Deaf twins going blind are euthanized

[hemet dennis]

I do not remember where I originally saw the article, but there is a story about it from the Huffington Post that has some additional detail, i.e. interview with Doctor and their older brother. In addition the original and detailed story also revealed that they had suffered from quite a bit more then deafness and going blind.

Well here's the one you mentioned

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/marc-eddy-verbessem-belgium-euthanasia_n_2472320.html

I would have agreed with the first hospital that refused to do it.

 

[Matthew3590]

Wow, just wow

Thank goodness Helen Keller didn't live in Belgium.

I wonder what the statistics would be on patients suffering debilitating disabilities ie blindness, paralised, amputation at time it occurred who wished they were dead. Compared to same patients 5 years later when they have had time to deal with the loss emotionally of that function. I'd be really interested to see if the amount wanting to die was still the same.

Hellen wanted to live from the stuff I read about her. These two wanted to die. Consented euthanasia should be legal.

 

[hemet dennis]

Quote:
Well if someone is having a bad day should they be able to go to the doctor and be killed ?

 

[ChickensRDinos]

Well if someone is having a bad day should they be able to go to the doctor and be killed ?

That is not how the law works. It is treated as a medical procedure with a evaluation process which includes a complete mental competency evaluation from a doctor that has provided long term care and a second doctor unrelated to the case must also sign off as a sort of checks and balances. It is far from a one day process.

Statistically it is most often used by patients with terminal diseases associated with cronic, unbearable pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia#Belgium

http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)14520-5/fulltext

 

[hemet dennis]

Quote: Sounded more like they shopped around for a doctor after the first ones turned them down.

 

[Chick1043]

Wow. That's really sad! All I can say is Hellen Keller. :/

 

[cupman]

Sounded more like they shopped around for a doctor after the first ones turned them down.

Why are you so concerned about their lives? I just think if there is anything you should be able to control it is your own life. If I recall correctly you are a big proponent of "keeping big government out of our lives" so why does this trouble you so much? To be blind and deaf is a horrible situation that none of us can comprehend. I don't think it can be compared with "having a bad day." It's a sad story but their ending isn't weak or tragic. They were just ready to move on.

 

[hemet dennis]

Quote:
Maybe I put a higher value on life then some. And yes I don't believe in the Government being in everyones everyday life, but there's a place for Government. I'm not anti Government. I also believe that a person that's bedridden and in constant pain should have the right to end their life. I also don't believe that this case even qualified under the law as I read it. I also will say that I don't know where the line should be, but it shouldn't ever have someone else deciding that another should die. I also have a living will so that if I end up as a veg. with no hope of any quality of life then it has a DNR order and pull the plug.
In the case of these two there one major reason to die was they wouldn't be able to see each other, and yes they probably communicated by sign but they could have learned to sign by feel. If one of them had die from something, hit by a car or something, could the other go to the doctor and say he was hurting from missing the other and have the doctor kill him ?

 

[PaulaSB12]

Not sure what euthanasia in Belgium has to do with chickens. . . I've often thought about how we Americans are allowed to offer more compassion to our our loved animals by having them put to sleep instead of suffering while our loved ones who have terminal illnesses (like my deceased sister-in-law) are forced to suffer to the end. That's just my personal thought. It's difficult to judge the decisions of others when we don't live their lives, and know so little about their situations.

Holland has euthanasia, when old people in a country are too scared to go to hospital because they know doctors are euthanising without consent then the system needs to be got rid of.
http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/holland-background/

The Dutch define “euthanasia” in a very limited way: “Euthanasia is understood [as] an action which aims at taking the life of anotherat the latter’s expressed request. It concerns an action of which death is the purpose and the result.” (4) (Emphasis added.) This definition applies only to voluntary euthanasia and excludes what the rest of the world refers to as non-voluntary or involuntaryeuthanasia, the killing of a patient without the patient’s knowledge or consent. The Dutch call this “life-terminating treatment.”
Some physicians use this distinction between “euthanasia” and “life-terminating treatment” to avoid having a patient’s death classified as “euthanasia,” thus freeing doctors from following the established euthanasia guidelines and reporting the death to local authorities. One such example was discussed during the December 1990 Institute for Bioethics conference in Maastricht, Holland. A physician from The Netherlands Cancer Institute told of approximately 30 cases a year where doctors ended patients’ lives after the patients intentionally had been put into a coma by means of a morphine injection. The Cancer Institute physician then stated that these deaths were notconsidered “euthanasia” because they were not voluntary, and that to have discussed the plan to end these patients’ lives with the patients would have been “rude” since they all knew they had incurable conditions. (5)
For the sake of clarity in this fact sheet, the direct and intentional termination of a patient’s life, performed without the patient’s consent, will be termed “involuntary euthanasia.”
THE FACTS
The Remmelink Report– On September 10, 1991, the results of the first, official government study of the practice of Dutch euthanasia were released. The two volume report (6)–popularly referred to as the Remmelink Report (after Professor J. Remmelink, M.J., attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands, who headed the study committee)–documents the prevalence ofinvoluntary euthanasia in Holland, as well as the fact that, to a large degree, doctors have taken over end-of-life decision making regarding euthanasia. The data indicate that, despite long-standing, court-approved euthanasia guidelines developed to protect patients, abuse has become an accepted norm. According to the Remmelink Report, in 1990:

• 2,300 people died as the result of doctors killing them upon request (active, voluntary euthanasia).(7)
• 400 people died as a result of doctors providing them with the means to kill themselves (physician-assisted suicide).(8)
• 1,040 people (an average of 3 per day) died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patients’ knowledge or consent.(9)
  • 14% of these patients were fully competent. (10)
  • 72% had never given any indication that they would want their lives terminated. (11)
  • In 8% of the cases, doctors performed involuntary euthanasia despite the fact that they believed alternative options were still possible. (12)
• In addition, 8,100 patients died as a result of doctors deliberately giving them overdoses of pain medication, not for the primary purpose of controlling pain, but to hasten the patient’s death. (13) In 61% of these cases (4,941 patients), the intentional overdose was given without the patient’s consent.(14)
• According to the Remmelink Report, Dutch physicians deliberately and intentionally ended the lives of 11,840 people by lethal overdoses or injections–a figure which accounts for 9.1% of the annual overall death rate of 130,000 per year. The majority of all euthanasia deaths in Holland are involuntary deaths.
• The Remmelink Report figures cited here do not include thousands of other cases, also reported in the study, in which life-sustaining treatment was withheld or withdrawn without the patient’s consent and with the intention of causing the patient’s death. (15) Nor do the figures include cases of involuntary euthanasia performed on disabled newborns, children with life-threatening conditions, or psychiatric patients. (16)
• The most frequently cited reasons given for ending the lives of patients without their knowledge or consent were: “low quality of life,” “no prospect for improvement,” and “the family couldn’t take it anymore.”(17)
• In 45% of cases involving hospitalized patients who were involuntarily euthanized, the patients’ families had no knowledge that their loved ones’ lives were deliberately terminated by doctors. (18)
• According to the 1990 census, the population of Holland is approximately 15 million. That is only half the population of California. To get some idea of how the Remmelink Report statistics would apply to the U.S., those figures would have to be multiplied 16.6 times (based on the 1990 U.S. census population of approximately 250 million).

Falsified Death Certificates —In the overwhelming majority of Dutch euthanasia cases, doctors–in order to avoid additional paperwork and scrutiny from local authorities–deliberately falsify patients’ death certificates, stating that the deaths occurred from natural causes. (19) In reference to Dutch euthanasia guidelines and the requirement that physicians report all euthanasia and assisted-suicide deaths to local prosecutors, a government health inspector recently told the New York Times: “In the end the system depends on the integrity of the physician, of what and how he reports. If the family doctor does not report a case of voluntary euthanasia or an assisted suicide, there is nothing to control.” (20)
Inadequate Pain Control and Comfort Care — In 1988, the British Medical Association released the findings of a study on Dutch euthanasia conducted at the request of British right-to-die advocates. The study found that, in spite of the fact that medical care is provided to everyone in Holland, palliative care (comfort care) programs, with adequate pain control techniques and knowledge, were poorly developed. (21) Where euthanasia is an accepted medical solution to patients’ pain and suffering, there is little incentive to develop programs which provide modern, available, and effective pain control for patients. As of mid-1990, only two hospice programs were in operation in all of Holland, and the services they provided were very limited. (22)
Broadening Interpretations of Euthanasia Guidelines

• In July 1992, the Dutch Pediatric Association announced that it was issuing formal guidelines for killing severely handicapped newborns. Dr. Zier Versluys, chairman of the association’s Working Group on Neonatal Ethics, said that “Both for the parents and the children, an early death is better than life.” Dr. Versluys also indicated that euthanasia is an integral part of good medical practice in relation to newborn babies. (23) Doctors would judge if a baby’s “quality of life” is such that the baby should be killed.
• A 2/15/93 statement released by the Dutch Justice Ministry proposed extending the court-approved, euthanasia guidelines to formally include “active medical intervention to cut short life without an express request.” (Emphasis added.) Liesbeth Rensman, a spokesperson for the Ministry, said that this would be the first step toward the official sanctioning of euthanasia for those who cannot ask for it, particularly psychiatric patients and handicapped newborns.(24)
• A 4/21/93 landmark Dutch court decision affirmed euthanasia for psychiatric reasons. The court found that psychiatrist Dr. Boudewijn Chabot was medically justified and followed established euthanasia guidelines in helping his physically healthy, but depressed, patient commit suicide. The patient, 50-year-old Hilly Bosscher, said she wanted to die after the deaths of her two children and the subsequent breakup of her marriage.(25)

Euthanasia “Fallout” — The effects of euthanasia policy and practice have been felt in all segments of Dutch society:

• Some Dutch doctors provide “self-help programs” for adolescents to end their lives. (26)
• General practitioners wishing to admit elderly patients to hospitals have sometimes been advised to give the patients lethal injections instead. (27)
• Cost containment is one of the main aims of Dutch health care policy. (28)
• Euthanasia training has been part of both medical and nursing school curricula. (29)
• Euthanasia has been administered to people with diabetes, rheumatism, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, bronchitis, and accident victims. (30)
• In 1990, the Dutch Patients’ Association, a disability rights organization, developed wallet-size cards which state that if the signer is admitted to a hospital “no treatment be administered with the intention to terminate life.” Many in Holland see the card as a necessity to help prevent involuntary euthanasia being performed on those who do not want their lives ended, especially those whose lives are considered low in quality. (31)
• In 1993, the Dutch senior citizens’ group, the Protestant Christian Elderly Society, surveyed 2,066 seniors on general health care issues. The Survey did not address the euthanasia issue in any way, yet ten percent of the elderly respondents clearly indicated that, because of the Dutch euthanasia policy, they are afraid that their lives could be terminated without their request. According to the Elderly Society director, Hans Homans. “They are afraid that at a certain moment, on the basis of age, a treatment will be considered no longer economically viable, and an early end to their lives will be made.” (32)

The Irony of History — During World War ll, Holland was the only occupied country whose doctors refused to participate in the German euthanasia program. Dutch physicians openly defied an order to treat only those patients who had a good chance of full recovery. They recognized that to comply with the order would have been the first step away from their duty to care for all patients. The German officer who gave that order was later executed for war crimes. Remarkably, during the entire German occupation of Holland, Dutch doctors never recommended nor participated in one euthanasia death. (33) Commenting on this fact in his essay “The Humane Holocaust,” highly respected British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote that it took only a few decades “to transform a war crime into an act of compassion.” (34)
so about 1o% of the death rate in holland is due to involuntary euthanasia, most without the patients consent and in 8% where there is alternative treatments available.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...derly-people-carry-anti-euthanasia-cards.html


He mentioned the comments of Lord McColl made in the House of Lords that in the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been officially legalised and regulated since 2002, doctors found the cases increasingly easy to carry out while “many elderly people in the Netherlands are so fearful of euthanasia that they carry cards around with them saying that they do not want it”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234295/Now-Dutch-turn-legalised-mercy-killing.html
Legalised euthanasia has led to a severe decline in the quality of care for terminally-ill patients in Holland, it has been claimed.
Many ask to die 'out of fear' because of an absence of effective pain relief, according to a new book.
Even the architect of the controversial law has admitted she may have made a mistake in pushing it through because of its impact on services for the elderly.
Holland was the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia, in 2002.
But Dr Els Borst, the former Health Minister and Deputy Prime Minister who guided the law through the Dutch parliament, now says it was brought in 'far too early'.
Without elaborating, she admitted that medical care for the terminally-ill had declined since the law came into effect.
She said more should have been done legally to protect people who wanted to die natural deaths.
'In the Netherlands, we first listened to the political and societal demand in favour of euthanasia,' said Dr Borst. 'Obviously, this was not in the proper order.'
The former hospital doctor made her remarks in an interview with researcher Dr Anne-Marie The, for a book on the history of euthanasia called Redeemer Under God.
Dr The, who has studied euthanasia for 15 years, said that palliative care was so inadequate in Holland that patients 'often ask for euthanasia out of fear' of dying in agony because care and pain relief is so poor.
She added that a crisis had developed and that 'to think that we have neatly arranged everything by adopting the euthanasia law is an illusion'.


More...

• DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Showing no mercy

Phyllis Bowman of Right to Life, a British group opposed to euthanasia, said she had witnessed pro-euthanasia campaigners picket hospices in Holland.
She said it was so bad that Amsterdam, which has a population of 1.2million people, is now served by just two tiny hospices.

Clarification: Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was asked to define when someone should be prosecuted for assisting suicide​

'People were marching round the building shouting and roaring and were screaming that the hospice was denying people their right to die,' she said.
'The pro-euthanasia campaigners set out to smash the hospice movement. People can no longer get palliative care when they need it - they just get an injection.'
The Dutch euthanasia law gives doctors immunity from prosecution if they help to kill patients over the age of 12 who are suffering unbearably from incurable conditions and who have repeatedly requested euthanasia.
It is usually carried out by administering a strong sedative to put the patient in a coma, followed by a drug to stop the breathing and cause death.
Cases of euthanasia in the country have increased from 1,626 in 2003 to 2,331 in 2008. It is also alleged that there have been thousands of cases of involuntary euthanasia and dozens of killings of disabled newborns.
Campaigners in Britain said Dr Borst's remarks showed the dangers of legalising euthanasia in the UK.
Dr Peter Saunders, from the Care Not Killing Alliance, an umbrella group of more than 50 disabled, medical and religious charities, said: 'If you introduce guidelines that help people to avoid prosecution then you will get a huge escalation of cases.'
Fears that Britain might introduce a euthanasia law have been mounting since Law Lords ordered Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to clarify when a person should be prosecuted for assisting suicide.
His guidance, published in September, said prosecution was likely if the 'victim' was under 18, had a mental illness or was in good physical health. Assisting in more than one case or being paid for assistance would also lead to prosecution.
Although it does not guarantee anyone immunity, it says a criminal action is unlikely if the victim had a grave illness or disability, was determined to kill themselves and was a close friend or relative of a helper, who was motivated by compassion.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234295/Now-Dutch-turn-legalised-mercy-killing.html#ixzz2I9MUn884
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So the pro euthanasia groups want the hospices to be shut down they don't want palliative care just euthanasia

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

I am sure not for all that ^^^^ especially being born a disabled newborn... The OP story though sure sounds like to adults making a choice. Not like they could not have done it crudely at home like it is done in the US every day..