DAILY MAIL (London)

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25 September 2007

By Jill Parkin

None of us likes to imagine such a terrible fate, but this much I do know: If I am ever in a coma I would like to be treated by Muslim or Catholic doctors, because if they're in charge, at least I know I will not be starved to death.

How extraordinary to think that in doing so - in the simple act of keeping me alive - they could be breaking the law.

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By Simon Caldwell
9/19/2007

Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) – Medical ethicists in Britain said a Vatican document reiterating that it is a moral obligation to provide food and water to patients in a vegetative state will encourage doctors to defy living wills.

Anthony Ozimic, political director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the document released Sept. 14 by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was "highly significant" for England and Wales, where the Mental Capacity Act will take effect Oct. 1.

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DAILY MAIL (London)

September 24, 2007 Monday

BY Simon Caldwell AND Daniel Martin

MUSLIM MEDICS SAY THEY WILL REFUSE TO LET PATIENTS WITH 'LIVING WILLS' DIE

MUSLIM doctors warned yesterday that they would rather go to jail than allow patients to die in accordance with 'living wills'.

The new Mental Capacity Act allows patients to write the wills, instructing doctors not to try to save them if they become incapacitated.

It also allows patients to give 'lasting powers of attorney' to a friend or relative who would be able to instruct doctors to starve to death a patient who becomes incapacitated.

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From Christian Newswire.

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Vatican Statement Defends Pope John Paul II’s 2004 Allocution on the Moral Obligation to Care for and Show Compassion for All People Like Terri

Contact: Suzanne Vitadamo, The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, 727-490-7603,

ST. PETERSBURG, Fl., Sept. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- By issuing its latest statement on the obligation to feed and hydrate those persons deemed to be in a "vegetative" or even comatose state, the Vatican today reiterated its two thousand year old teaching that all human life is sacred and deserving of our care, no matter its condition. The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation (Terri's Foundation) wishes to extend its sincere thanks to the Holy See for again repeating this vital truth.

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YOU CAN'T CALL THIS MERCY KILLING -- IT'S LEGALISED MURDER IN ITS CRUELLEST FORM

DAILY MAIL (London)
May 15, 2007 Tuesday

By A. N. Wilson

WHEN October comes, euthanasia will have become legal in this country. If that comes as a shock to you, it came as a surprise to me too.

Only when reading the report in yesterday's Daily Mail did I realise that legislation -- at present passing through Parliament -- is precisely a licence for families to kill their sick relations by the slow death of thirst and starvation.

Astonishingly, this radical departure from the existing state of the law is being brought in under the 'negative resolution procedure'. This means that the measure will pass into law automatically, and without any debate whatsoever, unless an MP chooses to put a spanner in the works and demand such a debate.

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FAMILIES ARE GIVEN POWER OF ATTORNEY TO END LIVES OF THE SICK

DAILY MAIL (London)
May 14, 2007 Monday

By Steve Doughty

DESPERATELY ill patients will be able to instruct relatives to end their lives.

They will have the right to appoint a family member or friend to tell doctors to withdraw the tubes feeding them when they become too ill to communicate.

Critics said the new rules slipped out by ministers during the final days of the local election campaign amount to the legalisation of euthanasia.

In the past, so-called power of attorney given by the sick to relatives or friends have covered only their way their money and property is spent and used.

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March 30, 2007

By Bobby Schindler

Saturday, March 31, will mark the two-year anniversary of my sister Terri Schiavo's death by dehydration. Not a day passes that my family does not think of my sister and relive the horrific images of her needless and brutal death at the hands of those who deliberately set out to kill her.

As hideous as it was, the truth is, long before Terri's case made headlines, the removal of basic care – food and water – was becoming commonplace. It continues to happen every day across our country oftentimes in cases, like Terri's, where the patient does not suffer from any life-threatening condition.

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Read the original at spiked-online.com

The website of the UK group Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, currently has a photograph showing a smiling bunch of people holding placards saying ‘82 per cent’ – signifying the fact that 82 per cent of the British public support calls for more liberalised assisted suicide laws.

If the new British Social Attitudes Survey, published last week, is accurate, those in the picture will still be smiling. The survey shows that, despite the setbacks over the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK House of Lords and the stalling of campaigns for assisted suicide in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, 80 per cent of people in Britain say that the law should ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ allow a doctor to end someone’s life at the person’s request if they have an incurable and painful terminal disease.

The figures bear further inspection, though. Things aren’t quite so clear-cut as some of the headlines – such as ‘Four out of five want to give doctors the right to end life of terminally ill patients’ – suggest. Only 60 per cent say the law should allow a doctor to assist a patient to commit suicide. This is significant because this scenario is precisely what the Assisted Dying Bill, which will shortly be introduced to parliament yet again, is proposing. Less than half support it for those with incurable and painful diseases from which they will not die, or for those completely dependent on others for all their needs (but not in danger of death).

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We know that some ALERT members wrote to Peers asking them to support Baroness Knight's amendment 10 to the Mental Health Bill, which would have guaranteed that food and fluid were given to helpless peple in hospital. Thank you.

There was an excellent debate in the House of Lords on 15th January, with support for Baroness Knight from both sides of the House. Even the Government spokesman, Lord Hunt, appeared sympathetic, although he also endorsed the dangerous clauses in the Mental Capacity Act, which is due to come into effect in April, as he was bound to do.

The Amendment was withdrawn, but that will not be the end of the matter.

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The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)

January 9, 2007 Tuesday

David Sapsted

A PENSIONER who, according to her family, starved to death in hospital, pleaded for food and a cup of tea in the days leading up to her death, an inquest heard yesterday.

Olive Nockels, 91, a great-grandmother, begged her family for beetroot sandwiches, macaroni cheese and a cup of tea, the inquest in Norwich was told.

But doctors and nurses from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital insisted that no such request had been passed on to them.

Before her death in October, 2003, Mrs Nockels, a retired school matron, had become the subject of a High Court action after she went four days without food or fluids after hospital staff withdrew them against the family's will.

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