Premier of Australia’s second largest state, Victoria, has declined a cancer patient’s request that the premier initiate legislation authorizing euthanasia, saying that the issue should be decided at the national level. A bill legalizing euthanasia was defeated in the Victorian Parliment in 2008. The news story can be found here.
Category: Euthanasia
Here is report on the recent Rasouli decision from the Ontario Court of Appeals. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-appeals-court-rules-doctors-dont-have-right-to-remove-life-support The court found that doctors didn’t have the right to withdraw medical treatment despite the family’s objection. Here is commentary from the National Right to Life website. http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/07/toronto-star-agrees-with-rasouli-decision/#more-2916 Richard M.
Marie Smith, wife of Congressman Chris Smith, runs a remarkable organization, the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (PNCI). PNCI coordinates efforts among members of democratically-elected legislatures – collectively known as parliamentarians – to advance respect for the inherent value, worth, and inviolable dignity of every human being from fertilization until natural death. The PNCI website […]
Wesley Smith notes the increased acceptance of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting in his July 4 Weekly Standard article. He notes that Julian Savulescu, a Romanian born Oxford bioethicist, supported this trend in a scholarly paper published in Bioethics. Wesley notes that Belgian doctors and bioethicists have been promoting the idea since at least 2008, […]
A valuable (and free!) interdisciplinary resource for academic research is the Social Science Research Network. It contains almost 350,000 abstracts and 280,000 manuscripts of scholarly articles in the areas of health, legal, political, philosophy, and rhetoric. I use it often to find the newest articles on a subject. An example of what you might find […]
This is a quick follow up to my post of June 6, 2011. On June 16, 2011, the US Bishops approved a statement on physician-assisted suicide. Here is the link. http://www.usccb.org/toliveeachday/bishops-statement-physician-assisted-suicide.pdf The statement provides a useful summary of the problems posed by the campaign to legalize assisted suicide. The Bishops advocate “the way of love […]
Here is a LifeNews story on a new document opposing assisted suicide that the US Catholic bishops will conider at a meeting in mid-June.http://www.lifenews.com/2011/06/01/catholic-bishops-to-vote-on-document-opposing-assisted-suicide/ This is a welcome development. After the major public battles on the issue in the mid-1990s, this issue has to some extent flown under the radar. Richard M.
Here is the LifeNews story on the death of Jack Kevorkian. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/06/03/assisted-suicide-crusader-jack-kevorkian-dies-in-hospital/ Kevorkian killed more than 100 people through assisted suicide. He was convicted for the killing of Thomas Youk and spent years in prison before being released in 2007. He was a deeply troubled man who was sympathetically treated by the media for many years. Here is […]
Here is an interesting item from Wesley Smith entitled “Modern Suicide Obsession a Troubling Sign of Nihilistic Times.” http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/05/23/modern-suicide-obsession-a-troubling-sign-of-nihilistic-times/ Richard M.
Here is a link to the Life News story on the Rasouli case that will be heard by a Canadian court next month. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/19/canada-supreme-court-to-hear-key-euthanasia-case-in-may/ The Rasouli case involves an important issue concerning whether doctors need consent before withdrawing life sustaining medical treatment. Richard M.