Everald,

<<As a Church Elder, I am publicly supporting Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) when the Churches of Queensland have joined together to make a submission to the Inquiry opposing it. The key factor is that they believe that God decides who lives or dies. I have never ever believed that. God gives you and me the spiritual power to handle whatever life and death throw up at us. With death being an inevitable and unavoidable part of life, why let many people suffer agony to get there.>>

Don't you understand the contradiction in what you wrote there? I oppose VAD for these reasons:

1. I take Scripture seriously. The Bible states, 'The LORD gives both death and life; he brings some down to the grave but raises others up' (1 Sam 2:6). A nation that murders the vulnerable suffers God's judgment: 'Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people' (Prov 14:34).

2. We cannot trust the medical profession to follow the criteria for VAD. In the Netherlands, 'The details are alarming. At least a third of the 5000 or so Dutch patients who each year receive lethal doses of drugs from their doctors do not give their unequivocal consent. About 400 of these patients never even raise the issue of euthanasia with their doctors' ('The Dutch Way of Death', 20 June 1992), http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13418264-800/

3. The case for euthanasia is based on:

• intentional murder or assisting in the murder of innocent human beings.
• repudiation of the doctor-patient relationship.
• It flies in the face of the medical advances made in the treatment of pain and is at odds with compassionate methods of care.
• It rests on presuppositions that do not respect human life.
• playing God.
• ethically, rests on self-defeating assertions.
• eliminating the sufferer, rather than reducing the suffering.
4. Therefore, as a Christian minister I support the promotion of life, care and compassion for the suffering, and am reminded: 'Just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment' (Heb 9:27)

Hasbeen

That sounds pretty terrifying, driving off a cliff. A nice peaceful drug death is much less traumatic and violent.
You might be too sick to get out of your hospital bed, catch a bus home to get your car and drive to a big cliff somewhere.

Why should you have to?

OzSpen

You say I am only giving the terminally ill only one option. Their options are pretty few don’t you think?
All deaths are not the same and some may have an easier time of it than others.
But probably death is a very traumatic physical experience for most, After all vital organs have to shut down. to cause you to die.
That is why it has to be the sole choice of the dying person, only they understand the level of their pain and endurance.

What other options can you suggest for a person dying a cruel death.
Morphine seems to be the go to drug for relieving pain in the dying process. As the pain gets more and more intense , higher and higher doses of morphine are needed.
Morphine at a certain dosage, kills. I believe this happens already with the dying.
The only other option is to be drugged up to the eyeballs with Morphine, for weeks or months living in a constant vegetative Zombie state? That’s not really living is it.

Cherful,

<<That is why it has to be the sole choice of the dying person, only they understand the level of their pain and endurance. What other options can you suggest for a person dying a cruel death.>>

In its position statement, “the AMA (Australian Medical Association) maintains that doctors should not be involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life.“This does not include the discontinuation of treatments that are of no medical benefit to a dying patient. This is not euthanasia,” says AMA president Dr Michael Gannon,http://ajp.com.au/news/doctors-not-involved-euthanasia-ama/

We know from the experience of euthanasia in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg that criteria for VAD are violated by the medical profession and they cannot be trusted to get the patients' permission. Involuntary euthanasia happens too often.

As for reducing the level of pain for a suffering person, we have facilities in palliative care that are designed especially for this.

It should not be the 'sole choice' of one dying person as there are deleterious consequences. We know this from the horrendous example of the Nazis in World War 2.

OsPhen
“Doctors should not be involved in interventions resulting in death”

They don’t have to be. The patient themselves can swallow the medication surrounded by their loving families.
The doctors can be involved in the legal side only, certifying the terminal state of the patient. That then goes to a judious tribunal
who approve or not,of the patient being given the end of life medicine, based on the suffering of their illness.

There is one legal representative who witnesses the dying event and reports back to the tribunal. To avoid the slippery slope, Post-Mortems should be carried out on all people who die in nursing homes. If the person dies at home without the legal witness present, then a post Mortem should be held on them too.

There should be no need for the endless cruelty of people dying in agonising pain, when we are clever enough and have the legal means to put safeguards into the system.

Cherful,

You make it sound so easy: <<The patient themselves can swallow the medication surrounded by their loving families.
The doctors can be involved in the legal side only, certifying the terminal state of the patient.>>

This article on 'Euthanasia in the Netherlands' (2017) states:

"Under strictly specified circumstances, physicians in the Netherlands are allowed to perform euthanasia and assisted suicide at the request of a patient. Euthanasia is defined as the active termination of life at a patient’s voluntary and well-informed request. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) also comes under this definition. Only physicians are allowed to perform euthanasia.

"In most cases the request for euthanasia comes from patients in the final stages of a malignant disease. A request for euthanasia can only be granted in cases in which the patient and physician have exhausted all options and the patient’s suffering cannot be remedied or alleviated by any other means. There is no right to euthanasia for patients in the Netherlands and physicians are not under any obligation to perform euthanasia", http://www.knmg.nl/actualiteit-opinie/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/euthanasia-in-the-netherlands.htm
What actually happens?

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