The aim of ALERT is to warn people of the dangers of any type of euthanasia legislation and pro-death initiatives. These include the promotion of Living Wills and Advance Directives, which create a climate for the acceptance of euthanasia.

ALERT was founded in December 1991 to provide well-documented information on these and related issues, and to defend the lives and rights of the medically vulnerable, recognising that all human beings are of equal value.

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By Hilary White

July 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A British "end of life" care protocol approved for use by the National Health Service (NHS), has created a systematic, and legal, method of euthanising elderly and disabled patients, even while "mercy killing" remains officially illegal, says a prominent expert in elder care. The "Liverpool Care Pathway" will be used to eliminate patients deemed to be "blocking beds" in the increasingly financially strapped public health system.

For years, Dr. Adrian Treloar, a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Greenwich Hospital and Guys', King's and St. Thomas's Hospitals in London, has been sounding the warning that the NHS has an unofficial system in place to authorise the killing of vulnerable disabled patients with an unwritten policy of "involuntary euthanasia" by deep sedation and dehydration.

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From LifeSiteNews.com

By Hilary White

Deemed "due to die" by doctors in February, Ellen Westwood is now home and recovering.
 

BIRMINGHAM, UK, July 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  "Ellen Westwood was due to die in February but her family's Catholic and for them, life is sacred." So begins the television coverage by the BBC of a battle by a Birmingham family to prevent the NHS from dehydrating their mother to death.

According to the BBC's report, doctors decided on a Friday in February that Mrs. Westwood was "due to die" by the following Monday, but the family, with the intervention of their priest, fought the order to remove the woman's hydration.

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From Wesley J. Smith, 19 June 2008.

Good news and bad news. An Australian jury has convicted two women who killed an Alzheimer's patient. From the story:

The Sydney jury found Shirley Justins guilty of manslaughter and Caren Jenning guilty of being an accessary to manslaughter for the euthanasia drug death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie...Justins pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting suicide early in the trial, and said Wylie was desperate to die before his dementia got worse. Jenning also told the jury she was motivated by mercy in travelling to Mexico to obtain the Nembutal for Wylie, who was one of her oldest friends.

Normally, such a defense melts hearts and juries--caught up in the "quality of life" ethos of our age--often will not convict. And that brings us to the bad news:

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From Wesley J. Smith, 13 June 2008

Assisted suicide advocates pushing Washington's I 1000 are resorting to coercion to pressure the media into using their advocacy phrases when describing the pro-assisted suicide initiative. From the Eye on Olympia blog :

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Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2008

By Melanie McDonagh

For someone contemplating death, Debbie Purdey seems radiantly alive. She is the multiple sclerosis sufferer who was allowed a judicial review this week to clarify what would happen if she were to travel to a Swiss or Belgian euthanasia clinic to end her life.

She wants to make sure that her husband, Omar, would not be prosecuted if he accompanied her. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, has refused to publicise the official policy on assisted suicide. However, according to the pro-euthanasia organisation Dignity in Dying, which is backing her case, 100 Britons have travelled to suicide clinics abroad since 1992 - and none of their relatives has been prosecuted.

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It seems compassionate to support a woman dying of a progressive illness who doesn't want to leave it too late to commit suicide. In fact, it is compassionate to no-one but ourselves to promote her death instead of the good care which helpless people deserve. We are not really doing ourselves a kindness, either, by deciding that a human life has no value. If Debbie Purdy, and others like her, can be put on the list of people society can do without, so can we all.

From the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide comes a special report on 10 years under Oregon's assisted-suicide law.

By. Wesley J. Smith

I have reported on the Canadian futile care lawsuit involving Samuel Golubchuck here at SHS previously. For those who may not recall, Golubchuck is a terminally ill elderly patient being treated in a Winnipeg hospital's ICU. Doctors want to refuse life-sustaining treatment. The family--citing religious reasons (they are Orthodox Jews) and believing that Mr. Golubchuck would want treatment to continue--sued and won a temporary injunction requiring his life to be maintained.

Now, the doctor who wanted to impose his values on the patient and family by forcing Golubchuck off of a respirator and feeding tube has resigned rather than continue treatment. I have no trouble with that so long as there is continuity of care. But the following comment by the head of an ICU should alarm everyone. From the story:

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By Wesley J. Smith:

When a story about worrying suicide rates in Oregon crossed my computer, I bet myself that the expert being interviewed and the reporter would ignore the obvious: Oregon officially sanctions some suicides and calls them "choice" if the suicidal person has a terminal illness--even if he or she is not experiencing significant symptoms--and moreover, permits doctors to intentionally assist in the self destruction. Needless to say, I was right. From the story:

Suicide is one of our more enduring public health problems. Because it accounts for only 1.3 percent of deaths, it still is often looked on as a rare problem. But there were nearly 33,000 suicides in 2005. More people kill themselves than are killed by others.

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