Posted on 06/30/2017 12:09:42 AM PDT by Olog-hai
A total of 111 people in California took their own lives using lethal prescriptions during the first six months of a law that allows terminally ill people to request life-ending drugs from their doctors, according to data released Tuesday.
A snapshot of the patients who took advantage of the law mirrors whats been seen in Oregon, which was the first state to legalize the practice nearly two decades ago. Though California is far more diverse than Oregon, the majority of those who have died under aid-in-dying laws in both states were white, college-educated cancer patients older than 60.
The End of Life Option Act made California the fifth state in the nation to allow patients with less than six months to live to request end-of-life drugs from their doctors.
Physician-assisted deaths made up 6 out of every 10,000 deaths in California between June and December 2016, according to state data. Thats much lower than the 2016 rate in Oregon, where lethal prescriptions accounted for 37 per 10,000 deaths.
But the findings have done little to calm the debate over whether allowing doctors to prescribe lethal medications is acceptable medical practice.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I humbly apologize to you for my invective.
I totally misunderstood your position.
I thought you were in favor of doctor assisted suicide, and I misunderstood your position.
Hmmm - now reading the newer posts, it seems my apology might have jumped the gun!
So weasel words are in play.
You think I haven’t been there? Or been around dying people in pain?
Pain relief is available.
Killing people because they are suffering is the answer of Hell.
Everyone suffers mental and physical pain at some points in their life. Anyone who knows the facts about what happens in states or countries with doctor assisted suicide laws knows that the slippery slope into NON-VOLUNTARY killings is quick and it happens in every place.
BTW your comments are unclear due to strange sentence construction.
I see, it is all becoming clear.... Thanks for the additional.
Oh, sure, everybody's a liar. If your promotion of doctor prescribed death wasn't worded a certain way, the whole world is lying.
You have a long history of promoting the killing of terminally ill and disabled people. It's an established fact, like the sky is blue. Anyone who's curious can google freedum2003 along with any number of relevant keywords, and there you are, singing the praises of extermination out of one side of your mouth, while denying having said it out of the other.
I noticed you didn't bother disputing the fact that you joked about the murder of Terri Schiavo. Is it still funny to you?
Thinking of the self again?
You’re welcome.
I see the Admin Moderator removed your abusive remarks at #41.
That’s something I appreciate about Free Republic. There is a level of barbarity we will not tolerate.
Thank you, BykrBayb.
Samson. They had him chained up while "they" partied. He removed the pillars holding up the party temple. It came crashing down. On Samson. Party over. Samson dead. Party people (Philistines) who served Dagon & didn't give a damn dead too.
Much of this is cost control and to eliminate the burden on families.
My personal opinion is we have gone to far when treatment is nothing more than keeping a ‘dying’ body alive. ......by this I mean the individual is in the ‘last stages’ of dying....Extreme measures can also sustain the body far beyond the bodies actual ‘death’.
I had a family member who refused to let my brother die....his body swelled up from all the fluids until you could not hardly recognize him. It was a terrible cruel thing to do to him. I’m glad I was not there.
On the other hand my mother went through the dying process and they made her quite comfortable along the way without completely loosing her ability to communicate....I was with her when she left this world. It was difficult to stand by but not unbearable.
With medicine as it is today there is no reason for someone with an illness to go out in pain.....none.
Anything in the medical community can be abusive and abused wrongfully...... I don’t believe in extreme measures when someone is in the ‘stage of dying’, nor withholding food or water. Both are cruel IMO.
But when it comes to the lengths that the medical field can go to sustain ‘a body’ then you’ve gone too far. Unfortunately this often only happens when family members cannot accept the lose they know they are facing.
Obesity is the salvation of Social Security and medicare
There is no reason for someone to be in pain that great through the dying process....if they are then the physicians or hospital staff are not doing their job.
That photo reminds me of what might have happened to that individual that they they felt the need to build this wall of ‘protection’ around themselves.
Just as an FYI, withholding food and water is usually only an option where the person is incapable of doing it themselves. And in the cases I am personally aware of, you could have brought in a steak dinner and cut it up and served it to them...and they would still not have been able to eat or drink.
They don’t walk into the room and look at a conscious person and say, “No food for you.”
The whole process gets twisted every time it comes up around these parts.
Been there, done that.
I know that there are people here who have suffered. Kidney stones, gall stones and other injuries are painful. I had kidney stones and they were horrible. But I knew that the pain could be corrected.
Then I came down with nerve pain. The pain was always there—is always there. The difference, in my mind, starts when the docs say, “There is nothing we can do.”
I have never gotten to the point where I wanted to take my own life. But I sure understand how others could get there. You are trapped in a body that is “shocking” youevery time anything touches your skin. Kind of hard to sleep or sit for long times if you feels like a cattle prod is jabbing you ever second or two.
And the worst part are all of the people you love trying to help you. And there isn’t a damn thing they can do.
You’re welcome, Mrs. Don-o.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.