Euthanasia Debate Woman Found Dead

[nacktman]

Euthanasia debate woman found dead

<!-- google_ad_section_start (name=blsadstrgt)--> A French woman severely disfigured by facial tumors has been found dead just two days after a court rejected her request for an assisted suicide. Medical examiners were Thursday looking into the death of 52-year-old Chantal Sebire -- whose case had prompted nominally Roman Catholic France to reexamine its stance on euthanasia -- to determine whether anything illegal had taken place.


It was not immediately clear how Sebire died.


Sebire had suffered from esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare and incurable form of cancer for eight years, developing tumors in her nasal passages and sinuses that distorted her face and caused her nose and eyes to bulge.


Sound off: What do you think about euthanasia?


The woman from Dijon, in eastern France, said drugs were ineffective against the excruciating pain caused by the condition and there was no reason doctors should not be permitted to hasten her death.


Assisted suicide is illegal in France, however. The law permits only passive euthanasia -- removing feeding and hydration tubes when a person is in a coma, or inducing a coma and then removing the tubes.


Sebire's lawyer had tried to convince a French court that it was "barbaric" to put her through the ordeal of dying slowly in an artificial coma, something that could take up to two weeks while her three children looked on in anguish.


The court turned down the appeal Monday.


At the same time, Sebire wrote a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy appealing for help, but he responded by suggesting top doctors should reexamine her for a second opinion.


Her plight and the questions it raised caused so much public debate in France that when Sebire was found dead Wednesday night, it made front-page news in heavyweight papers including Le Figaro and Le Parisien.


CNN Senior International Correspondent Jim Bitterman in Paris said the Sebire had many supporters in France with hundreds of people writing to her to express their backing. Watch as euthanasia row divides France.
"One of the reasons for this is this woman was a relatively young mother of three children and many people could sympathize. People think 'what would I do in the same circumstances.'"


A French group called the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, which took up Sebire's cause, believes laws must be changed to take such cases into account.


"It is not the liberty of a politician or a doctor -- it's the liberty of the person who is suffering, who has a terminal disease," said Jean-Luc Romero, president of the group.


"It's only the decision of the people who have a terminal disease to decide (whether they may die)."


Others disagree.


"It isn't because a citizen says 'I want this' that we should modify the law," said Patrick Verspieren, a Jesuit bio-ethics expert. "The law is already quite open."


France's prime minister, health and justice ministers all made clear they did not believe changes in French law are needed.



(The above is from CNN)

[MoonShadow]

How sad

I support that we should have assisted suicides when we find our quality of life horrible and beyond excruiciating pain or being in a drug stupor due to pain.

Here again, we have cultures and societies telling us what we will do or not do when we are terminally ill, will be dying from the disease, and our quality of life as we know is no longer available. This is wrong! It is not up to others to tell us, the dying, that we cannot die with dignity.

The end of one's life due to terminal illness should be up to them and if they choose to have assisted suicide, then they should have this available to them. Furthermore, we should define it something other than "assisted suicide" to something like "humanely terminated". Dying form agony from disease is not humane; being allowed to end life due to disease is humane.

[nimrod]

Yes life is precious and no one likes seeing a loved one die, but it is worse to see a loved one die slowly and in pain. If it is their decision to end the suffering who are we to say no just to keep them here longer. Are we really that selfish?

[BinCo]

Horrible. But too common.

Every person that I have ever spoken to about assisted suicide and stands against has never had to watch a family member slowly die. It should absolutely be up to the individual and the family. My father and step-father both died of cancer. It was a horrible way to go, even for the ones who stay behind.

I find it rude how all the conservative jerks who stand against assisted suicide are also the first the scream for a less intrusive government. ( Unless that government can force a women to have a child or force a diseased person to suffer and die naturally :rolleyes:)

You should be able to get a series of injections, ala Dr. Kevorkian, to terminate your life if you choose. This is a lot easier on the family than putting a gun in your mouth. It would allow the family to be there and say goodbye with dignity. Of course, imho, the decision to push for laws against p-a suicude is religious based as many seem to call it an affront to God.

[KirkOntario]

One need only look at the experience to Hollland where you wll find widespread abuse of euthanasia and pressure on the sick, the dying, and the disabled to terminate their lives. This is a society that has gone down the slippery slope.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/616jszlg.asp

"FIRST, Dutch euthanasia advocates said that patient killing will be limited to the competent, terminally ill who ask for it. Then, when doctors began euthanizing patients who clearly were not terminally ill, sweat not, they soothed: medicalized killing will be limited to competent people with incurable illnesses or disabilities. Then, when doctors began killing patients who were depressed but not physically ill, not to worry, they told us: only competent depressed people whose desire to commit suicide is "rational" will have their deaths facilitated. Then, when doctors began killing incompetent people, such as those with Alzheimer's, it's all under control, they crooned: non-voluntary killing will be limited to patients who would have asked for it if they were competent.

And now they want to euthanize children.

In the Netherlands, Groningen University Hospital has decided its doctors will euthanize children under the age of 12, if doctors believe their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness. But what does that mean? In many cases, as occurs now with adults, it will become an excuse not to provide proper pain control for children who are dying of potentially agonizing maladies such as cancer, and doing away with them instead. As for those deemed "incurable"--this term is merely a euphemism for killing babies and children who are seriously disabled. "

Thousands of people in the Netherlands are now being euthanized without genuine consent.

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95000390

"Some of these deaths are the classic cases cited by right-to-die advocates: A terminally ill patient, in agony, demanding to "die with dignity." But many are not. An estimated 5,981 people--an average of 16 per day--were killed by their doctors without their consent, according to the Dutch government report.

And these numbers do not measure several other groups that are put to death involuntarily: disabled infants, terminally ill children and mental patients. Some 8% of all infants who die in the Netherlands are killed by their doctors, according to a 1997 study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal. Consider the case of Dr. Henk Prins, who killed--with her parents' consent--a three-day old girl with spina bifida and an open wound at the base of her spine. Dr. Prins never made any attempt to treat the wound, according to Wesley J. Smith, author of the book "Culture of Death." The treatment was death. Euthanasia critics have talked about the "slippery slope" as a possibility; in the Netherlands, it is a fact."

[BinCo]

KirkOntario: While I see your concern, and it should be worked on to solve abuse problems, I strongly believe that this is the absolute most invasive form of government today. I hope you are never in the position to have to be with a loved one at this time. But I take comfort in the obvious position that you believe the government should be the one making your family decisions.

I want the government more out of my life, especially out of my family life and death decisions. Then again, many conservatives are always proving to be hipocrites who want less regulation. The exception to that distaste in regulation being in areas that they feel should be regulated out of existance, like abortion, P-A suicide, Pornography, Drugs, Alcohol on Sundays... Democrats.

[Boreas]

This is such a difficult issue. I totally agree with the idea that a person should have the right to decide when they die. Along with that is the right to die with some dignity.

So, what happens when the person is unable to swallow the pills themselves, or to kill themselves? Who will be the person to "pull the trigger"? There does need to be some clear guidelines about that so that no one would be charged with some form of murder/manslaughter.

On another vein, our healthcare system seems to be measured more in dollars, rather than in health. It concerns me that some would cite costs for healthcare as a reason to assist a suicide.

We have a situation in Canada that has raised this issue, though it is not assisted suicide. There is an elderly Jewish man on life support in Manitoba. Doctors have said he has no chance of a recovery, and that it is only the medical machines and such that are keeping him alive. His family believes that where there is life there is hope. They are saying they cannot "pull the plug" because of their faith values. There has been discussion about the costs of keeping this man (and others like him) alive. There was a news report that doctors will be given the power to decide when to pull the plug. This of course raised a great hew and cry. In actuality, doctors would only make that decision as part of a multi-disciplinary team, one that would include family in the decision.

I imagine that similar issues would arise with assisted suicide, especially if the person is in hospital or another healthcare facility. Professionals have codes of ethics which bind their practice. At the same time, I think it could be sorted out. I also understand that in some cases, there is a sort of compassionate euthanasia being carried out with morphine and similar drugs. In some situations where someone has a degenerative disease, they can discuss it ahead of time, and clearly delineate when and who would assist suicide. The use of living wills could be another option for us to make our wishes known.

This is an important issue to discuss. Under no circumstance should the discussion involve the cost in dollars and cents.

[nimrod]

I wonder how many are "killed" by incompetance in hospitals.

[BinCo]

I wonder how many are "killed" by incompetance in hospitals.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php

195,000 according to this article.

Borea: 2 words: Terri Schiavo. We understand what you are going thru.

[spiceant]

hospitals are not the place to live, they are the place to die which is the meaning of the hospital word which used to mean "a place to die". They are houses of debilitation, them involved with hospital profilerate on disease as there is no profit to be made from health or healing. An ounce of prevention is can be bought for free but a pound for a cure is good for the economy. The system is evil and it plays on greed and if you can't believe it you should check out the salary of doctors and surgeons. We can't have healthy people or else all doctors will loose their job? The system depends on dependancy, disease.

They have an oath i intentionally mispell as hypocritical, "first do no harm" it used to be? All the medical medicine harm the body. Makes the situation worse, depletes and tires the body and blocks its own healing efforts and burdens the immume system (because the immume system recognizes 'medicine' for what it is and treats it like it: poison). Practices a lot of fallacies such as feeding sick people that will only burden them, because sick people CANT digest food.

LOOK

[ParaNude]

I think it would be a great idea to allow euthanization to occur in the same manner as it occurs to our pets when they are suffering needlessly, we make that decision for them. But who allows that decision for us?

If I were suffering from some sort of deep depression or dementia and I also had some sort of physical illness that caused me to want to "Take the walk with my Lord", could I be trusted to make that decision for myself?

KirkOntario describes what cann happen if someone else is making that decision for us. Murphy's Law states that if it can happen it will happen. It happens because you take one tiny chance and multiply it times the number of opportunities for it to happen and that event will undoubtably occur. Now add in Insurance Companies, stressed-out relatives, unclear thinking and that chance has grown into a good chance. The math gets worse.

So now the question becomes "Where is the greatest harm going to arise or is already arising?". Without any dramatic evidence to prove that we are capable of making the right decisions every time, there exists few reasons to pursue changes. This is especially true when the changes require going against our built-in survival instincts and our moral values.

I wish there was an easier answer for this really good question...