Euthanasia Best Quotes

Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from an incurable and painful or extremely distressing condition. In these circumstances one cannot say that to choose to die quickly is obviously irrational.

That fall it was the most talked about book in America, because the pundits could not fathom why a book giving guidance on suicide could be in such huge demand. What, they asked, had happened to America?   The simple answer was perhaps contained in my response on ABC-TV’s Nightline program when Barbara Walters asked me: 'Why is it a best-seller, Mr. Humphry?' My reply was: 'Because everybody dies, and nearly every person wonders, however privately, what form that death will take. They’re looking to Final Exit for options.

At the deathbed of Christianity. Really active people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvellously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that will in the end be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone to exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demand s elevated to godhead that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much 'God, freedom and immortality' that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition will prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity.

This about it for a moment. It is truly very odd. We apparently believe that we own our own bodies as possessions and should be allowed to do with them more or less anything we choose, from euthanasia to a boob job, but we do not want to be on our own with these precise possessions. We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person. We see moral and social conventions as inhibitions on our personal freedoms, and yet we are frightened of anyone who goes away from the crowd and develops 'eccentric' habits. We believe that everyone has a singular personal 'voice' and is, moreover, unquestionably creative, but we treat with dark suspicion (at best) anyone who uses one of the most clearly established methods of developing that creativity - solitude. We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone. We declare that personal freedom and autonomy is both a right and good, but we think anyone who exercises that freedom autonomously is 'sad, mad or bad'. Or all three at once.

If we look honestly at the way many people manage their dogs today, we are faced with a staggering reflection of irresponsibility and lack of compassion. It is difficult to refer to a dog as “man’s best friend” when more than six million unwanted adult dogs and puppies are euthanized every year. We are not speaking here of the humane killing of animals done out of a sense of responsible stewardship but of the massive human negligence that leads to euthanasia. For those who doubt the serious implications of this situation, a trip to the local animal shelter can be a real eye-opener. We recall one client who dismissed our advice about spaying her female shepherd, explaining she felt it was important for her children to have the experience of seeing puppies born. When we asked her how she intended to care for and give homes to the puppies, she responded that she really had not thought about it at all and that she would probably leave them at the local humane society when it was time for them to be weaned. We then asked her what value such an experience would have if the principal lesson her children would learn is that puppies are cute little playthings who, when sufficiently used, may then be conveniently disposed of. Fortunately, our questioning convinced her of her faulty thinking, and she left with a new respect for the implications of bringing puppies into the world.

Some moral philosophers try to thread a boundary across this treacherous landscape by equating personhood with cognitive traits that humans happen to possess. These include an ability to reflect upon oneself as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death, and to express a choice not to die. At first glance the boundary is appealing because it puts humans on one side and animals and conceptuses on the other. But it also implies that nothing is wrong with killing unwanted newborns, the senile, and the mentally handicapped, who lack the qualifying traits. Almost no one is willing to accept a criterion with those implications. There is no solution to these dilemmas, because they arise out of a fundamental incommensurability: between our intuitive psychology, with its all-or-none concept of a person or soul, and the brute facts of biology, which tell us that the human brain evolved gradually, develops gradually, and can die gradually. And that means that moral conundrums such as abortion, euthanasia, and animal rights will never be resolved in a decisive and intuitively satisfying way. This does not mean that no policy is defensible and that the whole matter should be left to personal taste, political power, or religious dogma. As the bioethicist Ronald Green has pointed out, it just means we have to reconceptualize the problem: from finding a boundary in nature to choosing a boundary that best trades off the conflicting goods and evils for each policy dilemma. We should make decisions in each case that can be practically implemented, that maximize happiness, and that minimize current and future suffering.

One of the other interviewers, whose name I had forgotten, quickly picked up the ball and posed a question to Steve. He asked, 'Mr. Cranston, what do you think of euthanasia?' Steve got a confused look on his face and asked the doctor to repeat the question. He listened to the question again and still looked befuddled. He then, in a hesitating voice, said, 'Gosh, I never thought about it before, but I think they are probably just as nice as the youth in the United States.' Dr. Waxman was still sitting with his head down and his hand over his eyes. At this point I could see he was shaking all over and doing his best to keep from exploding into laughter.

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No. 1, when you ask who’s interested in this, the usual answer is, terminally ill people with excruciating pain. False. Factually not true. It tends to be a preoccupation of people who are depressed or hopeless for other reasons. No surprise, actually, if you look at what leads to suicide: hopelessness and depression. You have to look at euthanasia or assisted suicide as more like suicide than like a good death. Second, this notion that there’s no slippery slope, as advocates have long claimed? Totally wrong. Look at Belgium and the Netherlands: First, it’s accepted for adults who are competent and give consent. Then, it’s “We’re going to extend it to neonates with genetic defects, and adolescents.” Any time we do anything in medicine, it’s the same way: We develop an intervention for a narrow group of people, and once it’s well accepted, it gets expanded. I think it’s false to say, “We can hold the line here.” It doesn’t work that way. Third, people say this is a quick, reliable, painless intervention. No medical intervention in history is quick, reliable, painless and has no flaws. In the Netherlands, there’s about a 17 to 20 percent rate of problems, something screwing up. Initially, when the Oregon people published — “We have no problems. Every case went flawlessly!” — you knew the data was wrong. It had to be wrong. Either you’re not getting every case, so the denominator was wrong, or people are lying. There’s nobody who does a procedure, not even blood draws, and it’s perfect every time. So this idea that this is quick, reliable and painless is nonsense. And the last and most important point is: You want to legalize these interventions to improve end-of-life care in this country? That’s your motivation and this is your method? PS: I don’t think people argue that–— ZE: [interrupting] Oh, people do argue that! That is the justification for these procedures: It’s going to improve end-of-life care and give people control. The problem is, even in countries that have legalized it for a long time, at best 3 percent of people die this way in the Netherlands and Belgium. At best, 10 percent express interest in it. That is not a way to improve end-of-life care. You don’t focus lots of attention and effort on 3 percent. It’s the 97 percent, if you want to improve care. The typical response is, we can do both. Hmmm. Every system I’ve ever seen has a bandwidth problem: You can only do so much. We ought to focus our attention on the vast, vast majority, 97 percent of people, for whom this is not the right intervention and get that right — and we are far from that. I don’t think legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide are the way to go. It’s a big, big distraction.

In the absence of Christianity, suicide and euthanasia become, perhaps, the ultimate and extreme (if mistaken) vindication of human choice and human dignity: my life is mine, and I can end it when I want to. In this way, individual liberty is reduced to a kind of death cult, at best. At worst, in the hands of the state it gradually becomes a tool for the eradication of unwanted citizens.

The period of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-45) in many ways became a time of profound trial for the diaconal movement. It turned out that the diaconal institutions largely adapted to the dominant ideology and found no difficulties in co-operating with the authorities.9 Some few resisted, as did Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1877-1946), the director of an institution for people with mental disabilities. He did his best to protect them against the Nazi’s euthanasia and sterilisation policies. But he was an exception, as was the case of most professional health workers at that time:

When a doctor is prescribing a lethal concoction to be taken orally, the drugs are best taken in a dissolved liquid, which can be downed quickly. The occasional delayed-action death is almost always caused by the patient falling asleep before taking enough.

In the year following the 1991 publication of Final Exit, Derek Humphry’s best-selling book, which presented in detail a variety of ways to commit suicide (including, prominently, suffocation by plastic bag), suicidal asphyxiations involving plastic bags increased by 31 percent. Peter Marzuk and his colleagues at Cornell University Medical College in New York noted that although the total number of suicides did not increase, the publicity surrounding this particularly lethal method may have had a deadly impact on impulsive and ambivalent individuals. They suggest, “with good cause, that clinicians include in their assessments of suicide risk questions not only about actions of potential concern, such as writing suicide notes or drawing up wills, but whether patients have obtained and read literature about euthanasia or assisted suicide.

The practice of euthanasia, under some circumstances, is morally required by the two most widely regarded principles that guide medical practice: respect for patient autonomy and promoting patient’s best interests. In the Netherlands and Belgium active euthanasia may be carried out within the law.

Psychiatrist Robert Lifton, in his many interviews with Nazi doctors, confirms that the highest-ranking leaders were mentally healthy, even in many ways admirable, men. Karl Brandt, for instance, a prominent academic physician, a member of an aristocratic family, educated in the best universities, one of Hitler’s close doctors, was a leader of the medical euthanasia of mentally ill patients.

The increase in the aggressive tendencies in "man's best friend" that is leading to so many euthanasias is another example of the companion animal as the sentinel to mankind of the effects of vaccines. Mercury is now known to increase anxiety, irritability, depression and aggression. They have both animal and human studies to prove that vaccines containing mercury and aluminum are responsible for a large field of neurodegenerative disorders.