of Terri Schiavo has ended in success as an Ohio man has been able to protect his wife from a similar starvation and dehydration euthanasia death. Robert Lavers won a legal decision in his desire to protect his disabled wife.Lavers sought to protect his spouse, Heather Lavers, who went into a coma after suffering a heart attack in September and had been receiving medical care, nutrition, and hydration at a Florida hospital not far from her and her husband’s home.Robert Lavers' sister-in-law succeeded in having the court name...

Haleigh was being given food and water through a feeding and hydration tube. A year later, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services filed a legal motion to remove it. They cited the medical finding of “PVS”. Her stepfather then sued to prevent the removal of the assistance. There was speculation in some sources that he did this to avoid criminal charges for murder. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the assistance could be removed in a controversial ruling. One day after the ruling, Haleigh surprised all of her caregivers by breathing without the need for assistance and showing signs...

ROME, November 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Some hope still exists to save Eluana Englaro’s life, but the government must move quickly to overcome political differences and act, a prominent Italian lawyer today told LifeSiteNews.com today. The greatest hope to save the life of Eluana Englaro is to have the Italian government pass an emergency measure defining food and water as a human right, and not medical treatment, he said. While a group of pro-life advocates have brought a request for a hearing on the subject to the European Court of Human Rights, such an attempt, he said, will almost certainly...

Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- Delaware resident Lauren Richardson nearly became a euthanasia victim this summer as her mother and father feuded over her life that reminded observers of the debate over Terri Schiavo. Richardson is a 24-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight over whether she should live or die.Randy Richardson is battling Edith Towers, Lauren's mother, who wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and...

MILAN, November 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The nuns who run the hospice in which Eluana Englaro has been living for 14 years have refused to carry out the court order to remove her food and hydration tube. On Friday, the highest court of appeals of Italy upheld a previous court’s ruling that Eluana Englaro, the young disabled woman who has been in a state of diminished consciousness since being in a car accident in 1992, may be killed by the removal of her food and hydration tube. In a letter published in yesterday’s Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian...

The broadcaster, who has herself written a "living will" stating under what circumstances she would want her life support to be switched off, said dementia sufferers must be allowed to die once their identity has faded away. She added that she supports renewed public debate over whether the terminally ill should be given help to end their lives. The 75-year-old also told The Daily Telegraph that employers must make it easier for older people to stay in work beyond the normal retirement age, in order to relieve the pressure on pensions provision and public services that will be caused by...

ROME (AFP) - The Vatican on Friday firmly condemned an Italian court decision allowing a father to remove his comatose daughter from life support, saying "the right to die does not exist." "Life is sacred, the right to die does not exist," the Vatican's "health minister" Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said in an interview published by the Italian daily La Stampa. On Thursday, Italy's highest appeal court upheld an earlier ruling that doctors could stop artificially feeding Eluana Englaro, 37, as it had been proven that the road accident victim's coma was irreversible. "To stop giving food and drink to...

Olympia, WA (LifeNews.com) -- With Washington becoming the second state to legalize assisted suicide, euthanasia opponents have put together a new web site to urge doctors, medical caregivers and citizens to say no to assisted suicide. The site comes after doctors and medical centers have said they won't urge patients to kill themselves.The Take the Pledge web site urges the three different categories of people to sign an online pledge affirming they will help patients, not urge their death."I will treat the sick according to my best ability and judgment, always striving to do no harm. Whenever I care...

Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- The highest court in Italy has granted the right to a disabled woman's father to kill her via euthanasia by removing her feeding tube. Eluana Englaro has been in what doctors term a so-called vegetative state following a car accident and has received food and water via a feeding tube.Englaro has been the subject of the latest battle similar to the one Terri Schiavo's family waged to prevent her former husband from denying her food and water.She will now be starved and dehydrated to death in the same painful manner that took Schiavo's life over...

Honolulu, HI (LifeNews.com) -- Now that Washington voters made it the second state to legalize assisted suicide, the Honolulu Star Bulletin wants Hawaii to be the third. The island state's legislature has narrowly defeated previous attempts to legalize assisted suicide but the paper wants it to try again."Hawaii has come close to doing the same since a gubernatorial panel recommended it 10 years ago and should give serious consideration to the issue in the coming legislative session," the newspaper writes.A state House committee defeated the assisted suicide bill last in February 2007, which would have allowed physicians to administer a...