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I have to agree with you on this. Right now, my husband and I are going through this. His father has end stage terminal lung cancer. He is literally dying right in front of us at home. He wants to be home. My mother in law, bless her, looks like hell because of everything she is doing to try and help him ease the pain at least alittle. He wants to die. We want him to stop suffering. The hospice worker that comes in says she can barely hear anything when she listens to his chest. The cancer is consuming his entire body now. Basically, it is coming down to when will the cancer burst. We have been told that when this happens it will be terrible. He will be suffering even more than what he is now. He will basically bleed out of any hole. I personally don't think its right that he has to suffer like that. Why should his wife suffer and see this or his son (my husband)? It makes no sense to me at all.

SM
(Kris)

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

DesFIP - indeed, perhaps the problem is the lack of (and across most of the UK at least, absence of) adequate palliative care specialists?

One thing which does annoy me even so though, is the ridiculous notion of saying to someone who is dying and in severe pain that "you have had the maximum dose" of pain medication - what does it matter? Theyre dying and the physician is worried about what - liver damage? That many cancer patients dying at home and in hospitals actually die from morphine overdose should be noted though - I am informed that nursing staff do turn the dose up to ensure they slip away peacefully when the time comes, though its not something thats acknowledged as such.

And the other thing which annoys me is the tendency for hospitals to continue trying to cure dying people with medicines which have become unnecessary and the side effects of which make the experience of dying so much more unpleasant. There is such a lack of palliative care specialists that this happens all the time and achieves nothing but distress for the patient and their family. This occurs it seems to me because of a misunderstanding of the duty of care staff have - they seem to believe that if they stop trying to cure then they are being negligent; clearly they are not, but I'd bet now that some idiot in management would have them into disciplinary procedures if they stopped treating to cure and started treating to relieve.

E

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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(4) is again an outdated and outmanouevered ethic in the light of the developments of modern medicine and could just as easily be interpreted to support euthanasia as it is often interpreted to forbid it.

The Hippocratic Oath is hardly outdated.  With regards to questions of euthanasia, it is exactly right.  Doctors should not be in the practice of deciding when life should be ended.

Quite simply, the physician should have no voice in such a debate.  Euthanasia is not a question of medical ethics, but of social ethics.  The Hippocratic Oath, properly followed, puts physicians on the sidelines of that discussion, which is where they belong.

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ORIGINAL: FangsNfeet

The concept of Euthanasia is fucked up. In the United States of America, we're not allowed to euthanise our family/loved ones who are to the point of begging for death. On the flip side, you can be charged with cruel and unusal punishment for not euthanizing a pet animal. Ending the life of a person suffering beyond belief is bad but ending the life of a pet suffering beyone belief is good. What a fucking double standared.

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

Would it be fair to say that the main argument against euthanasia is not so much tied into the idea of the value of a human life, but the monetary value of that life I wonder?

Is suicide illegal not because life itself is precious, but because a living person is a greater potential asset to the system than a dead one?

Is abortion legal not because we dismiss the value of the human life comprised by the fetus, but because a fetus has no assets and is unproductive and prevents the pregnant woman from being productive for the system?

Is euthanasia illegal because the person has monetary assets and the longer the person lives, the greater revenue to the system his assets will provide? For whether natural or induced, a death means revenue to the system from taxes anyway.

E

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ORIGINAL: Rule
The Divine does not have such a power. The Divine is reactive, acting upon request and according to consequences of such requests - i.e. precedential requests. It does not act of its own volition.