🚀 go-pugleaf

weaver1@world.std.com (Frank Weaver) writes:

> 
> In article <5eo9bc$dvf$1@euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au>,
> d-moss@adfa.oz.au (David Moss) wrote:
> >weaver1@world.std.com (Frank Weaver) wrote:
> >
> >>In article <FF952D3w165w@orchide.dialix.oz.au>,
> >>jan@orchide.dialix.oz.au (jan) wrote:
> [snip]
> >>>Passive euthanasia is a contradiction in terms 
> >
> >>How do you figure that?
> >
> >Easy, if you are passive, you do not do anything .
>
{snip}
>                                       Hence passive euthanasia is a
> >contradiction in terms.
> 
> Very neat, but even the physician who takes no action is doing
> something, namely refusing to give medical treatment.

The only action in refusing action is the declaring,  whether or not
this declaration is articulated, of the inaction.  The "decalaration" is
"speech" if articualted or "thought" if not, it is not "action" this 
initial premise to the slippery slope argument which follows is false. 

>                                                       Just as often,
> 'passive euthanasia' is the term applied to 'letting nature take its 
> course' by *withdrawing* treatments, such as removing the patient 
> from a mechanical respirator or a nasogastric feeding tube.  These are 
> definitely actions, but they do not kill, 'mercifully' or otherwise.
> They may (or may not) let the patient die.
> 
> It may be that passive vs. active euthanasia is a distinction without
> a difference, morally speaking.  If that is the case, there is no
> moral difference between one person who requests the withdrawal of his
> feeding tube and another who requests a lethal injection. 
>

Between Mr Weavers last post and mine, to which his last post was a
response, I had looked at some of the sources he mentioned via Mr Moss's
web site.  It was then that I noticed that *both* sides of the debate
in the US and possibly the UK take the above slippery-slope argument
seriously, it is this (and similar) argument which falsley conflates, because
even the first premise is a false one, a right to refuse treatment with a right
to request a lethal injection.  It equates doing nothing with activity and in
this protagonists across the pacific collude.

[snip]

> So you're agreeing with me, contra Jan, that opponents equate PAS

Not contra me at all (see previous post).

> with an active 'right to kill.'  
> 
> >>Burke J. Balch wrote in NRL News: "The [Ninth Circuit Court] 
> >>opinion justifies the killing not only of those supposedly 
> >>competent individuals ..."  [http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/court.txt]
> >>Note that this opinion struck down a law against providing the means to 
> >>suicide (ie. assistance) at the person's request -- not actually
> >>killing anyone.
> >
> >Assisting suicide is a crime here in Australia. It is a crime even in
> >the Northern Territory if it occurs outside the guidelines of the RTI
> >Act. The US legal system has very little influence 
> 
> Please read more carefully.  I said nothing about any legal system,
> USA or otherwise.

Whose 9th circuit court it was not ours. 
  
> [snip]
> >>>The right of a person to refuse treatment is
> >>>one neither (AFAIK) side of the debate wants to question.
> >
> >><*sigh*> Limited historical perspective, too. 
> >
> >Only from a USA ethnocentric viewpoint. 
> 
> I was not aware that Scotland was part of the USA.  I do notice you
> deleted my reference and URL to the Scottish case I used to illustrate
> just how limited Jan's perspective is.

Try a parochial perspective: what happens in Scotland and the US does not
particularly concern us, since it does not provide us with useful impirical data
regarding the possible effect of our laws, though I am (personally) interested
in what happens elsewhere.  This thread is primarily about an Australian Law
in an Australian state where any patient has the right to refuse treatment
 - even if life sustaining -.  I agree with this right, always have, and I'm
sure most Australians would not want that right to be lost. There are
safeguards, so that involuntary treatment may be mandated, that can be
invoked by medical practitioners, communtiy welfare workers, police or family. 

The burden of proof, usually of the patients incompetence to make his own
decisions, rest with those seeking the treatment and must present it to a
magistrate, if the treatment is ordered, the order is subject to the usual
avenues of appeal and must also be reviewed at regular intervals of not
more than six months.  This it would seem is the reverse of the situtation
in the US and the UK.

[snip]  
> [snip]
> >So witholding life sustaining procedures in not an issue for us in
> >Australia, 
> 
> 'Legal' and 'not an issue' are two very different things. 

In this case it is not an issue because it is legal and so are NFR
(Not For Resuscitation) orders.  Not all Australians, nurses included,
are aware of this as I discovered a week ago when my (casual) assistant
was horrified to see an NFR order in a patient's clinical notes.  Must
have got her ethical training info from an American Medical TV show
and slept through the course.  This may have some influence on the
high level of confusion regarding the RTI Act in the Australian electorate.

Given the inexact nature of medical science and the, consequentially, 
rubbery quality of the definitions in Living Wills, it will be a brave doctor
indeed who acts on its provisions, depending on it for a defence
should his actions (or inaction) be challenged.

It is not very useful looking at the arguments of the American
anti-euthanasia brigade to gain an impression of their Australian 
counterparts' perspective.

[snip]

Jan.