|
Controversial topic du jour...
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Shakka |
This is certainly an attention grabber...
link
| quote: |
Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies
Email this Story
Nov 30, 3:03 PM (ET)
By TOBY STERLING
sponsored links
Voice Your Opinion - Take today's My Way Poll, featuring a new topic daily.
http://poll.myway.com
Play Free Online Games - Collapse, Bounce Out, Jigsaw, Crossword, Mah Jong and tons more.
http://games.myway.com
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.
The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.
The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.
Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.
The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.
Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.
"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.
"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."
According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.
Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people.
Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the practice is hidden.
"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."
More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said. |
|
|
|
| occrider |
 Kids suck. Now if only we could euthanize idiots ... |
|
|
| Shakka |
| LOL. Euthanizing -pumps. |
|
|
| NeoPhono |
Here's my stance, biased as it may be.
If your dog was blind, couldn't walk, didn't have the ability to accomodate to his surroundings or recognize loved ones, lived in un-ending fear, had no control of their bowels or bladder and lived in constant pain as they lived out their last days, what would you do? You'd do the "humane" thing and put it to sleep, out of its misery.
That being said, I deal everyday with people in the hospital that are in that same state or worse, and it makes me sad and angry at the same time to see them suffer needlessly. We don't even afford the same dignity that we give our pets to members of our own species.
We have the right to life, including the right to say when to end it. And when we do not have the ability to speak for ourselves on that matter I'd gladly give that power to choose to any sane individual. There's a difference between euthanasia and murder and euthanasia and compasion, dignity and humanity. |
|
|
| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
We have the right to life, including the right to say when to end it. |
Actualy how US society is there is no right to say when you end a life to anyone but the state and federal government (and then only after a review of a couple years by judges and peers and with a gilty verdict for some really, really bad crime). One does not have the right to take his own life nor anyone elses.
Hence the whole big abortion thing... |
|
|
| ResonantDrag |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Hence the whole big abortion thing... |
but don't babies go to heaven, too?
i may never understand the whole pro-life thing and god knows i've tried. but i don't want to go there.
so the vatican is against euthanising newborns who have no chance to reach childhood, much less adulthood. do they openly suggest the child's life options?
Chief First-rate Cardinal on the fith rank of Catholic Vaticanites:
"little jimmy who's brain is hemmoraging and hasn't stopped crying since birth should be spared from a painless death and attached to a machine that will keep his little christian heart pumping until god is ready to take him into the pearly gates of heaven."
doesn't seem likely.
sometimes the vatican looks like a bunch of protesting hippie kids. declaring all the bad things in the world without submitting potential positive alternatives. if a newborn is suffering and has no chance of a joyful life, shouldn't the parents be at least permitted to make the hardest decision they will ever make?
what's the real moral issue barring this? |
|
|
| ResonantDrag |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Now if only we could euthanize idiots ... |
you see... that's the elitist attitude that cost kerry the election:whip:
:p |
|
|
| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
This is certainly an attention grabber...
link
| quote: | Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies
|
|
reminds me of a couple dead baby jokes :p |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by ResonantDrag
you see... that's the elitist attitude that cost kerry the election:whip:
:p |
No it's the failure of our inability to euthanize idiots ;) |
|
|
| smokeape |
I say it's about time to set Jack Kevorkian free again!
:cool:
[[[smoke]]] |
|
|
| NeoPhono |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Actualy how US society is there is no right to say when you end a life to anyone but the state and federal government (and then only after a review of a couple years by judges and peers and with a gilty verdict for some really, really bad crime). One does not have the right to take his own life nor anyone elses.
Hence the whole big abortion thing... |
I realize that's the way it is, but I don't believe that it's right. If we truly have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I don't see why we don't also have the libery to end that life (in the pursuit of happiness). I understand that it doesn't make sense, at least from a demographic standpoint, to condone the productive (or unproductive, for that matter) part of your population killing itself, but that should be their option.
However when it comes to any of these cases, it always comes down to choice. The thing that seperates this matter from abortion, in my view, is the choice of the human that is asking for death. If you could time machine a baby 18 years into the future and ask it if it minds if its mom has an abortion, then maybe you'd have a point, but that's not how it works. When someone murders another, they also have the choice to remove that person from the planet, therfore forfeiting their rights here as well. The same thing for euthanasia. If you make the decision, that because of your state you no longer wish to live, then you've made that choice and good for you. And if it is agreed that you can no longer make that choice for yourself due to your condition, and that your condition is unreverseable and terminal, someone else should be able to make that choice for you. |
|
|
| drizzt81 |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
That being said, I deal everyday with people in the hospital that are in that same state or worse, and it makes me sad and angry at the same time to see them suffer needlessly. We don't even afford the same dignity that we give our pets to members of our own species.
|
Problem is that most people will not gain anything financially when they put their pet to sleep. In addition, the pet was never able to speak for itself. maybe it wanted to live on in that state - though i highly doubt that.
I think it is rediculous that the state is allowed to murder people, yet any 'law abiding' citizen cannot stop his/ her life?
One problem is 'legal' suicide is that it might be too easy to 'fake'. Suddenly, we might have a lot of 'euthanasia assisstants' that work for the mob.. if you catch my hint. |
|
|
|
|
