tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9216787076261944467.post2941514671920739681..comments2024-03-28T13:26:59.030-04:00Comments on Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: The Crime of Assisted SuicideAlex Schadenberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07649977828342637842noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9216787076261944467.post-10321854407737295442010-06-09T09:37:57.743-04:002010-06-09T09:37:57.743-04:00Alex,
Most of us are rather accustomed to your ad...Alex,<br /><br />Most of us are rather accustomed to your advocacy that every dying person be put through whatever possible treatment there is, however experimental, that you have issue with patients making their own health care decisions or dying naturally, that you contest whatever definition it is that will help you scare the elderly and terminal and disabled into thinking the great "culture of death" is out to kill them. (I'd love to hear the motivation you ascribe to this group of "killers." There's an odd tendency on the right to paint opponents not as simple opponents but as forces of some great conspiracy....)<br /><br />I've also learned from reading here that patient autonomy scares those who wish to impose a moral and ethical standard - of their own definition - on the medical system and the state's laws. Or rather, ultimately on patients who are working to achieve informed consent. It's a paternalistic need to "protect," to enforce that you know better, to assert your judgement on those who face death. I get all this strategy of yours. And I commend your sad effectiveness.<br /><br />But to pull out the Barbara Wagner story and use it to somehow prove that the folks at C&C or anyone who believes in the DwD laws in Oregon and Washington wanted to save a buck is even beyond you; an incredibly irresponsible distortion of a story that you have apparently not researched.<br /><br />Wagner thought - was encouraged to believe - that an experimental, miracle drug was going to save her life. It couldn't. The tragedy of the Wagner case is that society, her doctors, her family and you ("pro-life" media) who made so much of her sad story failed to prepare her for immanent death. Convinced her and manipulated her story to convince others that we have a duty to pursue every possible, ineffective medical procedure or drug, to die in the fight, to make no peace with death because we will defeat it. <br /><br />Yes, yes, "do not go gentle" and "pray for a miracle" and "you can fight this" and "God doesn't give you more than you can handle" is all a fine story for the dying (or perhaps the living) but it didn't help Wagner accept that she was going to die. Death comes; it is not shameful to die; patients who are dying have the right to make their own medical decisions - including the decision to not rely on medical prolongation of death. <br /><br />I don't care how often you claim to take the high road on this one, redefine things, make supporters of aid in dying out to be "killers" and death-hungry evil-doers.... You write me back after you've become a hospice volunteer or spent some time in facilities with the dying and you know intimately what happens in those hospital beds, when you understand that medicine is an inexact science, that supporters of aid in dying are as compassionate as you think you are, that the definition of death has changed over the past forty years and that we struggle today to redefine it in the face of leaping technology, when you realize that monolithic answers mean nothing to individuals, -- then tell me what great ethical superiority you are espousing.Ann Neumannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13690469764844904030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9216787076261944467.post-81506404928494530052010-06-08T21:22:20.417-04:002010-06-08T21:22:20.417-04:00It is sad that society has reached a point whereby...It is sad that society has reached a point whereby we feel it is our right to decide who should live and who should die. <br /><br />Those who are sick or disabled should have a right to live in comfort. What is the point of all our medical advances if we do not even provide that much to those who need it?<br /><br />WMD himself has described his actions as 'legal murder'. Surely that is what it is and should be seen as nothing less. I'm certain Barbara Coombs realizes that also, although she will never admit it. She has her own agenda and compassion I do not believe is a part of it.<br /><br />Perhaps the greatest crime is simply that there is such a law as 'assisted suicide' which although no less then murder does not carry the same punishment and is often even excused by society. It is time we see it for the vile action that it is and punish it accordingly.Deborah Chevaliernoreply@blogger.com