Spanish Bishop Right About What Constitutes Euthanasia

The good Spanish bishop is right, of course. When you remove food and water from a comatose patient, you are, in fact, committing euthanasia. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Bishop describes Spanish family's decision as act of euthanasia

Huelva, Spain, Aug 30, 2011 / 05:22 pm (CNA).- The Bishop of Huelva, Spain is declaring the decision to remove food and water from a 90-year-old comatose woman an act of euthanasia. more

CNN To Examine Issue Of Assisted Suicide

The pro-death agenda continues to "go legit" and is now infiltrating the mainstream US media. Hence this announcement that CNN will look at the issue this fall. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a balanced report!!

Choosing death can be like a 'birth,' advocates say

Editor's note: Coming this fall on CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes an in-depth look at assisted suicide and families ripped apart by the issue. more

Brit Health Expert Calls For Assisted Suicide Legislation

Here's another high-level Brit health expert calling for the legalization of assisted suicide and/or euthanasia. Prediction: Assisted suicide, if not euthanasia, will become legal in the UK in the next several years.

British health expert backs legalisation of assisted suicide

Terminally ill patients who want to commit suicide should be able to receive medical help to die, a British government adviser on care for the elderly has said.
Martin Green, a social care expert for the Department of Health, said patients who were too frail to take their own lives were being denied "choice" and "autonomy" because assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. more

NZ Media Pro-Deather Spin

Here's the media (in this case in New Zealand) in full pro-deather cry. A completely one-sided view presented as a balanced info piece. Shameful.

Couple's plea: allow 'exit plans'

The deaths of elderly Nelson couple Bob and Betty Jackson early this month, in what police say was a suicide and an assisted suicide, brought new attention to the question of ending life, and a fresh focus on the Nelson chapter of the voluntary euthanasia group Exit International. It also prompted a rural Nelson couple to come forward with their story. They talked to Bill Moore on Thursday. more

Should Assisted Living Become Assisted Dying?

The New York Times here jumps on the latest darling pro-deather issue: Voluntary ceasing to eat and drink as a way to die. Interesting angle: Should this be allowed in an assisted "living" facility? In this case, the facility (rightly, I think) reported the couples' actions as a kind of suicide-in-progress. Predictably, the story is very sympathetic to the couple who chose to die.

Deciding to Die, Then Shown the Door

Armond and Dorothy Rudolph had talked about their plans for more than a decade. They had a mutual horror of a lingering decline in their final years. They’d joined an organization that supports the right to end life when illness or pain becomes overwhelming; they’d attended meetings and given both their children literature on the subject. They’d drafted advance directives.
“Their great fear was that they’d end up in a nursing home,” their son, Neil Rudolph, told me. “That was hell for them, to have people waiting on them, to have no independence.” more

Obvious: People Who Suffer More Likely To Kill Themselves

Here's a study that concludes the bleeding obvious: People with severe medical and other disabilities are more likely to kill themselves. That's because these poor people don’t see any alternative to suffering - can we say better medical, psychological, and social care, people?

New study reveals link between suicide and chronic and terminal illness

The suffering of people whose chronic and terminal illnesses is so severe that they take their own lives has been laid bare in a new report which found that they account for almost one in 10 suicide cases seen by Norfolk’s coroner. more

Belgium: Medicalized Killings Increase Substantially

If you legalize it, they will die. Euthanasia is increasing exponentially in Belgium. I wish I could say I'm shocked . . .

Rise in assisted deaths

"Growing trend for euthanasia," headlines the front page of Le Soir. "Since 2002, and the implementation of a law that partially depenalises the practice, there have never been more cases of euthanasia," explains the Belgian daily, which reports on the latest figures from the federal monitoring agency. more

Dutch Teacup Storm: Priest Refuses To Bury Euthanized Man

Here's much ado about nothing. A Dutch priest refuses funeral mass to a euthanized man. This is the policy of the Roman Catholic Church and the priest is merely abiding by the rules of his church. Media is trying to spin it as somehow more than a tangential part of the assisted sucide/euthanasia debate.

Dutch priest refuses euthanasia

The small Dutch town of Liempde is at the centre of an outcry after a Catholic priest refused to say a funeral mass for a man who had opted for euthanasia. more

UK: Some Coroners Ignore Assisted Suicides

Hardly surprising. By law doctors are supposed to report when a death is by assisted suicide, but it seems that if it's a suicide due to some disabling condition, at least some coroners turn a blind eye.

Coroners turn blind eye to assisted suicides, report claims

CORONERS turn a blind eye to assisted suicides – with “devastating” consequences, a study claimed yesterday. more

US Pro-Deathers Think Up Novel Ways To Advance Killing

US pro-deathers continue to find novel ways to kill people. Now they're calling for people to refuse food and water as a way of dying.

US assisted suicide group opens campaign for voluntary starvation

Campaigners for voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide seem to be trying to make them more acceptable by blurring the moral boundaries. In the Netherland, terminal sedation – death by starvation under heavy sedation – is an increasingly popular with doctors. Now Compassion & Choices, an American lobby group, has launched a public relations campaign for VSED, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. more

More UK Pro-Death Poster People

Here's another poster-person case for assisted sucide. All these stories eventually shape public opinion to believe that if you’re/sick/despondent/old/disabled you should kill yourself or have someone to do it to you.

Assisted suicide could be 'legalised' in groundbreaking case

A 46-year-old-man who wants to die after a stroke that left him almost completely paralysed is bringing a groundbreaking legal action that could effectively lead to the legalisation of assisted suicide in the UK. more

Assisting In A Suicide Punished In China

This is a rare report from China, where a man assisting in a suicide is jailed. Of curse, we only have his word that his intentions were honorable - his friend is dead, so we'll never know if there were other reasons for this death.

Farmer jailed for assisting suicide triggers controversy

Zhong Yichun, an elderly farmer from east China's Jiangxi Province, never expected that helping his friend Zeng Qingxiang to commit suicide would bring him a two-year prison sentence.
Zhong buried Zeng last October as part of an agreement they made regarding Zeng's suicide. Zeng overdosed on sleeping pills and laid in a hole in the ground; Zhong called out to him 15 minutes later to ensure that he was dead before burying him.
A police investigation showed that Zeng suffered from a mental illness and had begged Zhong to help him commit suicide several times. more

French Death Doctor Receives Support

The French doctor who is now admitting to killing his patients (see below) is receiving quite a bit of support. Are we headed toward a new overall role for all doctors - to kill their patients?

Deaths reignite euthanasia debate

THE DEBATE on euthanasia in France has been reignited after a hospital doctor was charged with helping four elderly patients die. more

French Doctor Admits To Killing Patients

This is how it goes - now doctors are beginning to come out of the woodwork expressing pride for killing their patients, in this case in France.

Doctor ‘does not regret actions’

Paris - A French emergency doctor has admitted to killing elderly sick patients with lethal injections, in apparent cases of euthanasia, French media reported Saturday. more

Canada Safe From Legalized Killing - For Now

Canada is hopefully safe for now given the defeat of an assisted suicide bill last year. Remember, however, that the pro-deathers will be back as soon as they can.

Euthanasia issue won't be reopened, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says

Federal Justice Minister comments on case of B.C. woman seeking right to commit suicide

Canada's Justice Minister says the Conservative government won't be revisiting the question of assisted suicide despite a B.C. Supreme Court ruling to expedite a case on the matter. more

Pro-Deathers Take Aim At Massachusetts

Remember, the pro-deathers never give up. They're now banging the drum to legaize assisted suicide in Massachusetts.

Drive begins to put assisted suicide law on ballot next year

Voters may be asked to determine the fate of a proposal permitting dying patients to take life- ending drugs, a wrenching issue that backers say is a matter of dignity for the terminally ill but that opponents have warned is fraught with the potential for error.

Backers of assisted suicide for certain terminally ill patients filed paperwork yesterday with Attorney General Martha Coakley to begin the process of bringing their plan, dubbed the Death With Dignity Act, to the 2012 ballot. more

Aussie Dr. Death Pushes The Envelope - Again

Aussie Dr. Death Philip Nitschke is pushing the envelope again - trying to find ways to legally import Nembutal for assisted killing into Australia.

Nitschke announces to the media his latest scheme to help more Australians kill themselves

. . . Don Flounders, 81, suffered from mesothelioma, which is an incurable form of lung cancer and his 88-year-old wife Iris, who was not suffering from a terminal illness, had decided she did not want to live without him.

The couple made no secret of their intention to die together and travelled to Mexico in 2008 to buy the veterinary drug Nembutal which they claimed they needed for a ‘controlled death’.

The couple killed themselves after receiving advice from Philip Nitschke, a dangerous self-publicist and extremist who is well known for promoting suicide amongst elderly people.
Nitschke is now claiming that he has found a legal loophole, to import nembutal into Australia where is planning to help six other people to kill themselves.

He claims to have discovered that it can be imported legally, if a doctor applies to the Therapeutic Goods Administration with an acceptable medical reason.
‘I’ll be quite open about what I’m doing. There is provision in the legislation for this import process,’ Nitschke said. more

2/3 Of Dutch Doctors Support Euthanasia?

OK, so it looks like about one third of doctors in the Netherlands have refused to carry out euthanasia. You know what that means: two thirds are happy to kill. Frightening.

One third of doctors have refused a euthanasia request

One third of doctors have refused to carry out a euthanasia request over the past five years, according to a survey of 800 family doctors for television programme EénVandaag. more

Services For The Disabled: Yes. Assisted Suicide: Nope

Here's a good example of why services to severely disabled people should be the focus, and not about killing them off. This woman changed her mind about killing herself when she was offered appropriate therapy, which, as the story points out, is now about to be ended.

Shropshire woman 'shattered' as therapy sessions ended

A Shropshire woman who has multiple sclerosis has said group therapy sessions at a Shrewsbury hospital gave her a lifeline.
Jude Welsby was shocked when they came to an end abruptly in February 2010 after two therapists left.
She attended a meeting of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust Health Communities scrutiny meeting this week.
She wanted to know why there had been no provision for her continued therapy. more

An Antidote To Killing People With Locked-In Syndrome

Here, thank goodness, is the antidote to wanting people with locked-in syndrome dead.

No one has the right to switch off a human life... I should know: One woman's story of being locked inside her own

Can you imagine a lonelier or more frightening place to be trapped in, unable to communicate, than your own body?
These are terrifying times for anyone who cannot speak up for themselves. Whether they know it or not, they are lying prone in a world increasingly seduced by the idea that death is preferable to the life they are living.
The increasingly vocal advocates, who promote ‘assisted suicide’ for those who are too disabled to express their own feelings on the matter, cannot begin to imagine what it is like to live such a life. more

Assisted Suicide Infiltrates The Arts

So it goes - assisted suicide is now making it to the mainstream arts scene. Of course, these shows are almost all pro-death, as is the case here

True-life assisted suicide tale at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011

Having earned her third major Fringe award for last year’s forensic, verbatim one-man show Lockerbie: Unfinished Business, director Hannah Eidinow moves one step closer to her subject matter here. With An Instinct For Kindness, solo performer Chris Larner tells first-hand of accompanying his ex-wife Allyson to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to undergo an assisted suicide. more

No Longer Calling For Assisted Suicide - Now For "Merciful" Murder

People who think that assisted suicide/euthanasia for anyone is not a slippery slope should read this - a wife insisting she be allowed to kill her husband who has locked-in syndrome. Yes, assisted suicide is not an option (husband can't take poison offered to him by another) and the wife is giving short shrift to euthanasia, which essentially would be killing the husband by a doctor. Solution? Why murder, of course.

Stroke victim pleads for death sentence

. . . Today, Tony and Jane Nicklinson will celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. Not that Tony has remembered. "Typical bloke," Jane says, leaning over him. She could forgive him, though. The date now has a competing significance. It is also the day, last year, when Jane began her fight for the legal right to kill him. more