British Doctors Use Euthanasia to Kill Nearly 3,000 Patients

LifeNews ^ | January 17, 2006 | Steven Ertelt

[NYer]

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A new survey finds British doctors used euthanasia to kill nearly 3,000 patients in 2004. The poll also found that British doctors do not want to see the legalization of assisted suicide despite a campaign to do that.

Brunel University surveyed 857 doctors and found that thousands of deaths in 2004 were the result of illegal euthanasia.

According to a BBC report, the survey found that, of the 584,791 deaths in the UK in 2004, 936 were by voluntary euthanasia and 1,930 involved the doctor killing the patient without the patient's consent.

Of the euthanasia deaths, one-third of them were the result of doctors treating the symptoms of a disease or injury and just under a third involved doctors withholding treatment in cases when it is supposedly in the best interest of the patient.

Both of those courses of action are legal in Britain, the BBC reported.

None of the doctors in the poll said they had been involved in an assisted suicide and just 2.6 percent of the physicians surveyed said it would be beneficial to change the law to allow it.

Discussing the report, Professor Clive Seale told the BBC, "Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are understandably very emotive subjects, but this work shows that UK doctors are less willing to take such actions than in several other countries."

In November lawmakers in the House of Lords introduced a private members bill to legalize assisted suicide. Pro-life groups have strenuously fought the bill and were successful in getting a provision allowing voluntary euthanasia to be removed from it.

Groups backing euthanasia said the report shows some doctors are engaging in the practice and that it should be legalized, but pro-life advocates disagreed.

Julia Millington, political director of the ProLife Alliance, told the BBC, "Surely the response of a civilized society is to stop this unlawful killing altogether rather than use such research to support demands for doctors to be permitted to do it legally."

A doctor associated with the British Medical Association also worried about the number of doctors engaging in euthanasia.

[klossg]

I would much rather my heirs get something when I croak rather than see it go to a hospital who kept me alive in a brain dead coma they knew I wasn't coming out of.

I agree with you here. Hospitals should not be places to keep corpses alive on machines. The mind is part of the soul and modern medicine has done no great favors by allowing us to keep brain dead people alive. Heck its bad enough that someone like me is still breathing. I'd be dead by now if it weren't for the threat of sexual harassment lawsuits. Believe me, I have asked many a nurse to pull my plug.

Tis a funny reality that great advances in medicine and general cleanliness would lead us to talking about pulling a plug in order to die.

You are on a different topic all together. Shells without nuts and doctors pulling plugs is not even close to British Doctors helping their patients die way before they become bodies with more than one plug to pull.

If this article is about people on machines who are shells then, pull my plug. I have no time for the shell with no nut question. That is an all out bummer for everyone involved and I leave it to them personally to handle it how they need to handle it. British or not. Unless it is Prince Charles, then I say pull no matter what. The poor bastid.

Believe me, if you ever get in a position where you want someone to pull your plug and no one will do it and you don't have the nut and there is no hope for you ... I'll pull the plug myself. I have written a Living Will. It says not to make me a shell. If my body or mind start down the hill toward me becoming "a shell with no nut." I'll die a natural death and become a dead man. My wife, not my doctor will act on my behalf to make sure it is natural. Can you imagine how boring I would be if my tiny nut was turned to butter? I'd make even less sense.

Pulling vegetables out of the garden is not what I'd fight for. Killing people who have life left in them is what I think we should never do. If they are in pain, give them morphine or a doobie or 15 epidural. But, don't snuff them out legally through a doctor. Let's keep it illegal and leave it up to a judge to put a loving child in jail for doing what their father wanted. The judge that does that is a wanker.

By the way you are funny and it would be hard for me to snuff you out, even as a shell. But, I'd do it if you were a shell and had requested it.

[parsifal]

I don't think you ought to kill people with life left in them either. If I were all paralyzed and still had my mind and eyes, then I would spend much of my time doing what most Americans do, i.e., laying up in bed watching TV.

I could still read. I could play the clarinet if I had my arms. The kazoo if I didn't. I could still talk and bore people to tears.

But I am afraid of laying there drooling and my family coming in saying stuff like "Oh, what a brilliant person he used to be! I remember daddy's little quips. . .sob. . .sob. Now all he does is lay there and drool and pass gas.

So I have a living will, too.

parsy, the spud.