California plans to drug depressed patients unconscious to death.

[megimoo]

California plans to drug depressed patients to death

'Nothing in the bill prohibits this horror'allows a physician assistant or a nurse to opine that a patient is 'terminal .

" A new way to ballance the budget in the land of The Lost !"

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
"Depressed patients who succumb to this pressure will be drugged unconscious and die from dehydration,

Just as Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was in Denver preaching to a crowd of thousands of fans about the "change" he wants to see in the United States, his party compatriots in the California Legislature were making a "change," by approving a controversial plan that would allow nurses to assist terminally ill patients with suicide.

"AB 2747 allows a physician assistant or a nurse to opine that a patient is 'terminal,' and then push for unnatural death by 'palliative sedation,'" said Randy Thomasson, chief of the Campaign for Children and Families shortly after the vote.

"Depressed patients who succumb to this pressure will be drugged unconscious and die from dehydration, usually within five to 10 days. Nothing in the bill prohibits this horror," he said.

Forty-two Democrats in California voted in favor of the plan: 30 Republicans and two Democrats opposed the plan.

"AB 2747 pushes suicide through the back door at the hands of non-physicians taking advantage of depressed patients," Thomasson said. His organization has been alerting Californians to raise their concerns about the plan for sudden death with floor alerts, phone calls and e-mails.

"AB 2747 cheapens the value of human life by endorsing suicide as an option. Gov. Schwarzenegger should pledge to veto this very dangerous bill," Thomasson said, describing how the author, Assemblywoman Pattie Berg of Eureka, "deceptively changed" the bill to appear that "voluntarily stopping of eating and drinking" and "palliative sedation" no longer were on a list of "symptom management" options.

But the final bill "is broad enough to easily include these suicide techniques," Thomasson said.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73786http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73786

[FuroraCeltica]

In the Netherlands they have a similar system. The Dutch government estimate that 16 patients a week are put to death against their wishes by doctors. This is the same country with the Groningen Protocol, which extends this to children and babies. Isn't post-modern morality great? :rolleyes:

[wilbur]

In the Netherlands they have a similar system. The Dutch government estimate that 16 patients a week are put to death against their wishes by doctors. This is the same country with the Groningen Protocol, which extends this to children and babies. Isn't post-modern morality great? :rolleyes:

From what I can see it is illegal there as well... doctors can avoid prosecution in very specific circumstances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands


The law allows medical review board to suspend prosecution of doctors who performed euthanasia when each of the following conditions is fulfilled:

* the patient's suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement
* the patient's request for euthanasia must be voluntary and persist over time (the request cannot be granted when under the influence of others, psychological illness or drugs)
* the patient must be fully aware of his/her condition, prospects and options
* there must be consultation with at least one other independent doctor who needs to confirm the conditions mentioned above
* the death must be carried out in a medically appropriate fashion by the doctor or patient, in which case the doctor must be present
* the patient is at least 12 years old (patients between 12 and 16 years of age require the consent of their parents)

[FuroraCeltica]

From what I can see it is illegal there as well... doctors can avoid prosecution in very specific circumstances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands

Well, I read in Menace in Europe that this is not the case. There is also a law in Switzerland that lets you kill yourself if you suffer from long term depression.

[LibraryLady]

There is also a law in Switzerland that lets you kill yourself if you suffer from long term depression.

A law? People do it here all the time.

You are fooling yourself if you don't realize physician assisted suicide has been a part of American medicine for decades. Read about "snowing patients" (excessive sedation).

[noonwitch]

I'd prefer to use Dr. K's suicide machine, it's quicker and more merciful.

One of my major problems with the Terry Schiavo case was that she was starved and dehydrated, and that people assumed that she didn't suffer. Although giving someone an overdose without his or her specific consent crosses the line from "letting someone die" into euthanasia, it is more humane, in some ways.

When Michigan was the center of the whole assisted suicide debate, and Dr Death was helping someone die every couple of weeks or so, an article I read in a local paper interviewed doctors at UM Hospital, who said that they gave patients overdoses when they were terminal and requested it, that most doctors do, regardless of the law.

One of the problems I had with Dr. Kervorkian was with one of his early deaths-he hooked a woman with cerebral palsy up to the machine. CP is not a terminal illness. She needed a better doctor, if she was feeling suicidal from pain related to her condition.