Germany OKs Killer Doctors

Yes, folks, just like WWII, Germany is allowing doctors to kill their patients. Shameful.

German doctors can assist terminally ill

An administrative court in Berlin has given German doctors the power to use their own judgment in cases involving terminally ill patients who want to die.

The court lifted a physician's association ban on assisted suicide that included fines of up to $65,722 on doctors who provided their patients with enough drugs to kill themselves, The Local reported Wednesday. more

The Needed Counter To UK Push For Assisted Suicide & Euthanasia

Here’s a good piece from the UK opposing the seemingly unstoppable tidal wave for assisted sucide and euthanasia there.

Assisted Suicide Would 'Contaminate The Medical Profession'

Allowing doctors to assist terminally ill patients to commit suicide would "contaminate the medical profession", campaigners against changing the law have warned.

Robert Preston, the director of the campaign group Living and Dying Well, which argues against legalising the practice, said assisted dying was a euphemism for allowing doctors to kill people.

Speaking at a debate at the Law Society in London on Tuesday, he said most medical professionals did not want to be given responsibility for ending someone's life. more

The Dutch: Pro-Death Energizer Bunnies

So nice to know that death doctors in the Netherlands are still spinning how great it is to have legal medicalized killing as part of everyday life. Prediction: The Dutch will continue to find more novel ways of killing more and more of their citizens.

Push for the Right to Die Grows in the Netherlands

It was 1989, and Dr. Petra de Jong, a Dutch pulmonologist, was asked for help by a terminally ill patient, a man in great pain with a large cancerous tumor in his trachea. He wanted to end his life.

She gave the man pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate — but not enough. It took him nine hours to die.

“I realize now that I did things wrong,” Dr. de Jong, 58, said in an interview in her office here. “Today you can Google it, but we didn’t know.”

Her warm and sincere manner belies, or perhaps attests to, her calling. The man was the first of 16 patients whom Dr. de Jong, now the head of the euthanasia advocacy group Right to Die-NL, has helped to achieve what she calls “a dignified death.”

Founded in 1973, Right to Die-NL has been at the forefront of the movement to make euthanasia widely available in the Netherlands, even as the practice remains highly controversial elsewhere. Polls find that an overwhelming majority of the Dutch believe euthanasia should be available to suffering patients who want it, and thousands formally request euthanasia every year. more

UK Call For Better Palliative Care

Here’s a very poignant story from the UK about a father’s slide into Alzheimer’s disease, and the urgent need for good palliative care.

How could any carer scold an old man just for doing up his buttons wrongly? Arlene Phillips recalls her father's death from dementia

Alzheimer's reduced my father Abraham, an intelligent, smart and self-sufficient man, to a pitiful shell of a human being.

Almost the last sentence he ever articulated was: ‘I’ve lived my life now. I just want to curl up in the woods and go to sleep.’ This was how he expressed his  frustration and desolation with a life that, in the end, held no purpose.

He no longer recognised my sister and me. Simple words eluded him. Although he had always loved to read, the written word became a mystery to him. All that remained of his humanity, in truth, was his stubbornly beating heart.

It was sorrowful that my sister and I should have seen him so reduced — to the extent that I now think Dignitas would have been the right option for him. It sounds drastic, but it would have spared him that final slide into emptiness and bewilderment. more

Russian Take On The Culture Of death

Here’s a brief Russian take on the West’s pro-death culture.

Euthanasia: a right to die

Ten years ago The Netherlands legalized active euthanasia, becoming the world’s first country to do so. But debates continue to run deep on the moral and ethical aspects of helping people end their lives even they suffer from incurable illnesses.

Euthanasia is normally divided into passive and active, the former meaning that a patient completely rejects treatment, which is not prohibited by law except in a handful of countries with politicians, medics and rights defenders unanimous in their view that any person is free to decide whether or not to accept treatment or medication. As for active euthanasia, it is only allowed in The Netherlands, Belgium and two U.S. states – Oregon and California. more