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Why, now that doctors can do so much with advancements in modern medicine, are they turning their backs on the patients who need them most, and saying it’s for their own good? A terminally ill child’s death should not be determined by a panel of doctors and a judge. Parents should have a say in the decision to maintain life-extending care. But in Texas, Fourth District Court of Appeals Chief Justice Sandee Bryan Marion went along with the determination of doctors at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth to pull life support from 11-month-old Tinslee Lewis, despite her family’s...

The Cure for Toxic Positivity hen my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 52, I was flooded with emails, calls, and in-person pep talks from friends and acquaintances. Anyone who’d ever met me, it seemed, was eager to offer up a platitude. “Think positive,” they told me. “It will be okay. He’ll get through this.” But his cancer didn’t go away, and neither did the deluge of optimism that flowed over both of us — my dad, the patient, and me, his sole caregiver. It was wearing him down, and me along with him. During one visit, family...

Maine is the first state in New England to give dying patients the right to use experimental drugs. Republican Gov. Paul LePage signed legislation Wednesday that allows terminally ill patients to use treatments that have not received final approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. […] The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Thomas Longstaff, a Waterville Democrat who had worked as a hospital chaplain. …

New plans unveiled Friday could allow French doctors to put terminally ill patients into a deep sleep until they die. The French parliament will debate the issue in a new draft law, according to The Telegraph. So far only Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland explicitly permit euthanasia or assisted suicide. A 2005 French law already allows “passive euthanasia,” where a person causes death by withholding or withdrawing treatment that is necessary to maintain life, but the new proposal takes the idea further. The proposals by two MPs — one from the ruling Socialists, the other from the opposition UMP —...

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,...

FULL TITLE: Terminally sick children have been secretly given deadly overdoses by British doctors in illegal mercy killings, claims retired GP British doctors have secretly killed terminally sick children by giving them 'huge' overdoses of painkillers, it was claimed yesterday. Hours after Belgium became the first country in the world to allow the euthanasia of children, a retired GP suggested it was already happening, informally, in Britain. Dr Michael Irwin told an LBC Radio debate: 'It has happened in this country, very quietly. I know of one or two children over the last few years.'

Casey Kasem will die in the next few months … this according to a rep for Casey’s wife Jean. As we reported, Casey and Jean were sued by a former caregiver who claimed she was mistreated and cheated by Jean during her employment with the couple. The housekeeper, Hilda Loza, sued in small claims court and the case was heard Friday. …

J. R. was an auto mechanic of French Canadian descent with a perfectly square gap between his two front teeth and the slightly off-kilter face of a retired boxer. Soon after I met him on the surgical ward, after he had been found to have cancer, he developed a habit of planting himself in front of me whenever I got within 100 feet of his room, to spin stories about his life, wax poetic about his girlfriend, and offer free auto-repair advice. I thought we had caught the tumor in J. R.’s colon early, but in the operating room we...

U.S. Army Helps Sick Child's Wish Come True By Spc. Casondra Brewster / Assistant Editor, Belvoir Eagle FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Oct. 10, 2002) -— Walt Disney eat your heart out. The Army can help make dreams come true, too. Elements of Fort Belvoir recently teamed up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic to help make a terminally ill 10-year-old’s wishes come true. Justin Bryce’s doctors believe he has just a few weeks left before the disease that threatens his life wins. Bryce told the Make-A-Wish Foundation that his desire before dying was to be a soldier — a...