Thread by me.
The nation's Catholic hospitals, including three in the Bay Area, face a new religious mandate in the new year: to provide life-sustaining food, water and medicine to comatose patients who have no hope of recovery.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the directive Nov. 17 to the more than 1,000 church-affiliated hospitals and nursing homes in the United States and to all Catholic doctors and nurses. Invoking a 2004 speech by Pope John Paul II, the bishops said Catholics must provide nutritional assistance to patients with "presumably irreversible conditions ... who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care."
A previous directive let Catholic hospitals and doctors decide whether the burdens on the patient outweighed the benefits of prolonging life. The bishops said the new policy was guided by "Catholic teaching against euthanasia" and by John Paul's observation that providing food and water "always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act."
The directive plunges the bishops into another health care controversy, on the heels of their lobbying for tight restrictions on abortion coverage in health legislation pending in Congress.
Catholic hospital officials say the November decree isn't rigid and leaves room for accommodating patients' wishes. But the bishops' language appears to conflict with a hospital's legal duty to follow a patient's instructions to withdraw life support, as expressed in an advance written directive or by a close relative or friend who knows the patient's intentions. . .
Thanks for the ping!
Two thread by me.
Amsterdam, (LifeNews.com) -- The number of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands rose significantly in 2009 compared with 2008. There were reportedly 200 more deaths under the law, but pro-life advocates say those numbers are likely lowball estimates given the underreporting in the Dutch system.
The Dutch News indicates approximately 2,500 people died via euthanasia in 2009, but the actual number is unknown because the government estimates about 20 percent of cases are not reported.
The new government figures also include six registered cases of euthanasia on elderly patients with senile dementia, all of whom were supposedly in the early stages and able to make their wishes to die known.
In Holland, patients wanting to be killed must be in unbearable pain, the physician must sign off on the patient making an informed choice, and a second physician must certify the doctor's findings.
Alex Schadenberg of the Canada-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, discussed the new numbers.
He says the number of people dying in the Netherlands is higher because assisted suicide figures are not included. If they are included, another 500 people should be added to the 2,500 who were killed last year via euthanasia.
He also says deaths without explicit consent are not included and pointed to the most recent government report from 2005 showing 550 deaths are directly and intentionally caused by the physician but not reported as euthanasia because they lacked consent.
Schadenberg also notes that, as of 2007, approximately 10% of all deaths in the Netherlands were connected to the practice of terminal sedation.
"Many of those deaths were caused by dehydration, due to the physician sedating the patient and then withholding hydration until death occurs, which usually takes 10 - 14 days," he said.
Meanwhile, the Dutch News report "acknowledged that people with dementia are dying by euthanasia in the Netherlands, but the article didn't mention how many infants died by euthanasia in 2009," he pointed out.
"The Groningen Protocol allows infants who are born with disabilities to die by euthanasia based on the request of the parents and the agreement of the physician," he said.
Schadenberg said he is "concerned that since the Netherlands does not collect information concerning the euthanasia of people with disabilities, we therefore ask the question, how many people with disabilities are coerced into death by euthanasia based on a false concept that living with a disability is a life of suffering."
American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith also commented on the new numbers.
He says he has seen studies showing as many as 50 percent of all euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands going unreported -- meaning the lowball figures Schadenberg says are higher could be higher still.
Smith says he finds it "amazing" that the "number of euthanasia deaths are under-reported because non voluntary and involuntary euthanasia don't count as euthanasia because the patient didn't consent."
"And that isn't all. As Alex notes, these statistics don't include the unduly high numbers of terminal sedation deaths–palliative sedation used not as a legitimate pain control technique but as back door euthanasia," Smith continued.
"I would also point out that Dutch doctors refer patients they don't want to euthanize with how-to-commit-suicide information," Smith added.
For Smith, "Here’s the bottom line: The Dutch prove that once euthanasia consciousness is accepted, there is ultimately no real control."
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Let’s open the New Year as we left the old year, shall we?
You know - that part about how we are now becoming quite accustomed to killing people because somebody has decided they are not worth keeping alive.
All in the decedents’ best interests, of course.
Media in the Netherlands reports that there was an increase in the number of people euthanized in 2009 – including people in the early stages of dementia. No surprise there, but I think it’s instructive to look at what is reported, and the subtle subtexts that are nevertheless coercive in slanting a favorable impression of medicalized killing.
Sidebar: I’m not suggesting that the reporter deliberately thought this through, but I think it’s obvious that things in the Netherlands are so pro-euthanasia that the article’s bias is assumed to be “balanced coverage,” which it’s not.
From a piece DutchNews entitled More Cases of Euthanasia in 2009.
First, the obvious is reported, that there were more 200 more cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands last year than 2008, where the killing total was 2,500.
Then:
It is not known how many cases of mercy killing there actually are in the Netherlands, but in 2007 experts said around 80% of instances are registered with the monitoring body.
Well, mercy for whom, exactly? What exactly is the nature of this “mercy?” How can we be assured that the “mercy’ is not for those left behind who found the patient too much of a burden? What about the survivors benefitting from such “mercy” as they inherit goodies from the person they coaxed to assume a duty to die? No way to tell, of course.
“Merciful” because people are in unbearable pain and suffering? Not exactly, because many people who are euthanized are not in pain, and because, in the Netherlands, you can request euthanasia for just about any reason at all, pain or no pain.
Also, after all the fanfare in the Netherlands about making euthanasia legal so that it could be officially controlled, what do we find? Well, it’s not controllable.
Remember, too, that the registering “monitoring body” (sounds so nice, certain, and transparent) is a review panel that examines the circumstances of the killing AFTER it has occurred.
Now, here's the next snippet that contradicts the whole pain-and-suffering angle.
There were also six registered cases of euthanasia on elderly patients with senile dementia, all of whom were in the early stages and able to make their wishes known.
Ah, I see. Where to begin? Dementia, though tragic and unfortunate, is not physically painful (originally, at the top of the slippery slope, euthanasia was ONLY for untreatable physical pain among the terminally ill). Psychologically painful? Clearly, for persons who are aware that their faculties are diminishing, but how do other people make this determination? (Those with dementia don’t euthanize themselves, after all). Where is the bright clear line between someone with early dementia who requests euthanasia (in their right mind, so to speak) and someone who’s condition is more far advanced and is judged not competent to request euthanasia?
Don’t worry, the Dutch doctors have a solution for this latter group – they kill them too. The explanation? Had these people been in their right mind, they would have requested euthanasia anyway.
On we go:
The law states a number of criteria, which must be met before euthanasia can be administered. For example, the patient must be suffering unbearable pain and the doctor must be convinced the patient is making an informed choice. The opinion of a second doctor is also required.
More shooting fish in barrels here: Where’s the “unbearable pain” in dementia? How can a doctor ever possibly be sure that, knowing a diagnosis of dementia has already been made, calibrate that the dementia is not affecting the request for euthanasia?
Short answer, I’m afraid: All the contortions of logic and single-mindedness betray, with increasing smugness, that in many places we have decided who should live and who should die.
First those who are terminally ill and in untreatable pain. Then people who are not terminally ill but who might have physical or psychological pain. Then people who are judged to never be able to have a better quality of life. First adults. Then children.
Who’s next?