It will be interesting for those who supported Dr Nitschke in the NT to watch the events unfolding in the US after Hurricane Katrina:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5191772.stm

A Doctor Anna Pou MD & 2 Nurses were charged with killing a number of patients that were unable to survive the aftermath of Katrina:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/21/acd.01.html

Dr Anna Pou MD is (was?) a lecturer at this school:
http://www.medschool.lsuhsc.edu/faculty_affairs/new_faculty.asp

Her case has raised a high degree of interest, especially amongst medical professionals:

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2006/07/dr-anna-pou-hurricane-katrina-and.html

I apologise, for I do not remember the Nurse's names.

It is an extremely interesting case, as it involves a no win choice, to do nothing and allow people to suffer unbearably throughout the extended aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or to act to prevent this suffering by assisting people to die?

Either or both of these decisions would inevitably cause harm to the persons in her care, the question to be answered is where precisely, in the absence of the high-tech wizadry which enables effective palliative care, does relatively painless death become ethically or morally preferable to continued suffering? ODes painless death ever become ethically or morally preferable? Whose choice is it to make, the State's, the Doctor's or the Individual's?

I know the answer begins with 'first do no harm', but that does not solve the conundrum, it simply raises more questions, if one must choose between two harms, which is the lesser of the two evils?

Inshallah

2bob

Steve I fully agree with you. We all die and should be able to do so with dignity.

The shift from "right to die" to "duty to live" merely shows the folly of those who believe that we should extend life for as long as possible. If we have a duty to live then shouldn't the government extend medicare to 100% of wages and squeeze every last minute of life out of every one? Surely not.

At some point we stop living and start dieing, when exactly that point is reached could be the source for plenty of debate, but when we are in the dieing phase we should be able to depart humanely and with dignity.

I respect that many people would choose to live as long as possible.

One of life's ironies seems to be that we have the ability to create and end life but lack the wisdom of when to use it.

Yes, those terrible Christians and their respect for the sanctity of life. When will they ever learn?

Rant dressed up as argument - doesn't inspire confidence.

What stops me from dismissing Nietzsche as a godless-botherer? Why is it that extreme secularists are allowed to be politically organised by not Christians?

Nietzsche's pretend humanism needs an anti-Christian flavour,"beware theocracy, theocracy!!" to hook the gullible. Playing to people's silly prejudices is the mark of desperation.

I'm happy the true humanism represented by Christian principles is confounding Nietzsche and his attempts at instituting a death embracing madness.

www.firstthings.com
Report from the Netherlands: “Doctors can help patients who ask for help to die even though they may not be ill but are ‘suffering through living,’ concludes a three-year inquiry commissioned by the Royal Dutch Medical Association. The report argues that no reason can be given to exclude situations of such suffering from a doctor’s area of competence.... The new report does not rule on how doctors should respond if a patient without a classifiable condition should approach them for help but says that doctors believe that some cases of ‘suffering through living’ could be judged ‘unbearable and hopeless’ and therefore fall within the boundaries of the existing euthanasia law.” Waugh expected socialist Britain to be in the vanguard of the death industry. He wrote, “Foreigners came in such numbers to take advantage of the service that immigration authorities now turned back the bearers of single tickets.”

As it turns out, the lead has been taken by what Mark Steyn calls Eurotopia, the death-‘n’-sex boutique states of Holland and Switzerland. The London Daily Telegraph reports that “the Swiss are planning to crack down on ‘suicide tourists,’ including hundreds of Britons, who want to take their lives at a Zurich euthanasia clinic.” The report says, “Swiss officials are alarmed that most foreign patients spend only twenty-four hours in the country, meaning that there is little time for their cases to be checked fully.” Complains Zurich’s chief prosecutor, “We know nothing about them and we can’t say if it was a long-term desire to end their lives.” New rules will have staff “specially trained in their trade” and certified as “suicide assistants.” Deborah Annets, chief executive of Britain’s Voluntary Euthanasia Society, agrees that it is imperative that suicide “should be properly regulated.” After all, we’re dealing with civilized societies here, and it seems the decent thing to get to know something about the people you are going to kill. “Objects in the mirror. . . .”

My mother recently died in a degree of misery at the age of 96. She asked to go and was sick of pain and distress. She only got her wish when she finally refused food. Her view was well known to the Doctor and she was put on "palliative care". This is beloved of right to life and other conservative Christians but in fact means continuous doses of morphine to keep her unconscious until she died. Occasionally she would wake up in pain and they would increase the dose.

This was all total nonsense. At 96 she obviously had reached her end and she was made to suffer right to the last. She would have prefered a simple end to it all. My pet dog will be allowed a better finish.

I do not wish ill on anyone but if any of these right to lifers suffer unnecessarily at their end it will be poetic justice.

And my morther was not even a Christian, she was Jewish.