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The Forum > Article Comments > Legal safeguards can make euthanasia a legitimate option > Comments

Legal safeguards can make euthanasia a legitimate option : Comments

By Leslie Cannold, published 14/12/2006

People should have the right to make choices about their own deaths.

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This article has one glaring omission.
It is in regard to "the assertion of anti-euthanasia forces that the effectiveness of modern-day palliative methods obviates the need for legal reform."
Senator Haradine, during his successful fight to prevent civilised assistance to those in need of it during the desperate terminal phase of their lives, swung votes his way by giving an assurance that availability of palliative care services would be enhanced.
It was an assurance that he, an experienced politician, knowingly could not guarantee.
Further, during the remaining years of his tenure in parliament, he took up other causes at the expense of monitoring the assurance he had given. During those years, palliative care services were subject to bureaucratic shuffling within health matters, and provision of palliative care declined from the point of view of those in need.
Quite apart from needlessly increasing the physical and mental pain of those in need, the decline in effective service to their clients was distressing for the nurses employed to administer it.
Enforcement of their particular religious belief by one segment of society upon the whole of society is bad enoough. Resorting to dishonesty in the achievement of such enforcement is despicable. Such immorality remains unchanged from that senator's day.
Posted by colinsett, Sunday, 17 December 2006 3:33:09 PM
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As with the Australian peoples Constitution this gives the right of oneself.

This gives the person the right to have choice.

When religion comes into the mix as it always does people lose their rights and this is just communism.
It is not just liberal but labor and those that have a heavy, extreme stance on this issue.

As i see it this is my life and my doctors told me after my accident that i should be dead and yes i should have been, no it was a work accident, so now what are my choices well i am still here for a reason and that reason is the people.

It is time we fixed this so those in need can have that choice of dignity, and that i respect.
Posted by tapp, Sunday, 17 December 2006 7:44:29 PM
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The "No's" have it all their way at the moment. A referendum on voluntary euthanasia is well overdue. Which ever way the numbers fall, the "No's" can continue down their own path and hopefully, mind their own business!

I have an old flat mate currently dying. She was operated on in the best hospital in Sydney, is sufficiently well off to access anything on offer. Still, she is in agony, having returned to hospital several times for "pain management" - Oh yeah?

She is a tall woman reduced to weighing 48 kilograms, dependant on her ailing husband for daily care.

The best we can expect is for the end to come soon, though she'll no doubt,leave this world totally bombed out on the "pain management" drug, morphine.

I wonder if the pro-lifers' God is happy to receive confused and incoherent drug addicts into his realm!
Posted by dickie, Monday, 18 December 2006 2:18:20 PM
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no a referendum is a waste of time

what we need is a change of government

they wouldny send this out to the people as would then destroy credibility with those right to lifers and religious organisations.
Posted by tapp, Monday, 18 December 2006 3:03:20 PM
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I work in a palliative care unit.

It is false dichotomy to pose that palliative care is opposed to euthanasia. It helps no-one to pursue this line.

The philosophy of palliative care as published by the Queensland and Commonwealth pall care associations and as practised where I work is neither for nor against euthanasia.

Pall care is about providing symptomatic relief, rather than curative treatment.

Patients may have varying amounts of choice (according to their medical condition, other personal factors, and access to resources) as to when they shift their thinking from treatment for cure (or remission) to treatment solely to relieve pain and other suffering, including mental anguish. Most patients can be thus assisted - but not all. Sometimes suffering cannot be palliated.

Patients vary tremendously in their attitude towards shifting their thinking from cure to symptomatic relief only. Denial, acceptance, anger, hostility, fear, regret, grief are all frequent initial responses.

It is not only pain that distresses patients. Distressing symptoms may include nausea, extreme shortness of breath, fitting, generalised anxiety, fear of judgement after death, depression, bodily disfigurement, sense of lack of control and loss of dignity.

Drugs may be administered (ideally according to the patient's wishes previously expressed) to a level that would ease pain and suffering without removing mental awareness, or to a level that would completely relieve the patient's symptoms but might leave the patient sleepy or with little conscious awareness.

If euthanasia were legal, it would not alter the purpose of palliative care - symptomative relief rather than treatment for cure. Euthanasia and palliative care are separate concepts.
Posted by peggy, Monday, 18 December 2006 7:07:23 PM
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Peggy says, correctly, "Euthanasia and palliative care are separate concepts."
Yes, and I find it repulsive when religious fundamentalists conflate the two - in the manner of senator Harradine.
He declared that palliative care would be guaranteed at such a high standard and ready availability as to replace any need for euthanasia.
It was a dishonest guarantee - worse, the standard of delivery, from the patients' point of view, declined during his subsequent years in the senate.
Religious protagonists of his ilk perpetuate this style of conflation. No wonder a "them and us" misconception has been built up.
Posted by colinsett, Monday, 18 December 2006 8:00:27 PM
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