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A teacher who threw his terminally ill 79-year-old mother to her death from a first-floor balcony spared jail as judge describes it as a "mercy killing". A "devoted, loving son" who killed his dying mother to end her suffering by dropping her from a first floor fire escape at a care home has been given a suspended jail term. Robert Knight, 53, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his 79-year-old mother June at an earlier hearing at Basildon Crown Court. The languages teacher had denied murder and was cleared by a jury. ...

Mount Carmel Health System says one of its intensive-care doctors gave "significantly excessive and potentially fatal" doses of pain medication to at least 27 near-death patients between 2015 and 2018. Dr. William Husel, who had worked for the system since 2013, has been fired, and details of an internal investigation by Mount Carmel have been turned over to authorities, the health system's top executive said in a statement Monday. The statement was released after a lawsuit was filed earlier in the day in Franklin County Common Pleas Court against the health system, the doctor, a pharmacist and a nurse in...

Beverley Allitt , now 49, was convicted of killing four children while working as a nurse at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincs, in 1991. She is being held at Rampton high-security hospital and is said to be receiving 24 hour care after falling ill on Sunday. A source told The Sun: ‘There are genuine concerns as to whether she’ll pull through.’ Allitt took her first victim, eight-week old Liam Taylor, in February 23, 1991 after she injected the child with a fatal amount of insulin. The ex-paediatric nurse went on to kill three more and critically injured nine others during...

Caught between conflicting moral arguments, Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student, on Monday signed a measure allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who want to hasten their deaths. Approving the bill, whose opponents included the Catholic Church, appeared to be a gut-wrenching decision for the 77-year-old governor, who as a young man studied to enter the priesthood. “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,” Brown added. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in...

It’s that time of the year again folks, when two lucky turkeys come to Washington, spend time at a swanky hotel, get some facetime with President Obama at the White House, before spending the rest of their days at a historic Virginia farm. But those days are always short. Gobbler and Cobbler—last year’s set of turkeys who attended the annual Presidential Turkey Pardon—have both died, Whispers has learned. Gobbler, Cobbler’s understudy, died in February. … Cobbler, 2012’s official pardoned turkey, lived through the summer and was euthanized on Aug. 22. …

(CBS/AP) AKRON, Ohio - John Wise appeared perplexed at the attempted murder charge against him when he stood before a judge Tuesday. Accused of shooting his wife in a hospital intensive care unit in what may have been a mercy killing, Wise asked the judge whether she was indeed dead. Wise appeared before an Akron Municipal Court judge via video from jail on an aggravated attempted murder charge. The judge delayed his formal arraignment until Wednesday to give Wise time to get an attorney. Wise was apparently confused about the attempted murder charge Tuesday, asking, "Is she not dead?"

Emily Rapp is a writer, a devoted mother, and a left-leg amputee who was once a poster child for the March of Dimes. Her son Ronan is living with Tay-Sachs, a devastating rare genetic disease. I first heard of Emily in a disheartening Time magazine article titled “Why a Mother would have aborted her son.” It sprang from a Slate article Emily wrote where she said, “I’m so grateful that Ronan is my child. I also wish he’d never been born; no person should suffer in this way—daily seizures, blindness, lack of movement, inability to swallow, a devastated brain—with no...

NEW DELHI: The Centre has rejected the Law Commission's recommendation to allow terminally ill patients to choose death to end their suffering, attorney general G E Vahanvati told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. ( Read: Euthanasia a sensitive issue, says govt )  Opposing an euthanasia plea on behalf of Aruna Shanbaug, who has been in a vegetative state at KEM Hospital for 37 years, Vahanvati said western parameters seldom applied to Indian conditions and culture. "We do not lead our terminally ill parents or kids to death. Who decides if one should live or die? Who knows tomorrow there might be a cure to a medical state perceived as incurable today....

Across the world, the inexorable push for accepting the new culture of death continues unabated. It's not a pretty picture, because whichever way you turn, there is pressure for assisted suicide and euthanasia to become an acceptable and even hallowed part of the social fabric. While the roots of assisted suicide and euthanasia are hardly of recent vintage, the contemporary ground zero in our lifetimes is the Netherlands. The Dutch pro-death story is the exemplar by which all pro-death efforts should be gauged because it shows how quickly a social taboo can be reversed in the public consciousness to being...

Death is the ultimate subject most people would prefer to avoid. With the increase in the average life expectancy people are living longer and as a result, developing more illnesses. As we age, or watch parents or other loved ones age and struggle with serious illnesses, we are faced with the unpleasant reality that death is inevitable - and in rare cases, we’re left with having to make moral decisions regarding their final days. Families that have researched the benefits of advance directives have already considered these options which include the preservation of a loved one's dignity at the end...

The tragic story of Terri Schiavo has, for most Americans, become a faded memory. But now, thanks to Ken Carpenter and Franklin Springs Family Media, the account of her heart-wrenching ordeal will forever be available to those who believe in the sanctity and value of human life. Narrated by well known Christian author and advocate for the disabled, Joni Eareckson Tada . . .

This battle will be won, make no mistake. It will be won before my generation, the baby boomers, go to our graves, just as we made sure no one could discriminate against us in middle age. We will refuse to be forced to depart life through the torture chambers of terminal diseases for lack of the right to die at the right time of our own choosing. It will be won because 80% of the public support it - and have done consistently in polls for the past 25 years. The power of the religious lobby that has such a...

Catholic physicians and other doctors in California who oppose mercy killing would be forced to provide terminally ill patients with information on morally questionable “end-of-life care options” under a bill now pending in the state legislature. The bill, AB 2747, is a repeatedly amended and watered down version of an original euthanasia measure sponsored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka. Berg’s original bill, termed a “stealth assisted-suicide bill” by opponents, would have allowed doctors to administer “palliative sedation” to deliberately induce a coma, and to starve patients to death under a provision called “voluntary stopping of eating and drinking.” Also excised...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A man threw his seriously ill wife four stories to her death because he could no longer afford to pay for her medical care, prosecutors said in charging him with second-degree murder.

Today, advocates of euthanasia argue that they are merciful when they kill the sick and handicapped. Sadly, this twisted notion of mercy is gaining ground around the world. The groups first targeted were the elderly, the severely handicapped, and the very sick. The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and the state of Oregon all allow doctors to prescribe deadly medicines to men and women with various medical problems. Now, however, death advocates want to go further: they have set their sights on ailing newborns. Holland already allows seriously disabled children to be euthanized. Doctors in England, it was reported this week, are...

LONDON, JAN. 7, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Euthanasia is legal in only a few countries, but even where it is prohibited judges are increasingly reluctant to punish offenders. A recent example is the case of English father, Andrew Wragg. Wragg's 10-year-old son, Jacob, suffered from the degenerative disease of Hunter's syndrome and had multiple disabilities. On July 24, 2004, his father smothered Jacob, afterward calling the police to tell them he had killed his son, the BBC reported Dec. 12. During the trial, the prosecution argued that Wragg's act was a "selfish killing," carried out because he could no longer cope with...

Lausanne University hospital, Switzerland has decided to permit assisted suicides starting from January 1, 2006. Assisted suicide has always been considered a form of active euthanasia . In addition to Lausanne, other leading Swiss hospitals are now actively discussing permitting the procedure. Though Swiss law initially did not allow doctors to kill their patients the practice of euthanasia has been gradually extended from private groups into the public health systems. Extensive experience with euthanasia laws in other countries has revealed a consistent pattern. Assisted suicide is presented to the public as a last resort necessary to alleviate human suffering. Once...

THE Netherlands is setting up a commission to regulate the practice of ending the lives of "seriously suffering" newborn babies, the government said today, in a move critics said could allow more euthanasia. Euthanasia of newborns and late abortions remain illegal, but the commission - composed of three doctors, a lawyer and an ethicist - is likely to recommend that doctors who follow certain rules are not charged in concrete cases. Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and Junior Health Minister Clemence Ross-van Dorp said they hoped the commission, expected to start work in mid-2006, would improve the transparency of decision...

Dear Concerned Supporters Of Terri Schiavo: Please take time look at the following report. REPORT: IN DEPTH: ANALYSIS: HUMAN BIOLOGICAL FACTS IGNORED TO PUT TERRI SCHIAVO TO DEATH/ Forty Thousand Word Critique Of What Was Done To Terri Schiavo: Basic Knowledge; Basic Reasoning; Ignored Biological Facts; Ignored Medical Knowledge; Absence Of Biological Facts And Medical Knowledge; Absence Of And Destruction Of Evidence, Both Physical And Medical. There are many, many more points in the actual report. Some pages may seem similar to pages you have read before, but there are also many pages that go into depth with biological and...

Incarcerated euthanasia crusader, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, says when he's released from prison he won't help anyone end his life by assisted suicide until the law makes it legal, but if he could go back ten years, he would have taken Terri Schiavo as a "patient" if her husband Michael had come to him. Kevorkian, 77, is serving a 10 to 25 year sentence for second degree murder in an assisted suicide case where he injected a patient suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease with a fatal dose of drugs. He is eligible for parole in 2007.