A New England Journal of Medicine article reported that in 1995 in the Netherlands, where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal, doctors killed about 1,000 people without getting the patients’ “explicit request.” Nearly 20,000 were killed when they were given large doses of opioids, such as morphine and similar drugs.
Today, our own families and dedicated doctors will continue to care for our elderly parents. This shows true compassion and unconditional love. Patients with terminal diseases will pursue life with dignity, all the while demonstrating to the healthy that life is precious and sacred.
None of these acts of love and courage likely will make the evening news or the pages of this newspaper. Such heroic actions are deemed unexceptional compared with shocking suicides and pseudo-doctors who kill rather than heal.
This is a story taken directly from an oncologist in the Netherlands who relayed this story:
He had an older female patient with metastatic colon cancer who was a hospice patient – no chemo or surgery. However, the patient was fairly healthy and was expected to live several more months. She developed a pneumonia (which she could have despite the cancer) and her oncologist wanted to admit her for IV antibiotics. The only bed available was of a patient who had been given a weekend furlough. The oncologist thought this would be OK since she could be discharged on oral antibiotics. He had Monday off but asked about her on Tuesday. They had convinced her, in his absence, that she had a duty to die and d/c-ed her in the permanent sense.
Apparently, this is not uncommon.
The writer of the letter to USA Today is a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. Their website has bunch of information on this and other issues.
Thank you for the link to the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.
The same thing is already happening in this country. The story of Ruben Navarro proves it. This severely retarded 26 year old man was on a ventilator. His guardian authorized his death, and a transplant surgeon came in and ordered 100 mg of morphine administered before he was removed from the ventilator. An hour passed, and he had not stopped breathing yet. So the doctor ordered another 100 mg. A dose of 30 mg is usually fatal; that is the dose that Dr. Harold Shipman in the UK administered to kill his patients.
I fail to understand how the man could have been in respiratory arrest and survived under those dosages, and I suspect his heart was pretty strong too. It seems that he was murdered – legally.
Link here. There’s a link to a long article in the LA Times about the case. Words like “altruistic” and “dignified death” are not questioned, but it sure sounds to me as if an inconvenient and expensive patient was murdered. There is, I would guess, no chance that anyone involved will ever be charged.
Why is it that, increasingly, calling it like it is is referred to as “demonizing”? (I feel, btw, that there is no need to “demonize” Kevorkian, as he has already done it himself.)