Posted on 01/02/2006 6:31:03 AM PST by bulldozer
Lausanne University hospital, Switzerland has decided to permit assisted suicides starting from January 1, 2006. Assisted suicide has always been considered a form of active euthanasia . In addition to Lausanne, other leading Swiss hospitals are now actively discussing permitting the procedure. Though Swiss law initially did not allow doctors to kill their patients the practice of euthanasia has been gradually extended from private groups into the public health systems.
Extensive experience with euthanasia laws in other countries has revealed a consistent pattern. Assisted suicide is presented to the public as a last resort necessary to alleviate human suffering. Once this becomes acceptable to the public, the categories of people deemed expendable steadily expands to include those perceived to have a diminished value to society or to themselves.
In the Netherlands, doctors have been allowed to practice active euthanasia since 1973. While Dutch death regulations initially required that euthanasia be strictly limited to the sickest patients, it has been steadily redefined with the protective guidelines gradually eroded. As a result, Dutch doctors now legally kill the terminally ill, the chronically ill, disabled people and depressed people, on demand. Furthermore, repeated studies sponsored by the Dutch government shows that a significant number of patients are murdered by their doctors every year as a result of involuntary euthanasia.
(Excerpt) Read more at earnedmedia.org ...
I can only hope that when I get some horrible form of cancer that I will be allowed to have a trained medical professional help me end my pain when I choose.
Note to self: Never ever get seriously ill or injured in Switzerland.
No, you do not have the right to demand that a medical professional violate the oaths of their profession to do something you are too chicken to do yourself.
Leave it to the Swiss. They'll find a way to do it with cheese, confections, and precision. You could try the tool below, but the vast array of choices would be vexing.
Better yet....
You could hope a trained medical professional finds a cure for some horrible form of cancer.
Morphine and Dilotid are great pain relievers when it comes to cancer. Hopefully that will help your pain.
In the meantime, those trained medical professionals have sworn an oath to save your life. Not end it.
Leave that to God.
Hey, doctors have been killing patients for centuries.
Welcome to FR.
Please be aware many here see life as sacred as well as suffering and death. Thereby it is all in the hands of God.
The hospital in western Switzerland said it would allow the voluntary euthanasia group, Exit, to help terminally ill patients who are unable to go home.
I wonder if they would allow a Christian group entrance to the hospital?
Doctors are already gods in Switzerland. They cannot be sued. The worst that can happen to them is a review by their peers. This news is extremely dangerous.
"Anything worthwhile?" I guess that's all subjective.
The fact that you are alive is worthwhile, especially to surrounding family members who love you, but that's only my humble opinion. Bear with me :)
At any rate, a living will should do it. Indicate that you do not wish artificial means keeping you alive. I believe there are legal means of keeping your wishes known, in case you are not able to express them.
Make sure the hospital staff knows that you are "NO CODE" in other words, no heroic effort will be made should you go into cardiac arrest because of your illness.
But let's not hope that it will happen anytime soon, no? :)
I'm not sure that assumption can be made concerning docs in Europe. I read an article a while back, I think out of Denmark, that claimed the state (physicians) were bumping off grandma and grandpa before the families wanted them too. (Gram and gramps got too costly for the state to take care of.)
Europe better be careful what it wishes for. Assisted suicide by the nonproductive becomes an honorable thing to do??
why wast this on hospitals, I think we should have Assisted suicide in the prisons! Some one who is in for life just might want to checkout early instead of sitting around in a cell for 40+ years.
I believe you are right. I am not familiar if the same Hippocratic oath stated by doctors in the US is universal...perhaps there are some out there that can chime in?
It is frightening, isn't it? It's as if Hitler's ghost has possessed some of those Danish MD's all over again.
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