Posted on 04/08/2005 6:58:12 PM PDT by quidnunc
Brussels – Nearly half the newborn babies who died in Flanders over a recent year-long period were helped to die by their doctors, a new study reported yesterday.
Paediatricians in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium either discreetly stopped treating the babies or, in 17 cases, illegally killed them with lethal doses of painkillers.
The study, published in The Lancet, examined the deaths of every baby who died within a year of birth in Flanders between August 1999 and July 2000.
The results of a survey on the causes of death were stark: paediatricians who responded to the survey admitted they had taken "end of life" decisions in more than half the cases.
Most commonly, that involved withholding or withdrawing treatment because physicians believed the baby had no real chance of survival or the baby had no chance of a "bearable future".
In 40 cases, opiate pain killers were used in doses with a potentially life-shortening affect. In 17 cases, a lethal dose or lethal drugs were administered.
Overall, the research yielded information on 253 out of the total of 298 infant deaths in the region over the period. The lethal doses of painkillers, which broke Belgian law, were mainly administered to babies less than a week old.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
If many of those babies have no chance of making it.. should they keep doign painful operations, blood tranfusions, amputations etc.. until the baby eventually expires?
Or should they let the baby die without treatment..
Or give the baby enough painkillers to kill it?
Before we do that, it might be instructive to find out just exactly what they mean when they call a baby "defective." Something tells me it's a rather loose definition.
Coming to a nation near you...
I didn't know of the man you're speaking of, but I know of what you speak.
My goodness we have become a society that is made of absolutely nothing.
Several years ago I took a part-time job in a upscale grocery store, and I kept noticing that all these younger women, you know, between the ages of 13 and 18 looked oddly similar. Their noses all looked alike.
It took me a while to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that all these girls probably had plastic surgery. It was a very affluent area, and diverse in population so there's no way melting pot would produce those noses.
The reason I mention it is because we really have become slaves to the superficial. Superficial beauty, superficial intelligence and superficial goodness. And in my mind, none of this bodes very well. And isn't it amazing that in the never ending quest for and defense of diversity, everyone wants to look alike.
Made of nothing!
Your assuming they care..
I understand your point of view. I can tell you this, I don't want government doctors deciding to continue on, withhold treatment, or dispatch. That would be way too much power to put in the hands of government. Of course that's exactly what the liberals want.
Well, given they are growing up in a country where doctors kill babies, this is entirely plausible.
"Call me too black and white, but in my book, killing something or someone that is innocent is murder."
What ever happened to the Hippocratic Oath?
Doctors were never to take life, ever. Then came abortion, then came 'right to die', then came the slippery slope...
Between the Roe effect and the euthanasia the libs are killing there party.
Do you really think 1/2 of those babies were seriously ill or deformed? I don't.
50% is a pretty high rate of babies who could not live.
If killing you is "help," gotta wonder what "hurt" is.
Good point. Remember the thalidomide babies? Maybe that was before your time. People felt sorry for them, and there was no talk about ending their lives. I fear we have been socially engineered since abortion became legal. That would never have been accepted by "people who dress nice" back in the 40's and 50's. It wouldn't have been accepted by people who didn't dress so nice either.
I think the medical profession has seen so much by the time their training is completed that they detach themselves. I also know it is really hard for some of them with what they have to deal with, sometimes outright abuse. All the waste, shootings they have to treat. And so many of the young are rude and demanding, not like it was a generation or two ago.
Still, it's no excuse to kill anyone. But it's hard for me, because I didn't have a defective child and considered myself blessed. I hate to sit behind a computer and pass judgments on people whose lives are turned upside down when they have to raise a defective baby. It is really devastating. Most ended up putting the child into an institution, and now I've met some and hear of many more of those "children" who were abused in those institutions . . .
Most of these voices who are so influential in shaping public opinion are coming out of our godless educational establishments of "higher" learning.
Too bad humans don't get the same protection.
They changed it awhile back to a watered down verison. It may have been in anticipation of what was to come.
"killed them with lethal doses of painkillers."
Well, the Docs here have done this to adults by "pushing" the morphine drip. It's supposed to only occur when the situation is terminal but how many will be Schiavoed before folks wake up to the reality of modern medicine.
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