By Wesley J. Smith Once a society embraces euthanasia consciousness, the ways one can qualify to be killed legally by a doctor continually expands. Case in point: An ethics opinion by College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia decided that a patient — not otherwise eligible under current law for euthanasia — can become …
Continue reading "Qualifying for Euthanasia by Self-Starvation in Canada"By Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition In Oregon, the Senate is debating a deceptive bill (SB 494) that appears to simply replace the current advanced directives legislation, but in fact promotes the withholding or withdrawal of nutrition and hydration (food and water) from people who are incompetent and not dying. In 2006, I …
Continue reading "Oregon Senate Bill 494 will starve and dehydrate incompetent people to death"By Wesley J. Smith If there is any aspect of the culture of death not supported and promoted by the New York Times, I haven’t seen it. Now, Paula Span, the Gray (Ashen?) Lady’s “The New Old Age” columnist pushes suicide by starvation, known in euthanasia parlance as “voluntary stop eating and drinking.” It is …
Continue reading "New York Times Pushes Suicide by Starvation"By Nancy Valko Physician-assisted suicide is not just about someone taking a lethal overdose of medicine prescribed by a doctor. For many years, Compassion and Choices (the former and more appropriately named Hemlock Society) has also promoted VSED (voluntary stopping of eating and drinking) as just other end of life option they insist is legal …
Continue reading "New York Times, Dr. Timothy Quill Promote Physician-Assisted Suicide by Starvation and Dehydration"By Wesley J. Smith If there is any aspect of the culture of death not supported and promoted by the New York Times, I haven’t seen it. Now, Paula Span, the Gray (Ashen?) Lady’s “The New Old Age” columnist pushes suicide by starvation, known in euthanasia parlance as “voluntary stop eating and drinking.” It is …
Continue reading "New York Times Pushes Suicide by Starvation"By Wesley J. Smith The principle that all patients must always receive humane care is under pronounced assault in bioethics, Indeed, some bioethicists now argue that nursing homes should be required to starve Alzheimer’s patients to death–even if they willingly eat, and presumably even if the patient begs for food–if so instructed in an advance …
Continue reading "“Starve Alzheimer’s Patients” Pushed Again"By Wesley J. Smith Immoral bioethical policies and practices advance toward implementation through discourse–first in professional journals, and then in elite popular media columns. That process is now gearing up regarding what I call “VSED-by-Proxy.” VSED stands for “voluntary stopping eating and drinking”–suicide by self-starvation–pushed for the elderly and others by those compaaaaa–ssssss–ionate death …
Continue reading "Let’s Force Doctors to Starve Alzheimer’s Patients!"By Wesley J. Smith I continue to push back against the starvation killing agenda now being promoted vigorously among assisted suicide advocacy groups and by some bioethics. Toward that end, I have a piece just out in the Weekly Standard warning about where this is heading. First, I establish context. From, “The Ethics of …
Continue reading "Starving Our Way Toward Lethal Injections"By Wesley J. Smith No line in bioethics is ever fixed. Rather, the push to eradicate the boundaries that keep medical professionalism tied to Hippocratic values (sniffed at as “paternalism” by many in the field) continues unabated, with new boundary lines created, consolidated, and then moved again into ever-more extreme territory. Some call this …
Continue reading "Starving Patients Who Eat Next Stop on Slippery Slope"By Wesley J. Smith The “death with dignity” and bioethics crowds grow increasingly extreme. Now, they are pushing starvation. First, it was removing feeding tubes from the cognitively disabled, slow killing excused as removing medical treatment. Do it to a dog and go to jail. Do it to Terri Schiavo and it’s merely “medical …
Continue reading "Pushing Starvation as “Death with Dignity”"By Wesley J. Smith A disturbing sign of the times: The focus on hastening death grows ever more intense. Euthanasia groups, for example, increasingly push VSED–”voluntary stop eating and drinking”–to become dead. But the rigors and pain associated with self-starvation require a doctor’s help to accomplish. The question is whether helping patients starve/dehydrate themselves …
Continue reading "Should Doctors Should Aid Self-Starvation?"