NEW! Swiss Group Doing Assisted Suicides Wants to Let Elderly be Killed, Too

State Denies Cancer Treatment, Offers Suicide Instead

Woman's Waking after Brain Death Raises Many Questions about Organ Donation: Had No Detectable Brain Waves for More Than 17 Hours

CA State Bill Mandates Physicians tell Patients about Assisted Suicide

Belgian Legislators Again Seek to Legalize Euthanasia for the Unconscious and Children

Number of Netherlands Euthanasia Cases Increases, Not All Deaths Included

Switzerland Euthanasia Center Kills Nearly 900 Since Opening, More Brits

Canadian Doctors Do Not Have the Right to Remove Life-Sustaining Treatment Against the Wishes of the Patient

Renowned Oncologist Changes Position on Euthanasia After Contracting Cancer

NEW!  Arizona Law Forbids Easy Withdrawal of Food and Fluids from Patients

NEW! Janet Rivera, California's Terri Schiavo, Allowed to Receive Food and Water

NEW!  Man With ALS Fights Assisted Suicide Even as He Approaches Death...

ASSISTED SUICIDE SWISS GROUP WANTS TO LET ELDERLY BE KILLED, TOO. Exit International in Switzerland that facilities assisted suicides is no longer reserving them for the terminally ill.

At its annual conference and general membership meeting, the organization overwhelmingly adopted a resolution to that effect. The resolution requires the organization at its 2009 meeting to take a vote on whether their statutes shall be amended to add "being tired of old-age" to the current eligibility criteria for killing people via assisted suicide.

American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith isn't surprised. "Once one accepts the premise that suicide is an acceptable answer to the problems of human suffering and ennui, there are no boundaries that will hold for long," he said. "This isn't an outrider."

Back in 2001, the Dutch Minster of Health suggested that elderly people who are tired of life be given suicide pills--right after her country formally legalized euthanasia. "I am not against it, as long as it can be carefully enough regulated so that it only concerns very old people who have had enough of living," Els Borst told the NRC Handelsblad newspaper on Saturday. [4August08, Geneva, Switzerland, LifeNews.com]

OREGON STATE OFFICIALS DENY CANCER TREATMENT, OFFER SUICIDE INSTEAD. State officials have offered a lung cancer patient the option of having the Oregon Health Plan, set up in 1994 to ration health care, pay for an assisted suicide but not for the chemotherapy prescribed by her physician.

The story appears to be a happy ending for Barbara Wagner, who has been notified by a drug manufacturer that it will provide the expensive medication, estimated to cost $4,000 a month, for the first year and then allow her to apply for further treatment, according to a report in the Eugene Register-Guard.

But the word from the state was coverage for palliative care, which would include the state's assisted suicide program, would be allowed but not coverage for the cancer treatment drugs.

"To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel," Wagner told the newspaper. "I get angry. Who do they think they are?"

She said she was devastated when the state health program refused coverage for Tarceva, the drug her doctor ordered for treatment of her lung cancer.

The refusal came in an unsigned letter from LIPA, the company that runs the state program in that part of Oregon.

"We had no intent to upset her, but we do need to point out the options available to her under the Oregon Health Plan," Dr. John Sattenspiel, senior medical director for LIPA, told the newspaper.

"I understand the way it was interpreted. I'm not sure how we can lift that. The reality is, at some level (doctor-assisted suicide) could be considered as a palliative or comfort care measure."

The 64-year-old Wagner lives in a low-income apartment in Springfield with her dog, the newspaper said.

State officials say the Oregon Health Plan prioritizes treatments, with diagnoses and ailments deemed the most important, such as pregnancy, childbirth and preventive care for children at the top of the list. Other treatments rank below, officials said.

"We can't cover everything for everyone," Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesman for the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, told the paper. "Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."

He said many cancer treatments are a high priority, but others reflect the "desire on the part of the framers of this list to not cover treatments that are futile."

Wagner, however, is ending up with the treatment needed when her lung cancer, in remission for two years, returned.

She reported a representative for the pharmaceutical company called and notified her the drug would be provided for at least the first year.

"We have been warning for years that this was a possibility in Oregon," said the "Bioethics Pundit" on the Bioethics blog. "Medicaid is rationed, meaning that some treatments are not covered. But assisted suicide is always covered."

"This isn't the first time this has happened either," the blogger wrote. "A few years ago a patient who needed a double organ transplant was denied the treatment but would have been eligible for state-financed assisted suicide.

But not to worry.

Just keep repeating the mantra: There are no abuses with Oregon's assisted suicide law. There are no abuses. There are no abuses!

[20June08, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=67565
World Net Daily]

WOMAN'S WAKING AFTER BRAIN DEATH RAISES MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ORGAN DONATION: HAD NO DETECTABLE BRAIN WAVES FOR OVER 17 HOURS. A Virginia family was shocked but relieved when their mother, Val Thomas, woke up after doctors said she was dead.

Mrs. Thomas, 59, while being kept breathing artificially, had no detectable brain waves for more than 17 hours.

The family was discussing organ donation options for their mother when she suddenly woke up and started speaking to nurses.

Ethicists have strongly criticised developments in organ donation criteria that would have made Mrs. Thomas a candidate for having her organs removed before she woke up. [http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052709.html
Life Site News; ALL Pro-Life Today, 28May08]

NUMBER OF NETHERLANDS EUTHANASIA CASES INCREASES, AND ALL DEATHS ARE NOT INCLUDED. The official number of euthanasia cases in the Netherlands is on the rise, but not all cases of killing patients are included.

The official report mentions only three cases involving physicians who didn't follow the proper protocols when killing the patient. The ANP news service indicated the number of euthanasia cases rose to 2,120 last year from 1,923 in 2006.

In three instances, the regional committees responsible for ensuring the criteria for legal euthanasia are followed indicated doctors had not adhered to the law. The report indicated the committees forwarded information about the cases to the justice department and health inspectors.

Though the numbers show more patients losing their lives, noted American bioethics author and attorney Wesley Smith says the voluntary euthanasia figures don't include all cases of euthanasia or assisted suicide.

He said these "legalized murders do not include the about 900 'termination without request or consent' non-voluntary euthanasia deaths that Dutch studies have reported doctors commit each year." [1May08, LifeNews.com, Amsterdam, Netherlands]

SWITZERLAND EUTHANASIA CENTER KILLS NEARLY 900 SINCE OPENING, MORE BRITS.  The Switzerland-based Dignitas euthanasia center released figures Wednesday about the people it has killed since opening. Dignitas says more people than ever are opting to have the staff take their lives and that the number of Britons going there to die is on the rise.

UK residents are now in the top three nationalities of the people who go to the euthanasia center.

The euthanasia center has killed 868 in assisted suicides since it began and 335 people in the last two years alone. About 85 percent of the people who die there are foreign nationals with the rest hailing from Switzerland.

Dignitas director Ludwig Minelli told The Sun newspaper that half of the people who die there are German and British and French residents account for most of the rest.

He claimed the euthanasia center uses a rigorous process to weed out potential applicants and claims most people who apply for an assisted suicide never undergo one.

"For every 100 applicants, only 12 are given the go-ahead by us. The rest either choose to wait or never get in touch again. People are eased knowing there is an emergency exit," he claimed.

However, the euthanasia group's activity has not been without controversy.

In January 2007, it came under fire after a German woman apparently suffered tremendous pain when she died at one of its facilities. A 43-year-old women screamed in pain for over four minutes before her death.

Friends who accompanied her to her death told the newspaper the woman cried out, "I'm burning, I'm burning" and then fell into a coma. She was reportedly comatose for 38 minutes before finally succumbing to the drug.

Meanwhile, neighbors who live next-door to the Dignitas center on the outskirts of Zurich have complained about the frequency of dead bodies taken from the apartment where the assisted suicides take place. Dignitas removes the corpses from the apartment via a communal lift that other residents use as well.

Dignitas started doing assisted suicides in the Zurich flat eight years ago.

Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, has previously said Dignitas is doing a disservice to the disabled and elderly.

"Dignitas admits to having assisted the suicides of many people who were not terminally ill. As Minelli succinctly put it, 'We never say no,'" Smith explained.

"Minelli's position has a large constituency among euthanasia believers. Indeed, over the years, the movement has left many telltale signs that assisted suicide is not intended ultimately to be restricted to the imminently dying," he said.

Smith worries that, should Dignitas take its assisted suicide centers worldwide that a right to die will turn into a duty to die.

"Once assisted suicide is accepted in law and culture, the premises of radical autonomy and allowing killing to alleviate human suffering would conjoin, unleashing the irresistible power of logic that would push us inexorably toward the humanist nirvana of death on demand," Smith says. [28May08, Ertelt, Zurich, Switzerland, LifeNews.com]

ASSISTED SUICIDE BILL PASSES CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY. An assisted-suicide bill that allows doctors and nurses to suggest death by unconscious dehydration has barely passed the California State Assembly. AB 2747 would authorize total sedation without nutrition and hydration for depressed and confused patients, whether or not their natural death was imminent.

The bill would also allow family members to order the death of a mentally disabled person when a nurse opines they have less than a year to live, similar to Terry Schindler Schiavo's death at the hands of her husband.

AB 2747 passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly Wednesday afternoon on a 41-32 vote, a one-vote margin of victory in the 80-member lower house.

The vote was virtually party line, Democrats for, Republicans against. AB 2747 is authored by the same Democrats who unsuccessfully carried physician-assisted suicide bills for the last three years. "This deceptive bill will cause death and shorten life, despite its claims," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a leading California-based pro-life, pro-family organization.

"Drying up and shriveling to death through dehydration is a fate worse than lethal injection. By transforming palliative sedation into a vehicle for assisted suicide, AB 2747 would transform doctors and nurses from healers and comforters into killers like Dr. Jack Kevorkian." [http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052901.html
Life Site News; ALL Pro-Life Today, 30May08]

By just two votes, the California State Assembly passed a bill yesterday that detractors say allows doctors to push patients toward medically assisted suicide.

The bill, AB 2747, enables doctors to provide a patient declared to have less than one year to live with a long list of end-of-life options, including a last-moments option that looks suspiciously like euthanasia.

Critics of the bill point to a provision that adds "palliative sedation" and VSED (voluntary stopping of eating and drinking) to a patient's end-of-life options, extreme measures that have been previously reserved for patients within a few hours to a few days of death.

If the bill becomes law, critics say, a doctor could pronounce a patient within a year of death, encourage him to consider complete (sometimes irreversible) sedation, then proceed with VSED until the patient, unconscious and unaware, is starved and dehydrated to death. In effect, the critics argue, this is physician-assisted suicide for anyone deemed "within a year of death."

Assembly member Patty Berg, who co-sponsored the bill, wrote in California's Capitol Weekly that AB 2747 merely "requires healthcare providers to give complete answers to their terminal patients."

The bill itself states that "lack of communication between health care providers and their terminally ill patients can cause problems" and that "those problems are complicated by social issues, such as cultural and religious pressures." Further, "a recent survey found that providers that object to certain practices are less likely than others to believe they have an obligation to present all of the options to patients and refer patients to other providers."

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a California-based pro-life group, insists, however, "This deceptive bill will cause death and shorten life, despite its claims."

Thomasson sees an imminent danger that unscrupulous or cost-driven doctors might use the bill's provisions for communication as license to tell patients their death is coming within the year and move them toward life-ending choices.

"Some people are told they have a year to live," he points out, "then go on to live healthily for 12."

He also points out that in a state in which food and hydration are considered "extraordinary measures" in living wills, patients stunned by the news they have less than a year to live may opt for choices that lead directly to their death. Depressed or confused patients might agree to the sedation, then die through VSED.

"Drying up and shriveling to death through dehydration is a fate worse than lethal injection," says Thomasson. "By transforming palliative sedation into a vehicle for assisted suicide, AB 2747 would transform doctors and nurses from healers and comforters into killers."

The bill marks the fourth time in four years that Berg has attempted to pass legislation on end-of-life circumstances. Her previous attempts were more clearly euthanasia-related, including a bill last year that would have permitted death by lethal injection.

Berg insists AB 2747 is not of the same mold: "Unlike my previous end-of-life bill," she wrote, "my new bill doesn’t give anyone any new options. …Some, however, are still fighting last year’s battle and are trying to convince the gullible that my new bill is a Trojan horse, designed somehow to legalize aid-in-dying."

Thomassom sees the value Berg's places on "knowing all the options" as misguided.

"People who are ill need support, spiritual care and counseling," he says, not dire predictions of death and options for dying. "Just as the assisted-suicide bills of the last three years have been rejected, so should the California Legislature reject AB 2747. Assisted suicide by total sedation ignores the sanctity of human life and violates life-affirming medical ethics."

Related offer:
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http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?DEPARTMENT_ID=6&SUBDEPARTMENT_ID=94&ITEM_ID=1679
[31May08, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=65651;  LifeSiteNews.com]

BELGIAN LEGISLATORS SEEK TO LEGALIZE EUTHANASIA FOR THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CHILDREN. A group of legislators in Belgium is seeking to expand the practice of euthanasia to include those who are unconscious, as well as minors, according to a recent article in the Spanish newspaper Hoy.

The initiative, spearheaded by former Senator Jean-Jacques de Gucht, was originally launched in 2004 and failed, the article states.

The new proposed legislation will allow people to create a type of "living will" that will allow doctors to euthanize them if they are unconscious and unable to give consent.

While euthanasia has been legal in Belgium 2002, the existing law has prohibited the practice under the above-mentioned circumstances.

Doctors who refuse to kill their patients under the law will be required to refer them to a doctor who is willing to do it, reports Hoy.

Related: Euthanasia Rates Escalating: Kills One a Day in Belgium, Five a Day in Netherlands
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05042202.html

250 Belgian Pharmacies Offer Euthanasia Kits
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05042809.html

BELGIUM LEGALISES EUTHANASIA
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/may/02051704.html
[29May08, MC Hoffman, Brussels, www.LifeSiteNews.com]

 

CANADIAN DOCTORS DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMOVE LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENT AGAINST THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT. Jocelyn Downie, the Canada Research Chair of Health Law and Policy said at an End-of-Life Ethics & Decision-Making conference at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg yesterday that doctors do not have the legal right to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment against a patient's wishes. 

Downie, who is Canada's foremost player in interpreting health law issues, stated that there is no legal precedent in Canada that gives doctors the authority to remove a feeding tube or issue a do-not-resuscitate order against a patient's wishes. [10June08, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061001.html
www.Life Site News]

RENOWNED ONCOLOGIST CHANGES POSITION ON EUTHANASIA AFTER CONTRACTING CANCER. The Spanish magazine Huellas has published an interview with Sylvie Menard, one of the most renowned oncologists in Europe who for many years was a supporter of euthanasia but several months ago changed her views after she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Menard told the magazine that she always believed that each person should decide his own fate, but ‘when I became ill, I changed my position radically.”

“When you get sick, death ceases to be something virtual and becomes something that is with you every day,” she said.  “So you say to yourself: ‘I am going to do everything possible to live as long as possible.”

Menard, who is married and has one son, acknowledged, “Today anything that means a new chance at life is valuable to me.”

Despite her illness, she continues as head of the Experimental Oncology Department at the Institute of Cancer in Milan. She said that those who promote euthanasia do so for two reasons: they don’t want to suffer and they don’t want to lose self-sufficiency, thus becoming a burden for others.

She agreed that people who are ill “do not want to experience pain” and that “they have a right to alleviate it”. She also emphasized that “pain therapy has advanced considerably in recent years.”

“Even if you do not have complete use of your faculties and you cannot get up because you are confined to bed, but you still have the affection of your family members, in my opinion, even in those conditions, it’s worth it to keep living,” she said. [[11 April 08, Madrid, Sylvie Menard, CNA, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12314]; Cheryl Eckstein
Compassionate Healthcare Network (CHN)
www.chninternational.com/default.html; 28Apr08, N Valko RN]

Arizona Law Forbids Easy Withdrawal of Food and Fluids from Patients
On Tuesday, the State of Arizona passed a bill known as "Jesse's Law", which will help protect incapacitated patients from being euthanized.

The new law, inspired by the ordeal of Jesse Ramirez, closed a loophole in the decision-making process for patients who are physically unable to communicate their wishes regarding medical care.

House Bill 2823 establishes a court process to obtain an emergency order to prevent a surrogate decision-maker from withdrawing the administration of food or fluid from an incapacitated patient. [http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08062609.html, www.LifeSiteNews.com;  ALL Pro-Life Today 27June08]

CA's 'TERRI SCHIAVO' ALLOWED FOOD & WATER. Twelve days after she was initially denied food and water, a California court ruled that Janet Rivera is entitled to the nutrition and hydration that a guardian revoked. Rivera is the latest disabled patient like Terri Schiavo to draw the attention of pro-life advocates because of her plight.

Rivera lost her right to food and water on July 14 when a court-appointed guardian removed her feeding tube despite her family's wishes.

The 46-year-old had a heart attack on February 2006 and she never regained consciousness. She has been on life support for two years.

Fresno County Probate Judge Debra Kazanjian, in a Wednesday hearing, called the case "truly a life-and-death situation" and ruled for Rivera's family, which is fighting to save her life.

Rivera's brother, Michael Dancoff, told the Fresno Bee newspaper he was excited to hear about the ruling.
"I'm happy they're giving her a second chance," he said. "I'm happy we'll get to prove she's not on her deathbed."

He says he believes Rivera, who doctors diagnosed as being in a so-called persistent vegetative state, is still conscious.

"She looked at me and her eyes were open," he said. "She wasn't dying. She wanted to live."

The ruling is only a temporary decision to allow Rivera to receive food and water while both sides of the debate fight next Tuesday in a full-fledged hearing to determine her fate.
[24July08, Ertelt, LifeNews.com, http://www.lifenews.com/bio2515.html]

MAN WITH ALS FIGHTS ASSISTED SUICIDE EVEN AS HE APPROACHES DEATH. John Peyton a long time volunteer and speaker for Human Life of Washington, is dying of ALS.  He has generously agreed to be interviewed in opposition to the assisted suicide initiative.  In June 2008, he was interviewed by Laura Ingraham for Fox News.  Included are two links:  a small link and full link - both go to the video on Fox. 

http://tinyurl.com/525gn9 ,  and...

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=1591890&referralPlaylistId=search|assisted%20suicide

[PharmFacts E-News Update -- 24 Jun 2008]