Dutch kill babies, the comatose and the mentally retarded!

[Stefu]

I think that anyone should be creeped by the way 'natural evolution' is used here as an argument for euthanasia.

[Pekka]

It's still a difficult issue though.. I want to have the freedom to decide myself when the situation should arise. Then again, I think it is kind of a form or murder.

I would do it only to people who are very close to me, if I was ever able to in any situation. ANd that person would have to be an daire pains and nothing could save them and they would have to ask me. And ask me again and confirm it many times. And then ask again. And if the situation is hopeless, I would do it. No doctor, no nurse but me. I don't know, I guess it's a personal thing for me I think, I'm trying to simulate the situation. I can not let my friend die from hands of a doctor even if they show wish, I'll do it. And I would want that back from my friend also. Unless they really don't want to of couse, that's kind of a big 'favour' to ask. But **** if it's going to be done anyway, it'll be me and not the doctor. I don't know why. DIfferent situation and can't be compared but in a way it can was when my doggie was put to sleep. I insisted on doing it. Pushing the poison into her. I felt no doctor should be able to do it, it was my dog and damn it I'll be the one doing it also. All else would be a crime.

A little weird mindset, sure. But that's the way I feel about it.

If I saw my friend torturing really bad, and he had 3 days to live exactly, but was in pure torture and asked me to take away the pain, had I the strength, I would.

[Seeker]

yeah that is wierd do they think that they can somehow breed out a small fraction of god's occasional horror shows?

Personally I'd say the infants should be kept on however much painkillers or sedatives are needed until they die.

But I'd also argue that in 'extreme cases' (god's little mistakes....) with the aforementioned consent, it would be OK to put a 'no heroic measures'* notice on their chart.

*that's what this is called in canada, as the article pointed out this is de facto a widespread practice, the question is that the dutch may have gone to far in being 'proactive' about death.

[MikeH]

Ned - From your article:

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."

This whole thread is a lot of fuss about nothing.

[Seeker]

Mike H the point is that the Dutch go a step farther and inject the infants with a 'death cocktail' at some point.

The common practice is simply not to try very hard to keep them alive and thus allow them to die 'naturally'.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Stefu
I think that anyone should be creeped by the way 'natural evolution' is used here as an argument for euthanasia.

I got the impression they referred to it as a natural evolution of health care practices, not evolution of the human species. You know, it wouldn't help evolution a single bit if you only kill out those who would never breed anyway. Even if they could breed, killing less than one per million wont have much effect on evolution either.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
This thread is evidence that liberals just don't believe human life is really special in any way. If it is thought that one's life must be difficult, better to snuff it.

Yeah, as opposed to the caring sharing Catholic Church and drug companies:

'
GSK linked to trials forcing Aids drugs on deprived US children

By Jason Nisse

28 November 2004

GlaxoSmithKline will be accused this week of backing drug trials in the US in which underprivileged children were forced to test Aids treatments against their will.

The trials have been taking place in New York under the auspices of the Administration for Children's Services, the body that looks after the welfare of children in New York City.

The ACS has an agreement with the Pediatric Aids Clinical Trials Group, supported by GSK and other drug companies, to test treatments on HIV-positive children. No tests can take place on children without parental consent and drug companies have had great difficulty in the past obtaining such consent for Aids drug trials.

However, the ACS is deemed to be the legal guardian for many HIV-positive children. According to a BBC2 documentary, Guinea Pig Kids, to be shown on Tuesday, the ACS has forced children to be involved in these trials, removing them from foster homes if the foster parent did not comply and even physically making the children take the drugs.

The programme interviewed the family of Garfield Momodu, an HIV-positive child who was removed from his grandmother and taken into care when she stopped giving him the drugs prescribed in the trials. Researchers also interviewed an unnamed child who said he and others were physically forced to take drugs through a peg-tube inserted into their stomachs.

GSK admits that it supplied drugs for four trials conducted in New York by the PACTG and also supplied drugs and funds for another trial run by Columbia University Medical Center. The drug company admitted that it and others in the industry "did know about the clinical trial design, but they are not directly involved in the recruitment, enrolment or participation of patients in these trials".

It added that the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, encouraged the studies. "Clinical trials involving children and orphans are therefore legal and not unusual," GSK said in a statement.

The ACS says children were selected for trials only after a rigorous vetting process and has denied that it used any strong-arm tactics. '

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=587418&host=3&dir=94

The children were based at Incarnation House in New York, or were placed with foster parents approved by the A.C.S. and Incarnation House. As long as these foster parents ensured that the children continued to take part in the drug trials, they received fees amounting to 6 000 dollars a month.



Suffer the little children to undergo a battery of unpleasant and dangerous drug trials would appear to be the new gospel....

I would suggest anyone who thinks that euthanasia is always a bad idea, even for severely malformed foetuses, actually speak to someone who is severely disabled or has a condition which causes chronic acute pain- I know of several people (real human beings that is) who are of the opinion that they would rather have been aborted, because life has been one long series of struggles against severe disability and coping with pain crises.

There's nothing noble about undergoing lifelong agony for someone's else's moral scruples.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Seeker
The common practice is simply not to try very hard to keep them alive and thus allow them to die 'naturally'.

And that is more humane?

[Seeker]

Apparently, to the parents and doctors and other caregivers involved, it is.

Maybe you misunderstand what is meant by 'God's Little Mistakes'?

These infants are not what you would recognize as babies.

They may not have skin, organs that are exterior, disarranged or 'indeterminate'.

Nature can be 'unkind' at times. Do a little research on an empty stomach before judging these parents and doctors too harshly.

[lightblue]

I agree with Nacht and MikeH. I know from the news in the UK that routinely doctors decide to withhold treatment to not lengthen the pain an infant might feel (against the parent's wishes in some cases here recently). As a parent what would you rather have, making sure the infant feels no more pain and dies peacefully, or if it dies by withdrawal of care which presumably means a prolonged process.

BTW the withdrawal of care happens all over the world, including the US.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Seeker
Nature can be 'unkind' at times. Do a little research on an empty stomach before judging these parents and doctors too harshly.

i'm not judging anyone, I meant: 'is that more humane than euthanasia'

[Locutus]

This thread is total bull****. "Dutch kill babies, the comatose and the mentally retarded!" WTF? Where does it say comatose and mentally retarded people are being killed? This article is about terminally ill newborns: babies who are going to die no matter what. It's just a matter of whether they die a natural but excruciatingly slow and painful death, or a swift but unnatural one. I can understand how some people might object to the idea (although personally I find it extremely sadistic to allow babies to live a few days/weeks longer only so they can suffer a torturous amount of pain), but to generalize the situation and suggest that anyone who is deemed 'inferior' is being brutally murdered and to compare it to the systematic wiping out of millions by the Nazi's... puhleaze

Also:

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.

Yeah, us Dutch people are real Nazi's, systematically murdering people we deem inferior by the millions... at a rate of 5 people a year

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Locutus
This article is about terminally ill newborns: babies who are going to die no matter what. It's just a matter of whether they die a natural but excruciatingly slow and painful death, or a swift but unnatural one.

I'm sorry but the statement (sorry, only in dutch) of the hospital itself makes it clear that we're not talking about terminal cases only.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Locutus
This thread is total bull****. "Dutch kill babies, the comatose and the mentally retarded!" WTF? Where does it say comatose and mentally retarded people are being killed?

Yeah, us Dutch people are real Nazi's, systematically murdering people we deem inferior by the millions... at a rate of 5 people a year

In Ned's Republican universe, where European socialism and liberalism are equivalent to Nazism.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by molly bloom
In Ned's Republican universe, where European socialism and liberalism are equivalent to Nazism.

The most obvious flaw in Neds post is that having no free will (more accurately: not being able to express your will) is a ground for euthanasia.

In the manner of the Third Reich, where euthanasia progressed from the voluntary to the involuntary, the Dutch have taken the next step. They now kill babies, the mentally retarded and the comatose on the grounds that they have no free will to begin with.

I presume, as with the Third Reich, a lot of this has to with reducing the cost of the universal health care system.