By Alex Schadenberg

A New Zealand news agency is suggesting that leaders on both sides of the euthanasia debate are surprised that an American woman using the name Susan Wilson was paid $12,000to fly to New Zealand and assist the death of a woman suffering from depression. http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1786504

As the long-time leader of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Canada and now the International chair, I am neither surprised or shocked by this news.

In September 2006, I attended the World Federation of Right to Die Societies bi-annual conference in Toronto. During the proceedings of that conference, it was apparent that the end-goal for the euthanasia lobby was the acceptance of the "last-will-pill" or the peaceful pill.

Dr. Rob Jonquiere, the moderate leader of the Right to Die movement in the Netherlands explained that by taking the law in their own hands that activists were making it more difficult for politicians to accept the final goal - the acceptance of the "last-will-pill". When you analyze the concept of a last-will-pill you must agree that there is no way to protect people who are depressed or mentally incompetent from killing themselves with this pill.

We already know that the Supreme Court in the Netherlands approved euthanasia for people who are experiencing chronic depression or chronic mental suffering.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, who is the maverick Australian leader of Exit International promoted the peaceful pill that allegedly could be available to anyone at anytime.

Several years ago Wesley Smith reported comments by Nitschke in an article titled "Noxious Nitschke" stating that the "peaceful pill" could be available to troubled teens. http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200411150826.asp

The question for the euthanasia lobby is not that they oppose euthanasia or assisted suicide for people who suffer depression, the question is how will the public knowledge of their support for these acts affect their campaign to legalize euthanasia or assisted suicide everywhere?

Finally, if there is nothing wrong with assisted suicide then why should assisting a suicide be done for free. Susan Wilson had to fly to New Zealand and accept the chance that she might be arrested for her actions.

Maybe the real shock is that someone would pay her $12,000 and the other members of the euthanasia lobby feel that they are being under paid.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 will be the first International Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Terri Schindler Schiavo, and all of our vulnerable brothers and sisters, say the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation and Priests for Life. That date is the third anniversary of Catholic housewife Terri's death after 13 days of agonising starvation and dehydration at the hands of her husband Michael Schiavo and Florida local judge George Greer for the "offence" of being severely brain-damaged.

On March 31, individuals are invited to learn about Terri and pray for people whose lives are threatened as hers was. Churches are asked to hold memorial services for Terri and to teach their congregations about everyone's inherent dignity and worth. Educational institutions are invited to dispel the pro-death lies about Terri and to educate society about the rights of people who are disabled.

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Doctors at Northampton General Hospital used a "licence to kill" when they stopped feeding a woman against her family's wishes, her son has claimed.
Hamila Begum was admitted to hospital after suffering a stroke and died two months later when staff switched her care to a regime of palliative measures which involved removing food and fluid lines, according to her son Pervez Akhter.

But the hospital denied any wrong-doing and said the complaint had been fully investigated. No evidence of malpractice had been found.

Speaking at a meeting of the Muslim Division of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in Semilong on Saturday, Mr Akhter said the move went against his family's religious beliefs and claimed doctors had ignored their pleas for help.

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By Jen Skerritt

GIVING doctors the power to decide whether someone's life is worth living is criminal, the lawyer for the Winnipeg family at the centre of an end-of-life dispute said Wednesday.
Neil Kravetsky, who is representing relatives of 84-year-old Samuel Golubchuk, called the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba's new end-of-life guidelines terrible, saying they "smack of subjectivity" and give doctors a green light to commit crimes.

The guidelines say the minimum goal of life-sustaining treatment is for patients to recover to a level where they can be aware of themselves, their environment and their existence.

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In the Netherlands, doctors sometimes euthanize babies born with spina bifida. There (and here), doctors sometimes refuse to treat them so that they will die. But now, a new journal article calls expose these lethal actions and non actions as the bigotry (my term) that they are. Writing in Childs Nervous System (2008; 24:13-28), T. H. Rob de Jong A Dutch pediatric neurosurgeon writes:

There is no evidence that newborns with MMC and hydrocephalus do either 'suffer' unbearably or hopelessly and certainly not without the prospect to relieve this suffering by standard care. 'Suffering' itself is a nonconclusive,and in newborns, inapplicable denominator that should not be used anymore in this debate. Although they will in their future life be confronted with handicaps,sometimes very severe, their future prospects and their actual experienced quality of life cannot be predicted with such certainty at birth that their lives can be regarded as hopeless or meaningless ('quality of life judgments' as such being unacceptable in this decision making). Possible discomfort in these newborns can easily be treated in a straightforward way by active treatment (closure of the defect and shunting the hydrocephalus) and, when necessary,by the use of a professional pain/symptom protocol.

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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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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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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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