🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter Merel <pete@zip.com.au> wrote:

>d-moss@adfa.oz.au (David Moss) writes:

>>Fraid its not as simple as that Bill.
>>Check out
>>http://octarine.cc.adfa.oz.au/~dmoss/living/resource/kevorkia.htm
>>for a chilling example of how your "choice to die" has already been
>>perverted in the good ole US of A.

>An excellent example of how a lack of regulation leads to abuse. If Ruth
>Klooster had been attempting this under the NT law, she would not have
>succeeded.

All it takes is a couple of co-operative doctors, and don't try to
tell me it can't be done. My wife's grandfather had a "co-operative"
doctor sign his fitness to drive certificate year after year, long
after he was too blind to read a newspaper. 

> By opposing these laws, you're promoting exactly this kind
>of abuse.

Wrong Peter, by opposing the RTI Act I am ensuring that _any_ instance
of one person deliberately killing another remains illegal. No
exceptions means no misinterpretations.

>But it's also worth noting that the article has no evidence that
>Kevorkian would have cooperated with Ruth Klooster - and that seems to
>make this article rather a slur on Kevorkian. Does anyone know what
>criteria Kevorkian uses to determine which patients he will accept?

Glad you asked Peter. The answer gives us an insight into what we may
be letting ourselves in for by legalising euthanasia..

From the WWW resource http://www.iaetf.org/fctkev.htm

"In March 1990, a Detroit paper carried an article stating:

 Applications are being accepted. Oppressed by a fatal disease, a
severe handicap, a crippling deformity?
 Write Box 261, Royal Oak, Mich. 48068-0261. Show him proper
compelling medical evidence that you should die, and Dr. Jack
Kevorkian will help you kill yourself, free of charge." (8)"

Sounds like careful selection to me, lets look at how the might have
been vetted.

From the same resource:

"Doesn't Jack Kevorkian limit his services to the terminally ill who
are not depressed?

Definitely not.

"Terminally ill," as defined in most proposals to legalize euthanasia
and assisted suicide, means a life expectancy of six months or less.
(54) Yet the majority of Jack Kevorkian's "patients" did not fall
within the meaning of "terminally ill." (Kevorkian has defined
terminal illness as "any disease that curtails life even for a day."
(55) His attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, has written, "Any disease that
curtails life-span is terminal."(56) 

     He has testified that, if a person is depressed over illness or
disability, "the depression becomes irrelevant. "(57)

     He has written that the deaths of sick or disabled people would
benefit society:

          "[T]he voluntary self-elimination of individual and mortally
diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can  only enhance the
preservation of public health and welfare." (58)

     When questioned by Time magazine, Kevorkian said that doctors
will decide who dies: 

     Q. How do you decide whom to help? Does the patient have to
suffer from a life-threatening illness?

     A. No, of course not. And it doesn't have to be painful, as with
quadriplegia. But your life quality has to be nil. 

     Q. And who decides that?

     A. That's up to physicians, and nobody can gainsay what doctors
say. It all boils down to the integrity of the  doctors....

     Q. What about people who suffer emotionally and want to die?

     A. ...Once this gets going as a practice for physically
debilitated people, the psychiatrists are going to have a whopping job
because it is going to be up to them to decide how this fits into
their field. (59)

Twenty-seven people died from June 1990 through January 1996 using one
of Jack Kevorkian's machines."






David Moss,
personal opinion only.
try http://www.adfa.oz.au/~adm/politics for Australian Politics