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.

In a statement today, Elspeth Chowdharay-Best, Hon. Secretary of Alert said:

"'Dignity in Dying' (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) has sent out advice with their new Advance Decision by which signatories refuse 'treatment' in hospital if they should lose capacity.

"They say correctly that in order to ensure that an existing Living Will is binding under the Mental Capacity Act 'you must write the following statement in the section referring to the refusal of life-sustaining treatment: The decisions set out in my living will apply, even if my life is at risk as a result.'

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Dr Jacqueline Laing, of the Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute at London Metropolitan University, said of the Mental Capacity Act which comes into effect on October 1:

There are sound reasons to believe that the Mental Capacity Act, by endangering those who cannot speak for themselves, is incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights and other international instruments. By requiring doctors, on pain of an assault charge, to dehydrate non-dying patients to death and even perform non-therapeutic research and tissue removal at the behest of unaccountable third parties, this Act allows the basest of motives to override the rights and safety of the most vulnerable.

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The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)

September 29, 2007 Saturday
Letters to the Editor

SIR - With the impending implementation of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) I feel some concern as to the potential for human rights abuses that it allows, in particular over the withdrawal of fluids and nutrition based merely on hearsay and the delegation of power to consent or instruct withdrawal of nutrition to third parties.

With the implementation of this Act, we will be condemning some of the weakest members of our society to death by dehydration. Working as a doctor in a large general hospital I have seen many people die. I have no idea whether patients in their final weeks can fully understand the sensation of thirst, but I do observe that they look more comfortable and at rest when having their hand held by a loved one, and show distress when being turned or moved.

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An excellent piece from BBC's "Look East" concerning the deliberate dehydration of the elderly resulting in their death.