Physician Assisted Death Quotes

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don't approve of abortion? Don't have one. Don't approve of gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ's sake, don't have one. But don't tell me I can't have one - each and every one - because it offends your God.

Nothing about our pain takes Jesus by surprise. He is fully aware and fully in control. He knows how to bring our stories– knit together with God’s story as the true story– to a happy ending.

Companies spend billions on marketing and public relations campaigns to gain public trust. They award themselves “Best Hospital” prizes by measuring outcomes like “patient experience”—as if a visit to the hospital were a trip to Disney World instead of a life or death endeavor.

The Heiligenstadt Testament" Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskillful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable). Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! — and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, — a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like art exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent physician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accordance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Constrained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year! This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and [Johann], as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malady, and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs of my small fortune (if so it may be called). Share it fairly, agree together and assist each other. You know that any

The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e.g., gay marriage, gays in the military, the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e.g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research). That such issues are moral issues is surely not arbitrary. Sex and death are the gas pedals and brakes of tribal growth. (Gay sex and abortion, for example, are both alternatives to reproduction.)

It seems that part of the moral constitution of a doctor is a commitment not to intend the death of a patient, and to protect them from harm.

The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e.g., gay marriage, gays in the military, the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e.g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research).

In places that allow physicians to write lethal prescriptions—countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland and states like Oregon, Washington, and Vermont—they can do so only for terminally ill adults who face unbearable suffering, who make repeated requests on separate occasions, who are certified not to be acting out of depression or other mental illness, and who have a second physician confirming they meet the criteria. Nonetheless, the larger culture invariably determines how such authority is employed. In the Netherlands, for instance, the system has existed for decades, faced no serious opposition, and significantly grown in use. But the fact that, by 2012, one in thirty-five Dutch people sought assisted suicide at their death is not a measure of success. It is a measure of failure. Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. The Dutch have been slower than others to develop palliative care programs that might provide for it. One reason, perhaps, is that their system of assisted death may have reinforced beliefs that reducing suffering and improving lives through other means is not feasible when one becomes debilitated or seriously ill.

Death will come for us all and yet medicine still sees it as a defeat. No wonder that legal physician-assisted suicide has caused such an uproar within medical circles. Research has shown that even in jurisdictions where it is legal, confusion about its ethics, processes and procedures abound. Why? Because physician-assisted suicide allies the doctor with their enemy, namely death. Health professionals generally don’t seem to have the training and skills to assist in the dying process and most don’t appear to want them. Research has shown a strong connection between the death attitudes of health professionals and the quality of end-of-life care that they provide. For example, nurses low in death acceptance tend to have negative attitudes towards end-of-life care and cultivate poorer relationships with terminal patients. Death anxiety among healthcare providers negatively affects their attitudes towards family members of the dying. Further, death anxiety has been shown to stop relevant health professionals from initiating discussions about advance care directives. This, of course, makes it extremely difficult to ensure that the wishes of the dying are adhered to when the moment comes.

In the Netherlands, where euthanasia was legalized in 2002, some legislators have argued that the law should go even further, so that all people above a certain threshold age can receive a physician-assisted death, even if they aren’t suffering at all. In 2016, the country’s health minister, Edith Schippers, proposed a measure that would have allowed elderly people with “a well-considered opinion that their life is complete” to qualify. This, she said in a statement to parliament, would help “older people who do not have the possibility to continue life in a meaningful way, who are struggling with the loss of independence and reduced mobility, and who have a sense of loneliness, partly because of the loss of loved ones, and who are burdened by general fatigue, deterioration, and loss of personal dignity.

EXIT’s justification was that until a law permitting voluntary euthanasia was passed (which would place responsibility to help primarily on physi­cians), people had no alternative but to take their dying into their own hands.

The average time of death after stopping eating and drinking is about seven days, though 8 percent lived for more than two weeks. The last days of life were rated as peaceful, with low levels of pain and suffering, even more so than a physician-assisted death.6680 Most hospice workers said they would consider VSED themselves should they become terminally ill.

In regard to duties, if we all agreed that every one has a duty not to hasten death, then we could properly conclude it is wrong to hasten death regardless of the consequences. And we could properly conclude that it is wrong to assist such a death. But we do not all agree. Some of us believe our duty is to relieve human suffering or to allow freedom of human choice and that aid in dying is consistent with that duty.