The Need For Better Education About Palliative Sedation

Palliative sedation is distinct from euthanasia because the intent is not to cause death, but to provide palliation until natural death occurs.

Palliative sedation a 'peaceful way to die'

Within 10 minutes of having her first dose of sedative, Col Pieper's terminally-ill mother drifts to sleep.

A medication pump is set up to continuously give her the sedative midazolam to ensure she stays asleep until she dies.

Three and a half days later, she dies peacefully, as she had chosen.

Pieper, a West Coast-based registered nurse, says her mother had originally wanted to be euthanised, but switched her thinking only weeks from death once she learned about palliative sedation.

She could choose because she lived in the Netherlands, one of a few countries in the world to legalise euthanasia. more

Confusing End Of Life Issues Is No Help At All

This is a very confusing report – I’m not aware of anyone who opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia suggesting that palliative care and palliative sedation are “euthanasia.” If there are people who are making such charges, they are pretty ignorant of the issues they’re talking about.

End-of-life care: Pain control carries risk of being called a killer

Three decades after hospice emerged as the standard of care for terminally ill patients, the end-of-life treatments that palliative medicine physicians provide are frequently referred to as murder, euthanasia and killing.

More than half of hospice and palliative medicine physicians say patients, family members and even other health professionals have used those terms to describe care they recommended or implemented within the last five years, according to a nationwide survey of 663 palliative care doctors in the March Journal of Palliative Medicine. more

Empirical Answer To The Pain Argument: Good Pain Management, Not Death

We have to keep repeating, and repeating, and repeating: Every time the pro-deathers shriek that we need medicalized killing because people are in unbearable pain, we need to counter with a very simple empirical fact: In almost every case, people are suffering because of POOR PAIN MANAGEMENT and a lack of POOR PALLIATIVE CARE.

Euthanasia pushes past pain barrier

WHEN David Scott Mathers escaped a jail sentence for suffocating his chronically ill partner, much was made of her pain. Eva Griffith had wanted to die and her considerable pain was referred to 16 times last week in Justice Peter Hall's judgment, which concluded the manslaughter to which Mathers had pleaded guilty was ''a selfless act born out of the love the offender held for her''.

In Australia it is often assumed pain would be the main reason for voluntary euthanasia, or assisted suicide, yet evidence from the US suggests Griffith's circumstances were unusual. more

Pro-Deather Old Lies In Tasmania

Ya know, I’m getting really, REALLY tired of the “pain and suffering” pro-deather point. If people die in unbearable pain and suffering, it’s because their doltish doctors are pretty clueless, usually, about palliative care and advanced pain management. They trot this argument out because the average reader, uninformed, swallows the lie hook, line, and death clinic.

Euthanasia Bill given support

TASMANIANS deserve the right to die with dignity, says a national euthanasia advocate.

YourLastRight chairman Neil Francis arrived in Tasmania yesterday in a bid to rally support for Tasmania's Dying With Dignity Bill, which is currently subject to public consultation.

Mr Francis said passing the legislation could give terminally ill Tasmanians the option to die without pain and suffering. more

UK Nurses Back Off Pain Meds = Ignorance Of Palliative Care

Let’s see how long it takes the pro-deathers to take this information and morph it into another rationale for legalizing assisted suicide. Basically, the piece reports a survey of UK nurses who apparently go easy on pain meds because they fear being accused of assisted suicide if the patient dies from the meds. Well, the glaring point here is that these nurses appear to be so poorly trained that they haven’t a clue about the differences between involuntary euthanasia and palliative sedation. Another fine flub by the UK’s National Health Service.

Dying patients refused pain-relief because nurses fear prosecution for assisted suicide

Dying patients are being refused pain-relief because nurses fear they will be prosecuted for assisted suicide, a poll has found.

More than one in 10 nurses say they have held back treatment such as morphine on terminally-ill cancer sufferers in case they are implicated with hastening their death.

Many admit they are leaving their patients in agony but fear they will be charged with giving an overdose if medical records are later scrutinised. more