Please understand, dear readers, that when assisted-suicide advocates promise strict guidelines to protect against abuse, they don’t really mean it. The promise’s purpose is to get the law passed, not to be kept. Read More ›
Readers may recall the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases from the U.K. — in which doctors both wanted to remove life support and prevent the children from being transferred to other hospitals willing to continue care. Because the law in the U.K. permits courts to decide the “best interests” of children in medical extremis, the MDs got their way. Read More ›
Dutch euthanasia enthusiasts always pretend that doctors there commit homicide by lethal injection “only as a last resort” when nothing else can be done to eliminate “unbearable suffering.” What a pile of manure! Read More ›
As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live. Read More ›
“Futile care” — the forced removal by doctors and hospital bioethics committees of wanted life-extending treatment over patient and family objections — is, alas, still the law of Texas. And now a hospital in Florida has sued for the right to do the same thing to Genea Bristol, age 41. Read More ›
Readers may recall the sad case of Jahi McMath out of Oakland, Calif. In 2013, Jahi experienced a severe bleeding event after throat surgery and a subsequent cardiac arrest. She was successfully resuscitated, but her brain was catastrophically injured from loss of oxygen. Doctors at Oakland Children’s Hospital declared her brain dead and announced plans to remove Jahi from life support. Read More ›
Should psychiatrists and other doctors assist the suicides of mentally ill patients? Not that long ago, the answer to that question would have been unequivocally, “No” The job of a mental health professional is to save the lives of suicidal patients, not help them die. Read More ›
The primary purpose of SB 917 is to prevent unilateral forced withdrawals—over the objection of patients and/or families—of wanted life-extending treatment based on doctors’ beliefs about the quality of the patient’s life. Read More ›
The media love to boost assisted suicide. They laud people who commit it — witness their swoon over the late Brittany Maynard — and the doctors who are willing to lethally prescribe or give lethal injections. Read More ›