By Wesley J. Smith:

I have written several posts about the need to develop uniform standards of declaring death by neurological criteria--popularly known as "brain death." Now, there's some more information out about that problem. From the story:

Guidelines for determining brain death differ substantially between major U.S. hospitals, a national survey shows, and few stick to parameters established by the American Academy of Neurology.

"There are substantial differences in practice that may have consequences for the determination of death and initiation of transplant procedures," Dr. David M. Greer, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues report in the medical journal Neurology.

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The most robust opponents of assisted suicide--and the most effective in my view--are disability rights advocates. They understand well that legalizing assisted suicide is a gun aimed at their hearts. An opinion column by one Ian Mulgrew of the Vancouver Sun underscores the threat. He urges that the child murderer Robert Latimer be freed. Latimer killed his daughter Traci, because she had cerebral palsy. From the column:

Born with a severe form of cerebral palsy, his daughter Tracy was a 12-year-old who weighed barely 40 pounds, had no mobility, suffered unrelenting pain and endured five to six epileptic seizures a day. She had little more than a newborn's consciousness. Doctors at the time of her death were preparing to install a permanent feeding tube in her stomach and to remove her thigh-bone to relieve the pressure on her hip, dislocated because of the metal rods already implanted in her spine to correct the damage done by her bedridden condition...

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Like Oregon's law, the measure would allow doctors to help terminally ill end their lives

Thursday, January 10, 2008
DON COLBURN
The Oregonian Staff

Using Oregon's Death With Dignity Act as the model, a coalition led by former Gov. Booth Gardner launched a campaign Wednesday to allow Washington doctors to prescribe a lethal drug overdose to a terminally ill patient on request.

To reach the November ballot, the initiative must get about 225,000 valid signatures from Washington residents by July 3.

In 1991, Washington voters rejected a more far-reaching measure that would have permitted doctors not only to prescribe a lethal drug dose on request but also to administer the drug if the patient couldn't swallow it -- a practice some call voluntary euthanasia. The Oregon law forbids that.

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By Hilary White

LONDON, January 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Numerous prominent voices in the UK are strongly objecting to the idea, endorsed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to have every British citizen automatically regarded as an organ donor through a "presumed consent" scheme.

Brown promoted the scheme in an op ed piece this week in the Daily Telegraph. The scheme, as Brown explained, would see all British citizens being regarded as potential organ banks unless they go through an official process of opting out. Brown's suggestion follows recommendations from chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, who made the recommendation for presumed consent in his annual report last July.

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From The Times
January 15, 2008

Two thorny problems, organ donation and records of parentage, have clear solutions
Libby Purves

Naked we come into the world, naked we leave it. But in the meantime we do own our bodies. Parents don't, spouses don't, the State doesn't. From hair to toenails, these marvellous organisms are our sole inalienable property. So where state authority is concerned, lines need to be drawn carefully. Two examples lie before us right now.

The first is the Prime Minister's enthusiasm for a new law on transplant organs. It would enshrine the presumption of consent: unless you previously opted out, doctors could assume that after brain death they could use heart, kidney or whatever without consulting relatives. Since only one fifth of us are on the donor register, this would save time and lives. A BBC poll in 2005 attracted a cautious but convincing 61 per cent of public support, and several other countries do it. In Spain there is a “soft” system where relatives are asked even if the patient didn't opt out; in Austria, a “hard” system where relatives can't refuse. In the US there is “required request”, where it is illegal to turn off life-support without asking about transplantation. This prevents the loss of potential organs that occurs when nobody is brave enough to raise the subject with a distraught family.

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By Julie Grimstad
MichNews.com
Dec 17, 2007

November 30-December 1, 2007, over three hundred people from various nations met in Toronto, Ontario for a history-making event, The First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Current Issues, Future Directions. Hosted by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada (EPCC), the symposium was co-sponsored by diverse groups from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the Archdiocese of Toronto. With one thing in common—opposition to legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide—disability rights advocates, medical and legal professionals, pro-life activists, people of various religious faiths and atheists came together to learn from the experts, find common ground and strategize.

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Judy Siegel-Itzkovich

THE JERUSALEM POST

Jan. 6, 2008

A Canadian judge is due to decide this week whether to renew a temporary injunction against Winnipeg's Grace General Hospital, whose doctors want to detach an 84-year-old Orthodox Jew from a respirator and hasten his death, against his family's wishes.

However, it was learned Sunday that the patient, Samuel Golubchuk, regained consciousness several days ago and appears to be improving.

Although a hospital doctor treating Golubchuk wrote "Awoke" on his chart, the hospital did not disclose this to the court. The family said the hospital had been trying to make the patient appear to be dying and with minimal brain function. Grace General Hospital has received the backing of the Canadian Medical Association in its efforts to bring about active euthanasia.

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'She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her'
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

A Delaware father is fighting his ex-wife, the medical establishment and the court system for the life of his 23-year-old daughter, left brain-damaged by a 2006 drug overdose, in a case with striking parallels to the 2005 death of Terri Schiavo in Florida.

"She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her," Randy Richardson told the Wilmington, Del., News Journal of his daughter, Lauren Marie Richardson.

She was injured by a drug overdose in 2006 and has never recovered fully from the brain damage she suffered, he said. Court records reveal she was pregnant at the time and was kept on feeding tubes and a breathing machine in Christiana Hospital until her baby girl was born in February 2007.She's no longer in need of the breathing machine, and now a court order has been issued, and appealed, that could allow the removal of her feeding tube, and her resulting death, the newspaper reported.

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From Wesley J. Smith

I think Bobby Schindler is right.

There have been a lot of stories of late about how supposedly vegetative patients could understand, or of "miraculous" awakenings by people who doctors were sure would never react consciously again. Bobby, Terri Schiavo's brother, has noticed that whatever the condition of the patient whose story is being told, the reports all have a common sub theme--the awakening, comprehension, etc. has nothing to do with Terri, meaning it was right to dehydrate her to death. It is as these reports, to quote Shakespeare, "doth protest too much," as if there is a subliminal realization that a terrible injustice was done to her.

The latest almost unbelievable example is in an otherwise interesting and important (and long) piece in the New Yorker, byline Jerome Groopman. After describing how supposedly unconscious people have been misdiagnosed, the author quotes an unnamed neuroscientist about Terri. From the story:

A neuroscientist showed me a video on the Internet of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who spent fifteen years in what most doctors agree was a vegetative state--tests revealed almost no activity in her cortex--and whose death, in 2005, provoked fierce debate over the rights of severely brain-damaged patients. (Schiavo died after the Supreme Court rejected her parents' appeal of a judge's decision approving her husband's request that her feeding tube be removed. An autopsy showed extensive brain damage.) In the video, a man's voice can be heard praising Schiavo for opening her eyes in response to his instructions, and the neuroscientist told me that he was impressed until he muted the sound. "With the sound off, it is clear that her movements are random," the neuroscientist said. "But, with the voice-over, it is easy to make a misdiagnosis. (My emphasis.)

The above stills are from the video in question. It deeply touched my heart and it is seared forever in my memory. In that video, Terri is asked by the examiner to open her eyes. At first, nothing. Then, within ten or so seconds, her eyes flicker, she opens them, and then opens them so wide her forehead wrinkles. It is clearly an intentional response to the question.

But if you turn the sound off, there is no question to hear--and voila, her opening her eyes with clear intention can now be dismissed as merely "random movement." But a random movement under those circumstances would be to move her head from side to side or lick or lips. But when she opened her eyes, and so intently, precisely as requested, you have to work hard to make it "random." So, to make sure we don't see the terrible wrong that was done to her, we just turn off the sound.

As I said, unbelievable. But do read the larger piece. It is well worth the time.

Mrs E Chowdharay-Best, honorary secretary, Alert, London

HOLLAND has progressed from legalising euthanasia by request to killing disabled newborns, who certainly did not request it.

Oregon can be held up as a good example only because hardly any information is available (Legalised euthanasia safer, Oct 2). As mandated by law, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) must “annually review a sample of the records” and the “information collected shall not be a public record and may not be available for inspection by the public”. Only an annual statistical report with limited data is published.

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