[normanpubbie]

I agree with everything you said in post #28. I'm forwarding your post to some of the posters on this thread who need to see it too.

BTW, Jack Kevorkian was released from prison in March 2006 claiming to be terminally ill with hepatitis C and expected to live only 6 more months. Here it is, 3 1/2 years later, and he is still around. According to the Wikipedia entry, in February 2009 he lectured at some college:

...There were mixed reactions when Dr. Kevorkian unveiled an American Flag with a swastika where the field of stars normally resides (the Union). He claimed the flag was intended to shock and remind everyone that this is where America is headed if changes are not made.

Talk about execrable! Kevorkian, it was the Nazis who euthanasized 6 million people last century in the Holocaust.

[Cicero]

Well, I read the story over again, and I can see how there can be differences of opinion about it. The doctor seems to me to have made a very questionable decision. He admits that he “hastened her death.” But it is arguable on the evidence given.

Yes, it was an emergency, but I don’t think that necessarily excuses ending a life. The four nurses he mentions could probably have carried her down. And it’s perfectly possible to bring the intravenous drip along—I’ve been in that position myself.

Then if she died, she died, and it couldn’t be helped. But no one deliberately hastened her death.

I don’t know all the factors involved, so maybe no wrong was done.

As for the Grand Jury decision, the article says they were dealing with a couple of other cases. Whatever this doctor did was not known at the time, so he was not under investigation then.