Richie 10
“it is an individual choice , please have the intestinal fortitude not to involve others in your preferences, for politicians are not responsible for your personal choices, you are.”

Well then, it‘s O.K if we push the politicians and doctors out of the way of the drugs cabinets and take the drugs we need to die with peace and dignity is it? At the moment they don’t give us that choice.

Putting a bullet though ones brain would be a pretty messy find for our loved ones. If we somehow fail and manage to live with half our head and face shot off that also would not be a pleasant outcome for our relatives plus the fact that we would probably end up in a vegetative state.

We could hang ourselves from a rafter in the shed or maybe a branch in the bush, what a lonely, cold, terrifying death that would be. When you are as sick as a dog confined to hospital on very necessary pain killing drugs you would hardly be in a state to go and buy a rope, pick up a chair or drive a car. Besides the nurses are very disinclined to let you leave the hospital until a doctor has signed a discharge form because they may be held responsible for letting you leave in an unfit condition. Especially if you drive a car while medicated and kill someone.

You could take Panadol, but if you take the wrong amount and you live , again you could wind up in a vegetative state.

There is no need for the politicians or Doctors to be responsible for our choices, so just hand over the drugs and we oldies are quite capable of administering them ourselves when needed. Or don't the politicans have the intestinal fortitude to do that.

I was in a ward with a woman dying from diabetes , many years ago, and she screamed all night in pain before dying the next day. Some Things are much worse than death, death is peaceful.

OZPEN <Here are some specific details of the slippery slope in the Netherlands>

Does it not occur to you that these Doctors and Nurses are at the coalface when people are dying. They are there night and day with the dying. Are all these dedicated , educated, experienced professionals somehow so deranged that they think it is necessary to callously kill the dying . Or do they know the realities having had years of experience watching people die.

I believe the laws were relaxed somewhat years ago to allow dying people in the last weeks and days to have as much pain killing medicine as required as their pain wasn’t being treated adequately enough.

As to the lethal doses of morphine, it is inevitable that if your pain reaches a point where the quantity you are having becomes useless against the pain that you have no choice but to take stronger and stronger doses until it kills you. Otherwise scream in agony for a week.

Bear in mind that not all deaths are equal. Some die a fairly quick sudden death that may not involve much suffering . Some die a death made peaceful at the end by pnuemonia, that is a gradual cutting off of their air until they go to sleep and die like people at high altitudes. Then there is the death where cancer is literally eating your main organs alive, not so peaceful I would think.

On that cheerful note I shall end this post.

However I also concede that for as long as I've known there have been those kindly Doctors and carers who have increased the dose of narcotic painkiller (usually morphine) to the point where unconciousness, respiratory failure and death occur where the suffering of the patient has been profound and hard to manage. God Bless Them! [Divine_msn].

Wholeheartedly agree Divine_msn and you are spot-on with your account.

McReal,

You stated: "No laws will stop the informal hastening of death that occurs now. The Dutch experience is 20 years out of date, so current proposals need to be looked at in light of current societal views, and an optimal 21st century palliative care program."

This is a straw man logical fallacy. Whether it was 20 days or 200 years ago does not affect the fact. The Dutch euthanasia experience proves that euthanasia legislation cannot stop the slippery slope of killing more people than the legislation permits.

If you want more recent facts, this report is as recent as 2004: Dutch Infant Euthanasia (http://www.nrlc.org/news/2006/NRL04/KillingBabies.html): "In 2004, Groningen University Medical Center made international headlines when it admitted to permitting pediatric euthanasia and published the 'Groningen Protocol,' infanticide guidelines the hospital followed when killing 22 disabled newborns between 1997 and 2004. The media reacted as if killing disabled babies in the Netherlands was something new. But Dutch doctors have engaged in infanticide for more than 15 years. (A Dutch government-supported documentary justifying infant euthanasia played on PBS in 1993. Moreover, a study published in 1997 in the Lancet determined that in 1995, about 8 percent of all infants who died in the Netherlands—some 80 babies—were euthanized by doctors, and not all with parental consent; this figure was reproduced in a subsequent study covering the year 2001.)".

Twenty years or 5 years ago, the Dutch did not stop the slide into a practice of euthanasia beyond the boundaries of legislation. It cannot be contained.

We hear lots of talk about "choice" in euthanasia. Couldn't the paedophiles, DV perpetrators and thieves make the same claim? "It's my choice". This is the logical conclusion of a "choice" ethic.

King Hazza,

You wrote:
"This implies my worries of sincerely not being able to grasp anything beyond a religious order.
The reason we keep picking on religious people so much (perhaps too generally) in the euthanasia debate (and abortion) is the sheer irrationality of opposing something that is logical and in many dimensions humane to do, based on nothing but values passed through indoctrination, shared only by people who follow others thoughts, instead of evaluating the issue more deeply that 'euthanasia could be abused (due to specific reasons) but must be banned outright for everyone just in case'".

When will you quit your presuppositional bigotry so that we can engage in a rational discussion

Cherful,

You wrote: "Does it not occur to you that these Doctors and Nurses are at the coalface when people are dying. They are there night and day with the dying. Are all these dedicated , educated, experienced professionals somehow so deranged that they think it is necessary to callously kill the dying . Or do they know the realities having had years of experience watching people die".

So experience, in your view, provides them with legitimacy to engage in unethical behaviour that violates government laws? Not once have I ever made a suggestion of these medical people as being "deranged". This is an emotive red herring argument that interferes with our engaging in a reasonable conversation when you use this kind of language in your response.

Your view is: "As to the lethal doses of morphine, it is inevitable that if your pain reaches a point where the quantity you are having becomes useless against the pain that you have no choice but to take stronger and stronger doses until it kills you. Otherwise scream in agony for a week".

That was not the case with my mother. She had no increasing pain, and yet a nurse wanted to kill her with a lethal dose of morphine. Why? He, the nurse, did not say, but beds are short in some public hospitals. He wanted to treat my mother as a dog and put her down. This was not a compassionate end to life for my beloved mother. It was a deliberate attempt to kill her prematurely - and all without her or the family's permission.

Who gives anybody, doctor or nurse, the right to take the life of any human being? Palliative care options are very special in 21st century Australia. Caring for the dying is the humane option, rather than killing them.