KEVORKIAN to be freed June 1 07!!!!!

[niecyrenee 2]

And Denise, I just noticed your ticker! You've done so well, losing over a hundred pounds in 8 months! That's definitely good work.

Thank you! :biggrin1: I have really worked hard at this and am very pleased with my progress thus far. In no time at all you will be banded and rocking away! How exciting!!

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

If he ended peoples lives with dignity then why didnt those people have living wills or make legal arrangements such as a DNR or other legal means of ending there own lives? Dr Kevorkian murdered those people and should still be in jail. My stepfather was in a terrible sudden horrific car crash that left him brain dead. HE had already made prior arrangements in writing to have himself disconnected from life support. This saved the family a tremendous amount of grief and heartache at having to make that decison ourselves. It would seem to me that if someone knows they are terminal the best gift they could give their families is to insure legally and in writing their last wishes. The medical field has ways that a person can die legally and with dignity and with very little pain. There life does not have to taken from them.

If you don't want to end your life early, then by all means. Don't. But you do not have the moral right to tell someone else that because of YOUR beliefs THEY must live a life of pain that cannot be managed. Many people are under the assumption that 100% of the people out there dying horrific deaths can be made comfortable until their gawd takes them and that simply is not true. People die in severe pain for a variety of reasons every single day.

You have as much moral right to tell someone they have to suffer when they die as you do to tell someone they don't have a right to pain management after a painful procedure. It simply is not yours to decide.

If your relative was already brain dead that is not the same issue as what we refer to. Not even close.

[tink128 0]

tink: you obviously didn't read my post from last night. My dad had a living will and a DNR. His doctor refused to allow him to die. His doctor was one of those doctors who after saving so many lives, decided that HE was God. I wish I could describe exactly what all they did to my dad just so his doctor wouldn't have to face the fact that his surgical procedure caused my dad's death. That louse kept my dad on life support, with no possibility of recovery, for an entire month. It was horribly gruesome and extremely painful for my father, like torture.

That is terrible what happened to your Dad. Was the doctor ever prosecuted? I have never heard of a doctor who so willfully went against the families wishes. I do express my deepest sympathies.

[tink128 0]

If you don't want to end your life early, then by all means. Don't. But you do not have the moral right to tell someone else that because of YOUR beliefs THEY must live a life of pain that cannot be managed. Many people are under the assumption that 100% of the people out there dying horrific deaths can be made comfortable until their gawd takes them and that simply is not true. People die in severe pain for a variety of reasons every single day.

You have as much moral right to tell someone they have to suffer when they die as you do to tell someone they don't have a right to pain management after a painful procedure. It simply is not yours to decide.

If your relative was already brain dead that is not the same issue as what we refer to. Not even close.

Just like the previous reply, that doctor did not have the right to go against the families wishes and play "God" and neither does anyone else terminal or not terminal. Taking someones life or even your own before it is your time is playing "GOD". How come the ethanasias have the right tp play "God" but we dont when it comes to protecting someones life? Do it legally in writing and save everyone you love the anguish. DO not put it off or you will be faced with family members who believe they are acting out your wishes and end your life for you!

as for babygirl, we do not seem to agree on anything at all. Thats OK I respect your right to your own opinion. Lets keep talking. I enjoy your style!

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

Just like the previous reply, that doctor did not have the right to go against the families wishes and play "God" and neither does anyone else terminal or not terminal. Taking someones life or even your own before it is your time is playing "GOD". How come the ethanasias have the right tp play "God" but we dont when it comes to protecting someones life? Do it legally in writing and save everyone you love the anguish. DO not put it off or you will be faced with family members who believe they are acting out your wishes and end your life for you!

as for babygirl, we do not seem to agree on anything at all. Thats OK I respect your right to your own opinion. Lets keep talking. I enjoy your style!

I think you may not be understanding what Dr. K was doing. He didn't just randomly go out and "off" people because he felt it was best. These people came to HIM and asked him for help. They were unable to do it on their own for whatever reason, an inability to pull the trigger, whatever. All Dr. K did was set up equipment so they could push the button and kill themselves. He didn't find depressed people that didn't know what they were talking about, but instead terminally ill people in pain, who were suffering came to him and asked him for help.

He did not take someone's life, he complied with the patient's request and let the patient do it themselves. There is a huge difference.

The reason your god does not play a role in the law is because you can't even prove your god exists. I lack belief in your god, why should I live according to your beliefs? Why shouldn't you be legally forced to live by the beliefs of another's god?

Quite frankly, there are as many gods out there as there are believers. Each believer tends to agree with the god they see in the mirror each morning.

[marjon9 6]

Just like the previous reply, that doctor did not have the right to go against the families wishes and play "God" and neither does anyone else terminal or not terminal. Taking someones life or even your own before it is your time is playing "GOD". How come the ethanasias have the right tp play "God" but we dont when it comes to protecting someones life? Do it legally in writing and save everyone you love the anguish. DO not put it off or you will be faced with family members who believe they are acting out your wishes and end your life for you!

as for babygirl, we do not seem to agree on anything at all. Thats OK I respect your right to your own opinion. Lets keep talking. I enjoy your style!

I know this point has been made before but it bears repeating here. Most of the people that Dr. K was involved with would have died long before if it were not for extreme acts of medical intervention. If you are really interested in having people wait until it is "god's time" for their death, then they should be let go, if they want to be. (The "family's" wished are irrelevant here. It is the wishes of the patient that matter.)

If any of the people Dr. K helped were living, say, 100 years ago, they almost surely would not have survived as long as they did. What kept them alive was things like the most modern druges, respirator machines, chemotherapy, etc. These are human-made therapies, and have nothing to do with when a person has reached "god's time" to die.

So, when people are against Dr. K's approach to assisted suicide, what they are really saying is: A person should be required to endure every possible life-extending technology and drug that human beings can invent, regardless their own wish to be free from these things, and regardless of any unspeakable pain or anything else they are going through, simply because a certain faction of individuals who likes to call themselves "christian" thinks it should be that way.

This has nothing at all to do with someone reaching "god's time to die." This is about one group of people seeking to force others to live by their definition of morality. And in the case of assisted suicide the argument is particularly ludicrous. Very few of the people Dr. K helped would be alive at all if they were allowed to die in "god's time." They are alive only because of human intervention. Why is it that those opposing Dr. K are unwilling to see that obvious fact? Very hard to understand.

[lisah25 3]

Just like the previous reply, that doctor did not have the right to go against the families wishes and play "God" and neither does anyone else terminal or not terminal. Taking someones life or even your own before it is your time is playing "GOD".

So, how measures would you approve of to keep someone alive? Many of the ones that are routine could be seen as playing God, because they are keeping someone alive who otherwise would have died.

[lisah25 3]

Yeah, what you said Mark!

[green 6]

Taking someones life or even your own before it is your time is playing "GOD". How come the ethanasias have the right tp play "God" but we dont when it comes to protecting someones life?

!

It seems to me that when we choose to employ the entire arsenal of modern medical technologal knowledge we are certainly "playing God" if we are to apply your standard to the letter. In other eras those preemies, to give one example, certainly would have been in their own little graves; it is modern medicine which saves these little creatures and surely this, too, can be considered to be playing God. You have a well defined double standard. You are happy, I am sure, to see to see people who are in distress, be it by reason of cancer, heart disease, whatever..., be saved from death through the means of modern medical

knowledge - and is this not "playing God?" - but you are unwilling to allow others who are suffering from terminal diseases and who are in unendurable pain choose to exit this life when it becomes unbearable because this is "playing God." You should get your lines of logic straight. You cannot have it both ways. And by the way, the word is spelled euthanasia.

[babygrl1234 6]

as for babygirl, we do not seem to agree on anything at all. Thats OK I respect your right to your own opinion. Lets keep talking. I enjoy your style!

It's all good. I respect yours also. I am pretty much a "to each his own" kind of person. I try to mind my own business and really don't care too much about what other people do (obviously within reasons of the law). My friends consider me a "liberal repbulican" which I think are few and far between. lol

He didn't find depressed people that didn't know what they were talking about, but instead terminally ill people in pain, who were suffering came to him and asked him for help.

I hate to have to bring this up because I do agree with what Dr. K did for those who needed it. It was found out after the fact that there were a few of his patients that were extremly depressed but autopsies showed they were not terminally ill. They were just severly depressed and wanted to end it all. I guess the biggest question would be did these people come to Dr. K and lie to him about being ill or did Dr. K lie about them being ill.

While I do not agree with him helping depressed people to off themselves I definitely agree with his helping those terminally ill patients who were ready to go.

[Carlene 12]

My friends consider me a "liberal repbulican" which I think are few and far between.

I'm a conservative Democrat! Maybe we're the voices of reason....LOL

[babygrl1234 6]

I'm a conservative Democrat! Maybe we're the voices of reason....LOL

Definitely.

[BJean 16]

tink: No the doctor was not prosecuted. None of the administrative staff or the medical staff in the hospital would have dreamed of bringing that guy before the Medical board much less a court of law! The medical profession does not work that way. It is almost always up to the patient or his family to do the dirty work. That is one reason so many doctors get away with making terribly poor decisions with not even a slap on the wrist. That's a good reason for not putting limits on monetary judgements in malpractice suits. It's one of the few checks and balances we have as a society when it comes to this very powerful profession. Of course, we didn't exercise that right in my own father's case. I don't believe that most other people, who have legitimate reasons, exercise that right either.

Right now in America we are governed by the insurance companies with regard to our medical care. We are also pretty much dictated to by doctors. We have to be pro-active when it comes to our health. It isn't easy, but it is absolutely necessary.

In fact just last night my MIL, who is in the hospital after falling and breaking her pelvis and spending time in a nursing home (supposedly for rehab.) Most of her family has no experience with doctors, hospitals or nursing homes. My DH and I showed up at the nursing home last Sunday afternoon to find her all alone, in bed, still in her nightgown, and in excrutiating pain. She was nearly delirious and her blood pressure, as it turned out was 208/174. Her left shoulder was causing intense pain, coming in waves.

We sprung into action, got her some immediate help from the nursing staff. Once they realized the condition she was in, a doctor was summoned right away. They took her blood pressure with every type of blood pressure monitor they had available. Her stomach was bloated as if she were 8 months pregnant. She said it had been that way for 3 days. No one in the family had noticed it - including us. They rushed her to intensive care in the hospital and did lots of emergency tests.

She's now in a hospital bed after the discovery that she had an intestinal blockage. They determined that her shoulder pain was caused from deferred pain from the gas in her intestinal tract. She also had a bladder infection. (TOM said on another thread a while back that if you ever have a family member in a nursing home, watch out for bladder infections - patients always get them in nursing homes because of the staff not making sure that they are hydrated because they don't want to change their clothes or bedding often - how right he was!)

We think the reason she didn't have another stroke (first one was in Dec.) or heart attack was because she was on so much coumadin. (blood thinner) This is Saturday. She is still in the hospital and being kept on lots of pain medication to manage the pain, but they told us that the pain medication that she was taking before the fall and pelvis break, probably caused the fall as well as the intestinal blockage. We're now being told that if she won't allow surgery for exploratory purposes, she will be discharged from the hospital right away. We have located a better rehabilitative nursing home (we hope), but she's in no shape to be moved anywhere and what possible good at this point would surgery do? She's 81 and very fraile.

I would love to be able to tell you that our experiences are different than most. It just isn't true. We are no more or less savvy than the next person when it comes to medical care. Our experiences are very likely the norm.

I know we were talking about euthanasia, but I can tell you that right now after what this poor, tiny fragile woman has been through, she'd implore him to rescue her and put her out of her misery, if she could. As it is, she will probably live months, perhaps years, longer in a nursing home, in pain and being treated worse than an animal. Do you really think that is what God wants for this woman?

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

I hate to have to bring this up because I do agree with what Dr. K did for those who needed it. It was found out after the fact that there were a few of his patients that were extremly depressed but autopsies showed they were not terminally ill. They were just severly depressed and wanted to end it all. I guess the biggest question would be did these people come to Dr. K and lie to him about being ill or did Dr. K lie about them being ill.

While I do not agree with him helping depressed people to off themselves I definitely agree with his helping those terminally ill patients who were ready to go.

Sources?

Terminally ill people usually are a bit on the depressed side but that doesn't mean they want to die *because* they are depressed. They are depressed because they are in excruciating pain and can't take it anymore. Dr. K didn't diagnose these people, he wasn't in the business of doing that. He was a pathologist. He had no practice where he would see patients and run tests on them.

But what are your sources that he helped people off themselves when they were not terminally ill and merely depressed? I don't believe I ever recall hearing credible sources for this.

However, this brings up another issue. Mental illness. Schizophrenics come to mind. There is no cure and there is no treatment for some people. Do we force them to endure demons chasing them and telling them to kill themselves for the rest of their days or do we respect their rights too? Difficult question for anyone who has actually seen an extreme case of schizophrenia.

[anonemouse 1]

I hate to have to bring this up because I do agree with what Dr. K did for those who needed it. It was found out after the fact that there were a few of his patients that were extremly depressed but autopsies showed they were not terminally ill. They were just severly depressed and wanted to end it all. I guess the biggest question would be did these people come to Dr. K and lie to him about being ill or did Dr. K lie about them being ill.

While I do not agree with him helping depressed people to off themselves I definitely agree with his helping those terminally ill patients who were ready to go.

I have no problems with severely depressed people seeking out euthanasia, as long as it is not a short-term depression. If you've ever been severely depressed, there is as much pain there as there is with physical ailments. It may be mental pain (or even physical, as depression can cause physical symptoms), but who are we to say one person's pain is any less important and worthy of being relieved than another person's? Of course, I don't think it should be allowed before seeking out all possible assistance from therapists and doctors, but if their pain (physical OR mental) can't be relieved, then I say that the patient should have the right to put themselves out of their misery.