Threads by GonzoII and me.
A new national survey in England finds disabled Britons are opposed to the national government legalizing the practice of assisted suicide, and one pro-life group is welcoming the results.
The survey, commissioned by disability group Scope, found 70% of disabled people are “concerned about pressure being placed on other disabled people to end their lives prematurely” “if there were a change in the law on assisted suicide.” The survey also found that most young adults share the concerns of older generations about the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide.
The survey found 77% of disabled people aged 18-24 and 71% of disabled people aged 25-34 expressed those concerns.
Anthony Ozimic, the communications manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), responded to the poll, saying, “We welcome this survey and take encouragement from its findings. Scope, which commissioned the survey, is not part of the pro-life movement and there is no suggestion of it being partisan.”
“The survey’s questions were worded fairly, unlike recent general public opinion polls which use the pro-euthanasia lobby’s euphemisms, such as ‘assisted dying’. Disabled people, including young adults, are increasingly alarmed by the celebrity-driven push for legalizing assisted suicide. Disabled people want help to live well and die naturally, not lethal injections or poison-pills,” he added.
This year, assisted suicide backers in England have been pressing again for legalization of the practice and, in January, they went further by trashing disabled people in the process.
In the British Medical Journal, Tony Delamothe wrote a column titled “One and a Half Truths About Assisted Dying,” in which he disparaged the disabled.
“Sixteen months ago I argued that the debate on assisted dying had been hijacked by disabled people who wanted to live and that it should be reclaimed for terminally ill people who wanted to die,” he said.
But American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, in a blog post, called him on the carpet.
“Thanks to the spread of suicide tourism, the UK is going through another in a series of pushes to legalize assisted suicide. As with the last time, when a bill was introduced in the House of Lords, a commission is studying the issue. And advocates are pretending that their goal is what it clearly is not,’ he writes.
Smith says the pro-assisted suicide activism in the United Kingdom “has explicitly not been limited to the terminally ill” and writes the example of the bill in the Scottish Parliament to legalize the practice, saying MSP Margo MacDonald is referenced by Delamothe.
“Yet, it specifically would have permitted assisted suicide for people with non terminal disabilities,” he notes.
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LONDON, May 13, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A survey conducted recently of disabled people in Britain, commissioned by the disability group Scope, found that 70 percent are “concerned about pressure being placed on other disabled people to end their lives prematurely” “if there were a change in the law on assisted suicide.” More than a third were worried they would personally experience such pressure.
Concerns about the dangers of legalized assisted suicide were shared equally by young people and those in older age groups.
Fifty-six percent of respondents believed any relaxation of the law would be “detrimental to the way that disabled people are viewed by society as a whole.”
Richard Hawkes, Chief Executive of Scope, said, “Our survey findings confirm that concerns about legalizing assisted suicide are not just held by a minority, but by a substantial majority of those this law would affect.
“Disabled people are already worried about people assuming their life isn’t worth living or seeing them as a burden, and are genuinely concerned that a change in the law could increase pressure on them to end their life.”
The news comes as legal experts from a government-appointed think tank have issued a report warning that should assisted suicide become legal in Britain, lethal drugs could become easily available over the counter.
As pressure builds in Britain’s parliament to legalize assisted suicide, and with the Director of Public Prosecutions refusing to prosecute cases of assisted suicide, concerns are growing among the disabled community that their lives are seen as less valuable by the legal and medical communities.
Alison Davis of the disability rights group No Less Human welcomed the survey, saying it “disproves the constant claim by the misnamed ‘Dignity In Dying’ lobby that most disabled people support assisted suicide.”
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
Two threads by me.
NORTHERN TERRITORY, Australia, May 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Australian woman who was declared “brain dead” regained consciousness after weeks of fighting doctor recommendations that her ventilator be shut off, according to a report in the Northern Territory News yesterday.
Fifty-six-year-old Gloria Cruz was rushed to Royal Darwin Hospital in the Northern Territory of Australia on March 7, after having a stroke in her sleep.
When a CAT scan revealed that Cruz was most likely suffering from a brain tumor, she underwent surgery in what initially appeared to be an unsuccessful attempt to save her life.
“The moment I saw my wife in the ICU I thought I’d collapse,” Gloria’s husband, Tani Cruz said, according to Northern Territory News. “I couldn’t believe that I was looking at the woman I have loved for 27 years. She was not my wife. Her face was swollen. Her hair was gone. Tubes were inserted in her mouth. There was a tube in the top of her head. Another in her hands. And she was lying almost lifelessly.”
Doctors told Mr. Cruz that his wife would die within 48 hours, calling her situation “hopeless.” They recommended that the ventilator that was keeping her breathing be removed.
While Cruz stalled the decision, he was contacted by a social worker and a “patient advocate” who urged him to remove the ventilator and allow his wife to die.
“I told him that God knows how much I love her - that I don’t want her to suffer but I don’t want her to leave us,” Cruz said. “I’m a Catholic – I believe in miracles.”
After two weeks, he allowed them to shut off the ventilator, but insisted that a breathing tube be inserted in her mouth so that she could continue breathing on her own.
Three days later, Gloria Cruz defied the medical experts and woke from her coma. According to her husband, she is now alert, mobile, and on her way to recovery.
“We have a strong faith and always believed that God would help us,” said Cruz.
An increasing number of experts have begun calling into question the “brain death” criteria for determining death. They argue that brain death is an arbitrary set of criteria developed largely to ensure the usability of organs harvested from such patients, as well as to decrease the medical costs involved in keeping “brain dead” patients alive on life support.
A number of incidents have seemed to confirm this view, including one particularly chilling case in which a young man declared “brain dead” actually heard doctors discussing harvesting his organs. Minutes before being wheeled into the operating room to have his organs removed, he woke up.
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An Australian “brain dead” woman (clearly a misnomer, about which more below) was ordered removed from life support only a few weeks after suffering brain injury. But thanks to the efforts of her family, she is now recovering. From the story:
A TERRITORIAN has woken from the dead. Gloria Cruz was diagnosed as being “brain dead” by a team of doctors after suffering a massive stroke. But her distraught husband Tani begged them not to switch off her ventilator. “I’m a Catholic – I believe in miracles,” he told them…
Ms Cruz had a stroke in her sleep on March 7 and was rushed to Royal Darwin Hospital. After a CAT scan, a doctor said she probably had a brain tumour. Mr Cruz, 51, who works as a forecaster at the Darwin Met Bureau, said: “The doctor didn’t elaborate. He just said I should prepare myself.” His wife underwent brain surgery immediately…Doctors said the case was “hopeless” and she would probably die within 48 hours.
When a doctor recommended that the ventilator be removed and Mrs Cruz be allowed to die, her husband told them: “A miracle could still happen. I told him that God knows how much I love her – that I don’t want her to suffer but I don’t want her to leave us.” Mr Cruz asked for a 48-hour respite. A doctor, social worker and patient advocate later rang him and again asked him to agree to have the ventilator turned off. After two weeks, a breathing tube was inserted in Mrs Cruz’s mouth and the ventilator was turn off. Hospital staff were stunned when she woke from her coma three days later.
This story illustrates many of the problems we see in medicine today:
1. There is a tendency to give up way too early on patients who have serious brain trauma. I think that is in part to the bioethical meme that rejects human exceptionalism, accepts the so-called “quality of life” ethic that presumes people with catastrophic cognitive traumas have lower moral worth, and indeed as some hold, are mere human “non persons.”
2. “Brain death” is a badly misused term. If Cruz breathed on her own after the ventilator was turned off, by definition, she wasn’t dead, but in a coma, as the story stated later. Media and medical communicators have to watch their lexicon. An unconscious patient is a living patient.
3. Diagnosis of persistent consciousness can’t usually be done reliably in days, or even weeks. It takes months, and even then, there is a 40% misdiagnosis rate. It would appear that a hasty prognosis might have been made in this case that could have had tragic results. What if the family hadn’t fought for her life? She might not have recovered to the point that she was able to breathe unassisted.
4. Doctors should not have the unchecked power to unilaterally “pull the plug.” Decisions that wanted further treatment is “futile” should not be made by the doctors or hospital bioethicists or social workers. Rather, they require strong checks and balances and decision by rule of law. If the wanted treatment is clearly so burdensome to the patient (not the medical team or hospital finances) that it should be stopped, that is a decision to be made in open courts with rights of cross examination and appeal.
5. Occasionally, “miracles” do happen.
This part of the story raised my eyebrow:
A doctor was so amazed, he said: “It’s a miracle.” And then he turned to Mr Cruz and said: “I am happy that my prognosis was wrong.”
Well, that’s nice. But I hope the doctor learned something from this experience. Sometimes prognoses are wrong. The one in one hundred chance comes up one in one hundred times. Hope should not be too quickly abandoned.
To pressure disabled persons - or anyone - to take their own lives should be a felony.
