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Sam Golubchuk update...

With support coming in as the story grows about the killer team tantrum, we had to expect someone to weigh in on the side of the killers. Naturally it had to come from someone in exalted intellectual station, one who finds amazing complexity in simple applications of good and bad. Here we have an intellectual discovering gold-like specks in the fading argument offered by the Texas Futile Care law. Here, too, the intellectual is struggling with the differences between futile care and futile life.

The dilemma of such elites is they are surrounded by equally astoundingly brilliant colleagues and alas have no associates of simple mind in range to explain the simple to them.

University of Toronto -- By declaring that patient choice is paramount, Tom Koch oversimplifies the ethical principles at stake in the case of Samuel Golubchuk (Doctors, Religion And Law - letters, June 19). There is at least one competing principle he ignores - medical futility.

Do family members have the right to demand treatment that will be of no therapeutic benefit to the patient? Are doctors obliged to provide such treatment?

Hard cases in bioethics are those in which equally reasonable principles conflict. This is one of them.

Medical futility is a principle, too

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Wesley J. Smith tells of an irony down under. Thanks, Leslie, for the tip.

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Good news and bad news. An Australian jury has convicted two women who killed an Alzheimer's patient. From the story:

The Sydney jury found Shirley Justins guilty of manslaughter and Caren Jenning guilty of being an accessary to manslaughter for the euthanasia drug death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie...Justins pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting suicide early in the trial, and said Wylie was desperate to die before his dementia got worse. Jenning also told the jury she was motivated by mercy in travelling to Mexico to obtain the Nembutal for Wylie, who was one of her oldest friends.

Normally, such a defense melts hearts and juries--caught up in the "quality of life" ethos of our age--often will not convict. And that brings us to the bad news:

Apparently the women had a financial incentive for the deaths:One week before his overdose, Wylie drew up a new will leaving all but $200,000 of his $2.4 million estate to Justins.

The previous will had left 50 per cent to Justins and split the remaining half evenly between his two daughters, Tania Shakespeare and Nicola Dumbrell. Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC told the jury Justins was motivated by a desire to secure her financial future, and either deliberately killed Wylie or let him take the drug Nembutal and was indifferent to the fatal consequences.

Sadly, I believe that but for this proof, the case might never have been brought.

Predictably, the death on demand advocate Philip Nitschke was appoplectic:

Euthanasia campaigner Phillip Nitschke is advising Alzheimer's sufferers against getting tested for the disease, after two women were convicted over the drug death of a dementia sufferer.

To Nitschke, nothing comes before the euthanasia agenda--not even obtaining proper medical care. Yet, he remains a hero of the international movement and a darling of the Australian media.

Labels: Euthanasia Convictions. Philip Nitschke.

posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:44 AM

Australian "Euthanasia" Manslaughter Convictions

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