Euthanasia/assisted suicide - what do you think?

[Bev]

OK, everyone knows that I have a firm belief that the media, especially soap operas and drama shows push whatever messages they are asked to - one example being Eastenders admitting that they were asked to push the message that HIV could affect heterosexuals and non-drug abusers.


A couple of weeks ago, they showed an elderly man dying live on TV. There was talk of Jade Goody allowing her death to be filmed. Eastenders revisited Dot Branning's helping her friend Ethel to die. Many newspapers have printed accounts of people not being charged for assisting suicide in this country. There have been countless stories in the press recently about the Swiss suicide clinic for the terminally ill, and last night, Emmerdale apparently showed an assisted suicide scene.


Do you think they're paving the way to allow suicide clinics in this country? Sort of softening up the attitudes and testing the waters, as it were. What do you think about the issue?

Personally, I think it could be a good thing, provided that the person is terminally ill or has a serious progressive disease and has undergone numerous and repeated checks by the necessary authorities to ensure it's truly what they want.

[Gerry Fable]

Personally, I think it could be a good thing, provided that the person is terminally ill or has a serious progressive disease and has undergone numerous and repeated checks by the necessary authorities to ensure it's truly what they want.

I can't argue with that sentiment. It would be awful to die a slow and painful death. In those circumstances if the person who is terminally ill would like to die then it is just and humane. After all, we don't allow dogs to suffer. But for some reason we allow humans to suffer!

People suffering from mental illness such as clinical depression - no! After all they are just depressed and need medication and therapy.

[Jez North]

Soften people up on euthanasia and eventually people will be indifferent to killing the elderly for the benefit of society or whatever.

[Bev]

Originally Posted by Gerry Fable

I can't argue with that sentiment. It would be awful to die a slow and painful death. In those circumstances if the person who is terminally ill would like to die then it is just and humane. After all, we don't allow dogs to suffer. But for some reason we allow humans to suffer!

People suffering from mental illness such as clinical depression - no! After all they are just depressed and need medication and therapy.

Good points. Anything that is treatable shouldn't be included - I don't envision it as free assistance for the depressed and the emos.

Originally Posted by Jez North

Soften people up on euthanasia and eventually people will be indifferent to killing the elderly for the benefit of society or whatever.

Another good point. I hadn't considered that.

[John Bull]

Euthania by default has existed in England for a long, long time. It has been tacitly carried out humanely by using the 'do not resuscitate' option for treatment. It happened that way with the death of my own mother.
If one allows sanctioned mercy killing, hordes of unscrupulous doctors and relatives will use the legislation to get rid of burdensome old fools with hefty bank balances, or tedious and expensive care requirements. Self aggrandising cretins here who push this agenda would get exactly what they wanted if they kept their gobs shut. No one, I suspect, has been convicted for helping someone to die. You're right Bev - if it is a storyline on Eastenders it is a mindbender.

[Gerry Fable]

If one allows sanctioned mercy killing, hordes of unscrupulous doctors and relatives will use the legislation to get rid of burdensome old fools with hefty bank balances, or tedious and expensive care requirements. Self aggrandising cretins here who push this agenda would get exactly what they wanted if they kept their gobs shut.

Few animals live to old age, and the 'laws of Nature' apply to humans. Either science finds a way to keep old people 'young' or civilisation will eventually collapse due to the number of unproductive people outnumbering the productive.

[Bev]

It's not mercy killing, though, is it? It's assisted suicide. To me, killing is something someone does to someone else. From what I know of the Dignitas clinic, a doctor gives the person the drug and they take it themselves.

I can see why people would be worried (and rightly so) that it would be used to offload troublesome or expensive relatives. But I'm talking about the person themselves seeing psychiatrists, doctors, specialists, counsellors, the whole lot - to make sure this is exactly what they want. No family involvement. Lie detector tests if necessary.

Wills would have to be examined beforehand to make sure that no doctor involved in the process stands to get so much as a quid from any estate.

DNR is a whole different thing. That's not killing, that's "don't bring me back if I do die" or "don't take any heroic measures to save me". I fully agree with that and have told my own next of kins that if something happens and I don't have full cognition, then just let me go.

I don't know. I lean towards being in favour of it myself but the potential for abuse is horrendous.

[Darius Appleby]

Some Australians intent on getting the poison to kill themselves quickly and surely have to travel to Mexico to buy the drug where it is legal.

After returning home they decide when to do it and are dead within a minute of drinking the small vial of poison. It is called Nembutal.

http://www.lifenews.com/2008/05/21/bio-2453/

[Bev]

Originally Posted by Darius Appleby

Some Australians intent on getting the poison to kill themselves quickly and surely have to travel to Mexico to buy the drug where it is legal.

After returning home they decide when to do it and are dead within a minute of drinking the small vial of poison. It is called Nembutal.

http://www.lifenews.com/2008/05/21/bio-2453/

Following a link from your link, I found:

Two Australian women have pleaded not guilty in a New South Wales Supreme Court to murdering Graeme Wylie. The women are accused of following the advice of Australian euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke, who suggested they give Wylie a lethal dose of Nembutal.

Wylie suffered from dementia and couldn’t remember his own birthday or how many children he had.

Shirley Justins, Wylie’s partner, and their friend Caren Jennings are accused of helping Wylie kill himself in March 2006. They have pleaded not guilty to importing the drug from Mexico and using it in his death.

The two are members of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International that Nitschke operates. They contacted Nitschke after the Swiss euthanasia group Dignitas turned Wylie down for an assisted suicide there after questioning his ability to consent to the death.

Dignitas asked Nitschke to evaluate Wylie’s condition, but he did not do so because he wanted to help in the suicide himself.

According to the Brisbane Times, the new South Wales Supreme Court heard testimony in the case that Nitschke was "hell-bent on doing his best" to support the women’s effort to kill Wylie.

Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi says Wylie did not have the ability to consent to an assisted suicide, which is illegal in Australia, and argued the two women should be charged with murder.

The newspaper indicated both women had motive to kill Wylie.

"Shirley Justins had a strong financial motive … and also a personal motive in wanting Mr Wylie deceased. Caren Jenning … was ideologically motivated [and] had a personal motive in assisting Shirley Justins to kill Graeme Wylie," Tedeschi said.

Alex Schadenberg, the chairman of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, commented on the case and said it emphasizes two important issues.

"The euthanasia lobby is not really concerned about consent. Even someone who is suffering from Alzheimer or dementia can be killed, even when consent is not possible," he said.

"The second point is that the euthanasia lobby is not concerned with the health of their victims. They are only concerned with a change in the law, and once the law is changed, they are really concerned with facilitating death," he added.

To validate his point, he noted Oregon’s assisted suicide law and indicated the state health department’s law report showed none of the 49 assisted suicide deaths in 2007 were first referred to a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

That’s required by the law when the doctor suspects possible depression or mental issues.

See, now this, to me is wrong, and those two women should be convicted of murder, if this news report is correct. There is NO indication that this man wanted to die - no mention of a living will or something along those lines stating that if he got to X point in his dementia then he wanted to go - nothing. A partner should be the last person involved in the decision. This only strengthens my opinion that those wanting to euthanase themselves should have every counselling and test known to man before being allowed to do so. But then again, you make it too hard and they'll just find an alternative method. So difficult to make my mind up where I stand.

[John Bull]

Mercy killing, assisted suicide,they are all euphemisms for the same thing. This debate is very easily confused by semantics. Essentially the liberal position - which is being promoted by politically correct marxist dogma, is debasing the value of life by reducing it to yet another commodity. Remember the morality of Western society has been diluted by salami slices, this is just another slice of the old sausage.

[Jez North]

Originally Posted by Darius Appleby

Some Australians intent on getting the poison to kill themselves quickly and surely have to travel to Mexico to buy the drug where it is legal.

After returning home they decide when to do it and are dead within a minute of drinking the small vial of poison. It is called Nembutal.

http://www.lifenews.com/2008/05/21/bio-2453/

So when are you next going to Mexico then?

[Bev]

A DESPERATELY ill man will be shown on TV choking and begging for water before he dies in a suicide clinic.

The harrowing scenes to be screened by BBC2 on Monday are set to spark outrage.

Millionaire hotelier Peter Smedley, 71, was filmed swallowing a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal - helped down with a praline chocolate.

He gasps for breath. Within a minute his face turns red and he chokes as he pleads for water.

The documentary Choosing To Die shows an "escort" at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland holding on to Peter as he convulses on a sofa.

His wife of 40 years, Christine, 60, holds his shaking hand.

The staff member tells the camera: "He is losing consciousness, very soon the breathing will stop and then the heart."

After motor neurone disease sufferer Peter dies the Dignitas worker tells Christine she can cry and "let it all out".

Author Sir Terry Pratchett, who made the programme, says to a background of haunting pipe music: "This has been a happy event.

"He died peacefully, more or less in the arms of his wife, quietly."

Sir Terry, an Alzheimer's sufferer and supporter of euthanasia, tells clinic staff he was "impressed".

The camera cuts to snow falling outside the corrugated iron Dignitas house on an industrial estate.

But campaigners Care Not Killing attacked the BBC for its "one-sided" programme.

Multiple sclerosis sufferer Geoff Morris, 58, said after seeing a preview: "Snowfall, music, all it needed was angels to carry him away to the pearly gates.

"It was biased and there was no argument against euthanasia."


Peter, of the Smedley canned foods family, is shown earlier at his £3million Guernsey mansion.

He tells Sir Terry: "My condition has deteriorated to the point where I need to go fairly shortly."

The programme also follows multiple sclerosis sufferer Andrew Colgan, 42, to Dignitas - which has helped 1,100 people to die in 12 years.

Andrew says: "Most mornings I get out of bed by falling then have to crawl from room to room. I don't want to live the life I have now."

His death is not shown. But when the time comes Sir Terry is seen drinking whisky and listening to Elgar's Nimrod.

BBC Knowledge controller Emma Swain said: "I am delighted that we have ended up commissioning such a really good film."

Asked about Peter's death, she said: "It would have been a disservice to not include it."

Read more: h t t p://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3631980/BBC-suicide-documentary-Choosing-To-Die-sparks-debate.html


They're leading up to something, I'm telling you.

[Bev]

The organs of people killed by euthanasia in Belgium are being harvested for transplant surgery, a report revealed yesterday.

A quarter of all lung transplants in Belgium are from people killed by lethal injection.

The study, led by Dirk van Raemdonck a surgeon from Leuven, found doctors preferred lungs taken from those who die through euthanasia as they are in a far superior condition to those from people killed in accidents.

The paper showed about 23.5 per cent of lung transplant donors and 2.8 per cent of heart transplant donors are killed by euthanasia.

Mr Van Raemdonck insisted doctors were acting within Belgian guidelines on euthanasia, which was legalised in 2002.

All of the donors had given their consent.

The report showed ‘donors were admitted to hospital a few hours before the planned euthanasia procedure’.

They were given the lethal injection, died and then used for organ retrieval.

The paper revealed Eurotransplant, a coordination group for transplants in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia, is devising protocols for ‘organ donation and transplantation after euthanasia’.

Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, an umbrella group of more than 50 British medical, disability and religious charities opposed to euthanasia, said he was shocked by the report.

‘I was amazed at how nonchalantly the issue was dealt with as if killing patients and then harvesting their organs was the most natural thing in the world,’ he said.


‘Given that half of all euthanasia cases in Belgium are involuntary it must be only a matter of time before the organs are taken from patients who are euthanised without their consent.

‘The matter of fact way the retrieval process is described in the paper is particularly chilling and shows the degree of collaboration that is necessary between the euthanasia team and the transplant surgeons - prep them for theatre next to the operating room, then kill them and wheel them in for organ retrieval. All in a day’s work in Brave New Belgium.’

He added: ‘Doctors there now do things that those in most doctors in other countries would find absolutely horrific.’

The report comes just a year after researchers found a high proportion of deaths classified as euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not requested their lives to be ended by a doctor.

A fifth of nurses interviewed by researchers from the Canadian Medical Association Journal admitted that they had been involved in the euthanasia of a patient - but also found that nearly half of these – 120 of 248 - admitted to particpating in ‘terminations without request or consent’.

Belgium became the second in the world after the Netherlands to legalise euthanasia since the fall of Nazi Germany. Euthanasia now accounts for two per cent of all deaths in the country.

Read more: h t t p://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003280/Organs-people-killed-euthanasia-harvested-transplant-surgery-Belgium.html


I think this story has definitely tipped me against euthanasia. It's not hard to imagine the possible abuse of this.

[Jez North]

The whole organ donation thing is revolting. The doctors are like vultures and with euthanasia, the doctors will be pushing for depressed but physically healthy people to be euthanized with the ulterior motive of collecting their organs.

[Bev]

A man who died from a terminal illness has been mummified like an Egyptian pharaoh for a Channel 4 show.

The broadcaster looks set to find itself at the centre of another taste row after agreeing to air the macabre documentary, Mummifying Alan.

Sources say the dead man, from the West Country, had a keen interest in preservation techniques used at the time of Tutankhamun.

He is not expected to be identified until next week when his family will explain why he agreed to be part of the show.

The programme will make television history when it airs on Monday, October 24, as a scientific embalming experiment is unprecedented.

A team of pioneering scientists were brought together to perform the little-known technique used by the ancient embalmers at one of the UK’s leading pathology laboratories.

It is understood the man’s body remained in excellent condition when it was examined months after the experiment.

EGYPTIANS BELIEVED MUMMIFICATION WAS CRUCIAL FOR AFTERLIFE

Ancient Egyptians believed the preservation of the body after death was essential because it would be needed for the journey to the afterlife.

This led to a lengthy and complex mummification process carried out by priests.

The best literary account of the process comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. He recorded that the process took 70 days.

The earliest known Egyptian mummy, nicknamed 'Ginger' because of its hair colour, dates back to about 3,300 BC.

The body was cut open and the internal organs, apart from the heart and kidneys, removed. These were dried and wrapped and placed in jars close to the sarcophagus (coffin).

The brain was removed by inserting a hook through the nostril and pulling it through the nose. This was then discarded.

Bags of natron salt were then placed inside and outside the body for 40 days until the body was dried out. The body was then cleansed with aromatic oils and wrapped with bandages.

Some of the bodies are so well preserved that scientists have been able to identify lung cancer thanks to CT scans of the mummies (pictured below).

Researchers concentrated on the techniques used on Tutankhamun, whose body was mummified during Egypt’s 18th Dynasty.

The Pharoah’s body was remarkably preserved more than 3,000 years later when his tomb was found in 1922.

Egyptian embalmers left few clues about their ingredients, but it is known that embalming took 70 days, with 15 days of that spent cleansing and purifying the body, 40 days spent drying it and 15 days spent on wrapping, bandaging and art work.

The Egyptians were able to ‘mummify’ bodies for longer than any other civilisation, and are believed to have used resins found only in Burma – more than 4,000 miles from Egypt.

In recent years, chemical analysis of a shrine from the 18th Dynasty by German scientists found that the body had been preserved with cedar wood extract.

Ancient Egyptians believed the preservation of the body after death was essential because it would be needed for the journey to the afterlife.

A Channel 4 spokesman said: ‘Using a secret and complex blend of ingredients and processes, embalmers managed to stop decomposition almost entirely.’

In 2010, Channel 4 stoked controversy after advertising for a terminally-ill volunteer to take part in the project.

The advert they published read: ‘We are currently keen to talk to someone who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming.’

It was said payment would not be made, but that costs would be covered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049740/Body-terminally-ill-man-mummified-Channel-4-documentary.html


How much further do they have to go before the public stop and say "hang on, this just ain't entertainment any more"? They can pass it off as educational all they like, but they ain't fooling me. This is just voyeurism. How much lower can they sink?

[Maxfield Parrish]

I think there are a lot of commercial possibilities in this.

Now, provided a given individual wants to die, because of terminal disease or terminal depression, there's no reason that such an individual can't make some last minute cash selling his death to the entertainment networks.

For instance, two men want to die. In exchange for paying each man's survivors a half million dollars, both men can then be placed inside a mock battlefield arena, where each makes use of various weapons in a brutal fight to the death. The victor of the contest wins an extra half a million, plus (of course) a lethal injection. Multiple contestant matches could be arranged, naturally.

[Mr Baker]

I think if someone is suffering, and that suffering is only going to get worse before eventually it kills them, and they are saying that they want to die, then there should be no law against putting them out of their misery.

I know if i had an accident and was laying there like Christopher Reeves and i could only move my eyes, and that was as good as life was ever going to be again, then i would want to be done in.

[andy]

An essential tool for any future government with a racial imperative.

[Bev]

Originally Posted by Mr Baker

I think if someone is suffering, and that suffering is only going to get worse before eventually it kills them, and they are saying that they want to die, then there should be no law against putting them out of their misery.

I know if i had an accident and was laying there like Christopher Reeves and i could only move my eyes, and that was as good as life was ever going to be again, then i would want to be done in.

Provided the person has, over a period of at least three months, made it absolutely clear beyond all doubt to at least two independent psychiatrists who do not have a vested interest and, more importantly, the government is kept well and truly out of establishing any criteria or indeed having anything whatsoever to do with it, I think that's how I feel.

I don't think the govt. should be involved at all in this decision. It should be down to doctors, shrinks, etc. NOT ministers with a vested interest in seeing pensioners vanish after they have had ten years worth of pension, or seeing such as cancer patients give up their expensive treatments and end it all with one cheap pill. There's so many variables to be considered.

If the govt. get their beaks into any part of the process, it won't be long before you get moron MPs saying things like:

Originally Posted by andy

An essential tool for any future government with a racial imperative.

which is clearly outrageous and well beyond the scope of any government, outside of the death penalty debate.

[Gerry Fable]

Originally Posted by Mr Baker

I think if someone is suffering, and that suffering is only going to get worse before eventually it kills them, and they are saying that they want to die, then there should be no law against putting them out of their misery.

I know if i had an accident and was laying there like Christopher Reeves and i could only move my eyes, and that was as good as life was ever going to be again, then i would want to be done in.

Make any terminally ill person listen to some Vogon poetry. That will quickly kill them off. Alternatively, make them listen to the Vogon's Earth representative, Andy, of VNNUK. His inane and incomprehensible rantings are just as effective, if not better (or should that be worse) than Vogon poetry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDVn5DFyqjc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDVn5DFyqjc&feature=related