Euthanasia in the Third Reich: Lessons for Today?

[IndianaGreen]

How remarkable the similarities between the way the Third Reich disposed of the "useless" and the way our society justifies doing the same!

Euthanasia in the Third Reich: Lessons for Today?
J A Emerson Vermaat

‘At this stage I do not feel that I am going to die, but I don’t want to die away later with my body being reduced to a little more than a lump. Please, promise to help me before this moment comes.’

Today, many physicians are familiar with incurably ill patients requesting them to end their lives because of unbearable suffering. In the case of the above quote the request for euthanasia is not made by a desperate twenty-first century patient. One finds it in the Nazi film Ich Klage an (I Accuse) which was produced in 1941. The message of the the two hour long film was that doctors who submit to an incurable patient’s death wish act legally and morally.

<snip>

Hitler’s ‘Euthanasia Decree’

This remarkable propaganda film presents a case and a logic with which today’s medical profession is quite familiar. It is not the crude Nazi ideology of killing ‘worthless life.’ Rather it makes a smart plea for a terminally ill patient’s right to a ‘humane’ way of dying. Sixty years ago the Nazis occasionally used similar arguments as today’s humane and sincere advocates of euthanasia. Karl Brandt, the head of Hitler’s euthanasia program, claimed at his trial after the war: ‘The underlying motive was the desire to help individuals who could not help themselves and were thus prolonging their lives of torment.’ However plausible or humane this may sound, the reality was far from humane. Indeed, the Nazis went far beyond killing the incurably sick, and few of the ‘individuals’ Brandt had in mind actually made a request that ‘their lives of torment’ should not be prolonged.

‘Euthanasia’ in the Third Reich was even a prelude to the Final Solution (Endlösung). Euphemistic terminology and covering up was the rule. Hitler’s Euthanasia Decree (‘Erlass’) of 1 September 1939 ordered his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philip Bouhler, head of the Reich Chancellery, ‘to enlarge the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death (Gradentod).’

Similar criteria were later found in Ich Klage an: Mercy killing (Gnadentod is in Nazi language synonymous to Erlösung) for those whose suffering could not be prolonged. However, the decree did not refer to the need for a specific request by the patient, in most cases persons with mental disorders. Karl Brandt later said in Nuremberg that ‘incurably sick persons’ primarily meant ‘insane persons.

http://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/18/1/18-1-vermaat.htm

[Lindacooks]

1. Um, this is total flame bait.

And 'our society', by which you probably mean the people wanting to let Mrs. Schiavo's husband carry out her wishes, is not 'for killing' anybody. We're for privacy, personal dignity, and the right to end our lives the way we see fit.

[IndianaGreen]

2. This is an article about the T-4 euthanasia program

Sorry if you find it disturbing. It is meant to be disturbing!

[Lindacooks]

3. But I don't understand. Are you equating with the right to die movement

with Nazis?

[IndianaGreen]

7. Read about the Nazi euthanasia program

and how legal it was carried out, down to the court orders. You draw your own conclusions.

[katsy]

25. Terri Schiavo...

is not being euthanized.

Get your facts straight.

[IndianaGreen]

26. According to Rabbi Marc Gellman, she is being euthanized

and Jesse Jackson said the same thing on CNN tonight!

This is what Rabbi Gellman wrote in Newsweek:

In many right-to-die cases, the patient is on life-support systems, so all that needs to be done to allow them to die is to remove these medical obstacles to death. However, in this case Terri Schiavo is not on any life support systems. In this case, in order to live she only requires hydration and nutrition; and it is a big stretch for many people to label food and water extraordinary means. It is one thing to let a person die in peace who is already dying. It is one thing to remove an obstacle to death. It is quite another to cause death.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7259993/site/newsweek/

I guess Gellman and Jackson are now Freepers and enemies of individual choice.

[katsy]

31. And I respectfully disagree with them...

Are they of the opinion that extraordinary means to prevent death should be common practice and made law for everyone? If so, they should be addressing Texas laws that allow for withdrawing life support for the poor.

The FL/FED/SCOTUS courts established/affirmed that Terri would not have wanted to extend her life.

Extraordinary means, life support, kept her body animate. There is no active mercy killing IMO. They removed the only obstacle to Terri's natural death - the feeding tube.

[IndianaGreen]

32. Judaism does not approve of extraordinary means to preserve life.

However, many Jews feel that starvation and dehydration of the severely impaired crosses a threshold that we find very disquieting.

[katsy]

41. I respect your feelings

and opinions. Opinions can vary even between people of the same faith.

There are steps you may take that will protect you civil rights without impeding my right to declare my end of life preferences.

[katsy]

33. The nazis tainted ALL of medical science.

That is a given.

Should neurology be criminalized and neurologists jailed because the nazis were unethical criminals?

Are you contending that every scientific endeavor exploited by the nazis must be criminalized?

[IndianaGreen]

35. The article by J A Emerson Vermaat, decries the passing of a euthanasia

law in The Netherlands.

Are you contending that every scientific endeavor exploited by the nazis must be criminalized?

Guess what? We used those same scientists and their research for our own purposes, including the medical experiments that German and Japanese "doctors" performed on prisoners.

Does the name Tuskegee Syphilis Study ring a bell? Or the injecting of plutonium into unsuspecting patients in Colorado?

Or to mention something more recent, how about the baby that was unplugged in Texas, against the mother's wishes, because it was inconvenient to the hospital?

[katsy]

37. I repeat...

the nazis engaged in a perversion of neurology.

Do you advocate the prevention of scientific research in the study of neurology? The criminalization of the practice of neurology?

Do not mix the criminal actions by the industrial/military complex in this debate. It is not applicable.

[IndianaGreen]

39. Do I advocate the prevention of scientific research in the study of....?

It depends on the type of research. I am not familiar with the scientific research in neurology, but I know a little about research with animals, and how they are made to suffer so we have better cosmetics, or we can design a better maze for the lab mice. I don't find the practice palatable.

[katsy]

42. You misunderstand.

Neurology was practiced by the nazis.

Is neurology to be banned BECAUSE the nazis practiced it?

Don't extend or read too much into my question.

Just answer that.

-----------------

Nazis practiced medicine.

Should medical arts be banned?

[IndianaGreen]

44. No

But it is a qualified "no."

[katsy]

46. Good.

Because you are once again firmly grounded in reality.

There are qualifications for every human endeavor and lessons to be learned from history in the practice of whatever endeavor we happen to be debating.

The practice of euthanasia in Oregon is not the euthanasia of the Nazis.

FL does not allow active euthanasia. There are no laws or custom that require the forced extension of life through artificial means PERIOD.

Not everyone wants to exist on life support and as individuals, we have the right to refuse extension.

There is NOTHING in FL's laws, that I know of, that make it mandatory to refuse life support for disabled individuals.

Texas discriminates against the poor and makes it okay to withdraw life support. bush signed the law that kept that policy in place. IF you are rich and disabled OR not, you're okay. IF you are poor and disabled OR NOT... they can withdraw life support.

If the government were to allow discrimination against the disabled regarding life support... who do you think would be advocates for the disabled?

[DemBones DemBones]

47. Florida does not allow active euthanasia? Oh, I guess it's

passive euthanasia since we are just starving/dehydrating Mrs. Schiavo until death?

Isn't she the lucky one?! They might have, well, what? Given her a lethal injection, like any murderer can request in lieu of electrocution in Florida?

[katsy]

54. You are entitled to your hystrionics.

But you are not Terri Schiavo's spouse. This is a private matter.

[jwirr]

62. There is a difference

between government interference and personal choice. When I write out a living will I am making personal choices for myself. In the present case the lady should have had a living will but like most of us we think we have a long life ahead of us. And I do understand where you are coming from: There is a similar basic philosophy behind the right to die idea of today and the eugenics of yesterday. But it is only a similarity. Then it was used to create a pure race. Today it is necessary because medical science has made it possible to keep "life" going beyond the normal time of death without intervention. If you don't believe me just ask the wealthy elderly who still have money to pay the bills!!

[undergroundpanther]

30. Ok

Y'all still don't get it do you? People seeing only the surface,one sided.Right to die. forced to live.. This is shallow and simplistic thinking.
I can't believe all the bigotry and ignorance of history and obliviousness to disability rights I'm seeing RIGHT HERE!

Disability rights DO matter to anyone with a mind or body that can get mentally ill,sick or wounded...Remember the saying the health of a culture and a community is determined by how well it treats it's most vulnerable members?.. Does that ring an important bell to ANY of you?
Terri's case Matters to ME.
I am "mentally disabled" I grew up in an abusive home.
It messed me up inside..I have been locked up bound,tortured,kept in a room alone for 6 months,injected with tons of drugs against my will,been humiliated by"behavior modification "programs like B.F.Skinner would fancy, I have been treated like subhuman by staff supposed to help who were more interested in power and gas lighting people for kicks than helping anyone.
I can't work,so I am a "useless eater" I don't "produce" for this"economy"I am a"drag" on the system. I am a lesser person according to some"normal" people's self serving social Darwinist Utopian ideas.They'd declare me unfit and kill me if there was a law that excused it and the American people went along with it for"my own good".Shit people I faced torture by"professionals""for my own good".

Bush put through a thing called the New Freedom Initiative where EVERY citizen will be tested for mental illness.Read about it:
http://www.unknownnews.net/040712a-upits.html


Already
Torture has been redefined into something else by Bush co. And the American people did NOTHING about Abu Gharib because it was Iraq,over there out of sight.Apathy,standing by..we twiddle as they die over there,Because we are not in Iraq who cares right? Good Germans are in America,and on DU too it looks like.
Torture has been going on in the name of "health and discipline" in juvenile justice,jails and mental hospitals for a long time. Being on the inside of the mental hospital as a "lesser" i.e patient or"client" and you will come to understand firsthand what I mean about the danger of eugenics,sociopaths,our cultural fear of weakness ,difference and disability and scapegoating.

Right to die? Who's right is it really to kill someone else?
Who's passing laws for the capacity to legally define for others who has a right to live or a right to die? Bushco..And what does that look like... Eugenics when people needed scapegoats early in the Reich.

Why is her life such a burden? To whom? to YOU?,to THE STATE??? That she must die right NOW? Bush's bailouts and war for haliburton cost us way more than maintaining a life of a disabled woman someone loves.
Just because asshole Fundies scream "right to life"and are angling Terri's case to undermine abortion, realize they are as ignorant of the underside motivating of this whole circus as the people screaming she should "die in peace" by starving to death.
Sheesh. Get with it.

I must ask why is she a scapegoat/martyr? Our culture is rife with inequality and a cultural scapegoat is needed,the gays aren't as helpless and disenfranchised, politically on all sides like disabled people are.If we want her dead,why? And if Terri is killed the fundies can retaliate,if she lives hatred of useless eaters is acted out.
I ask who are WE to decide her fate,who are the fundies to decide her fate? The state has NO BUSINESS even going there.
If Bush gets his way alot of us may die,people you don't think are brain dead the most vulnerable go first..the ones less likely to COMPLAIN.

And will some of you continue to be a moral cowards in the face of the disabled that need you to LISTEN, crying about other people's right to die,and "pro life" distractions just to stand by? Stand by as the"brain dead" die and laws for eugenics get passed under your sanctimonious nose because you are not brain dead and like to believe you will never be in Terri's situation..? Think again the future,including yours and mine is not in ANYONES control.
Do you think it's OK to stand by as mentally ill are decared"unfit"to live so they die because you are not mentally ill?

The arrogance of the self righteous "normals" who think they can say what lives are not worth living,sicken me.It is EXACTLY how the Nazis started their notions of a "final solution" and had it fly by the ignorant self serving scapegoating weakness fearing,disability ashamed public..
Terri's life or death means one thing,And it's not right to die or fundies are nuts..SDhe is the scapegoat/martyr BUsh is using so the state can get control over our most important decisions regardless of living wills and families objections,The state decides life or death,this is step one of the final solution.
If you don't see it,I am really scared for our nations ability to stand up to the growth of fascism ,which is very very real and right now and right here.

[Lindacooks]

56. NO, I think YOU don't get it.

Ms. Schiavo's EEG is FLAT. That means she is GONE - NOT disabled. And quit insulting me - I have two college degrees and an IQ of 145, and I DO GET IT!!!

Her life isn't a burden to me - it's a burden to HER. That is what the courts have decided.

This whole case is about privacy and individual self determination. It has NOTHING to do with the rights of the disabled.

And this thread is, as I first suspected, FLAME BAIT. Now you're on ignore.

[Lindacooks]

57. Oh, and by the way, you sure went from trying to describe history

to jumping down my throat with rudeness and name-calling. It's obvious you have some kind of agenda here. The difference between you and me is that I respect Ms. Schiavo's rights, to privacy and the right to die, and you don't.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Right....we are just like the Nazi's.

How "progressive" of you IG.

Have you got your "Keep alive/Resuscitate at any cost with no consideration towards quality of life and irregardless of family financial/emotional burdens" paperwork signed and in the hands of your attorneys and next of kin?

[FreepFryer]

5. Something smells very Freepish in here. This is your second flamebait.

Does it somehow please you to equate Nazi purges of the disabled with an individual's right to die?

[IndianaGreen]

9. What part of "Never Forget" don't you get?

There are people on this board that have yet to recognize the parallels between the burning of the Reichstag and 9/11, and the passing of the Enabling Act and the PATRIOT Act.

Are we to banish history now so that we don't start thinking that we are repeating it?

[FreepFryer]

11. The choir does not need to be preached to.

I'm well aware of the neo-Nazi leanings of the current administration, and the U.S., under it's influences.

That doesn't extend to your post, which compares individual civil liberties to Nazism.

It's a flawed, idiotic argument and you'll need to do much better than that to sound like anything more than a functioning retard.

[IndianaGreen]

13. Where do I say that in this thread?

And you haven't even bothered to read the article I posted, you are just knee-jerking.

[FreepFryer]

16. You accused someone else of knee-jerking when they called you on your bs.

And you were wrong then too.

Please, go join FR and get it over with. We'll be glad you did.

[jwirr]

63. You are distorting history!

In both the US in the early 1900s and in Nazi Germany it was the GOVERNMENT that was eliminating/killing the disabled. When I have a living will the government has not part in it. It is my own private decision. It is also not to "better" society but to limit the use of new "life" prolonging procedures that I have a living will for. I do object to the use of starvation and hydration as a method. They are both normal functions of any persons life. They will not be mentioned in my will.

[The Magistrate]

6. Not Truely Applicable, My Hoosier Friend

The Hitlerites produced a thing to deceive the public about the nature of their program. In doing so, they necessarily used genuine arguments that ordinary people would be moved by. But their intent, and their practice, was something very different from what the propaganda piece presented.

This thing is really relevant only if you believe that persons here in the U.S. today, who feel that terminally ill persons ought to have the right to end their lives, or have them ended, short of the final extremities of medical heroism, actually intend a wide-spread program of killing persons with a variety of sub-lethal mental and physical conditions.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Sorry but I hear the same rationalizations today

and we are not debating right-to-die, we are debating whether the State can order the termination of the life of those that are less perfect than the rest of us.

[FreepFryer]

14. We're not debating. You're making illogical connections...

between Euthanasia and Nazism, and implying that Euthanasia is in fact the onset to Nazi purges.

That's ridiculous. The Nazis had impeccably designed uniforms, too. Does that mean DKNY and Gucci are perpetuating neo-Nazism?

[IndianaGreen]

18. LMAO

That's good, FreepFryer. That's really good.

[FreepFryer]

20. It's easy when you serve up this tripe. (n/t)

[The Magistrate]

24. If You Hear The Same Arguments Today, Ma'am

It is because they are perfectly valid ones. What is distinctly different here is the purpose of putting them forward. In the case you have cited in beginning this discussion, they were put forward to conceal the nature of a deliberate program of killing people who were not, in almost all instances, afflicted with any terminal illness, but merely viewed as undesireable and useless by a regime dedicated to murder as its raison d'etre. In the current instance, they are put forward in honest description of a person without cortical function, who a competent court has concluded expressed the desire not to prolong her existance in such a vegetative state. There is no need to cloud the issue by waving bloody swastikas about, any more than there is to cloud it by waving bloody crucifixes....

[IndianaGreen]

27. Did you watch Jesse Jackson on CNN today?

He was very upset about the denying food and water to Terri Schiavo. He felt it was euthanasia.

[FreepFryer]

28. Did he claim Nazis were involved? He has a right to his beliefs...

...and to decide for himself whether his life should be artificially supported under conditions like Ms. Schiavo's.

Again, you make no real point... individual liberties means individual beliefs...

[The Magistrate]

29. Rev. Jackson Has His Opinions, Ma'am, As Do You

My own inclination is to support euthanasia in some instances, and so his views will have little impact on my own.

[katsy]

45. That's not what the courts

did in the Schiavo case.

Michael Schiavo is Terri's husband. He is the lawful next of kin.

Terri Schiavo expressed that she would not want to extend her life by extraordinary means and the courts accepted that as fact.

An external obstacle to her body's passing was removed in accordance to her wishes.

NO LEGAL PRECEDENT HAS BEEN SET AS TO THE "VALUE" OF TERRI'S EXISTENCE OVER THAT OF ANY OTHER LIFE.

[applegrove]

8. This is to scare the disability community. Bush is an ASSHOLE

Nobody says you can kill someone without permission. This is just to scare people.

Sorry - but all the likeness to brown-shirts, scapegoating, Hitler, sociopathy, reducing adults to adolescents so they can hurt others without feeling responsible for it, etc..

All from the BUSH White House. All!

[Banazir]

19. Yes, people do say you can do that.

And it's happened here in the US. Nazi eugenics came from American eugenics which never entirely left the mentality here, and people routinely get away with premeditated and unasked-for murder of disabled people in several countries on lighter sentences than if they killed non-disabled people. The attitudes are still there and discussing it makes sense.

[DemBones DemBones]

48. Hey, do you know WHY it scares us? Not because of Bush,

because of all the liberal Democrats right here at DU saying "Right to privacy, must have right to privacy, move along, nothing to see here, just a man legally starving his inconveniently disabled wife to death."

We KNEW * was dangerous, we didn't know how dangerous liberals had become.




You wrote: "Nobody says you can kill someone without permission."

Newsflash: Michael Schiavo IS killing Terri Schiavo without her permission. She can't voice it, she didn't write it down when she could have, and now judges have chosen to believe him, his brother and the brother's wife saying she'd want to die vs. her mother and her best friend saying she wouldn't want to die, was very much opposed to the Karen Ann Quinlan decision.

[applegrove]

60. I cringed when I first saw Liberals saying "right to privacy" because

it was such a knee-jerk reaction to Terry Schiavo (Liberals are for bigger government ergo less privacy than the Libertarian/conservatives).

This is such a wedge issue. I myself freaked out all over the "right to privacy" Democrats when they appeared on the board a few days ago. And I even complained to the moderator that they were likely freepers in disguise...trying to milk the Liberal disgust at the Bush Brothers ... into a wedge issue that could then be used to introduce (small government and no regulation and no activist legislators or whatever) meme into Liberal/Progressive/Democrat minds.

I was not happy the second I saw that. I think this whole thing is an issue to try and get the disabled community afraid of Liberals (as if!). Just more Karl Rove fun house games.

[Banazir]

61. Actually, we've been afraid of liberals...

...for a long time. Even those of us who are committed leftists ourselves. It's been well-known for a long time in the disability community that both liberals and conservatives harbor dangerous attitudes towards disabled people. Frankly the reason many of us fear liberals is because many of us are left-leaning ourselves and expect our political allies to do more to protect us than our political opponents would. As it stands, euthanasia is being considered a 'progressive issue' much of the time and that justifiably frightens people in this community.

Unfortunately no matter how much scholarly research we conduct to suppor tour points, we get accused of either being right-wing or being dupes of the right, and any criticism of liberals is taken as unfounded. Really there is a strong strain of disability prejudice through the left wing in this country, just as there is in the right wing, and it would be nice if liberals could be non-defensive about it long enough to really look at how many unexamined assumptions are behind a lot of the 'progressive' positions on these issues. There seems to be an attitude that liberals are never classist, racist, sexist, ableist, etc, but in reality liberals can be all that and more, and that's what we're trying to do is point this out -- without pointing it out, nothing would change.

As Lucy Gwin said years ago, "P.S. We don't have a particular bone to pick with Progressives. Conservatives are just as wrong on disability issues. We've come to the sad conclusion that we're too special (and too poor) to have friends in politics."

[Maple]

10. Euthanaisa has been around since day one

of the world's history, and was not remotely exclusive to Hitler...except to those looking to start a flame war by calling opponents Nazis.

When you can't argue on facts...drag out the name 'Nazi'

The term has long since been overused, and is in danger of losing all meaning I'm afraid.

[IndianaGreen]

15. And there are those that engage in storm trooper tactics

and try to get everyone to march in lockstep, whether it is to force us to support the war, or the PATRIOT Act, or the bipartisan American Empire.

[FreepFryer]

17. *yawn* is there a cliché left that you haven't already co-opted (poorly)?

[IndianaGreen]

21. The article deals with euthanasia in The Netherlands

During the parliamentary debates Senator Egbert Schuurman, a leading opponent of the new euthanasia rules, had predicted precisely this: ‘Advocates of euthanasia will add new criteria, for example “being tired of life.”’55 Nobody paid attention then. This is undeniably a slippery slope trend, starting from the small beginnings described by Leo Alexander. It is this very trend that Professor Schuurman, a leading culture philosopher in The Netherlands, is worried about. Of course, there is not the slightest resemblance between Senator Kohnstamm or Minister Borst—both prominent in the Dutch euthanasia movement (NVVE)—and crude Nazis or their ideology. But the ghosts of the past will some day haunt those who proclaim principles like ‘there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.’

It should be kept in mind that the propaganda film Ich Klage an started a similar public debate in Nazi Germany in 1941 as people who lived at the time told me. Again, the film did not show the crude ways in which the Nazis often conducted their euthanasia programme. On the contrary, it told a very sentimental story about human feelings and love, and finally about the decision of a man who killed his own wife because he loved her so much. Hanna had explicitly requested euthanasia. These lessons from the past can only be ignored at our peril. ‘What experience and history teach is this - that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it.’56 E&M

http://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/18/1/18-1-vermaat.htm

[FreepFryer]

22. Actually I did - and your post is not a retrospective - it's a premise...

...that the current attitudes towards Euthanasia are akin to neo-Nazism.

And as you apparently have not heard, that's what is so illogical about your post. Thanks for the history retrospective, but like your other article on the subject, it does not support your premise.

[katsy]

36. Don't move to the Netherlands. eom

[sandnsea]

23. Oregon - 8 years

200 euthanasias. The disease has to be terminal within 6 months. Two doctors verify both the disease and patient's mental state. The prescription is self-administered. It can't be used for someone like Terri Schiavo, it can't be given to people who are chronically ill, but not terminal. But it is there for people who don't want to suffer through a terminal disease. Funny how few choose the option, when they actually have it. And Oregon certainly isn't on its way to becoming Nazi Northwest. That would be the wacko right wing culture of life state of Idaho.

[undergroundpanther]

34. Terri

Is not taking the drugs all by herself.She didn't ask a doctor mix me up a lethal cocktail so if my illness is too severe I can die quick. She has no living will.
She is being starved,because she is Dependant,her family is being forced by state order to disregard their feelings for their daughter because of why?.
Why does Terri have to die RIGHT NOW? This minute?Why is it so important because she takes up a room a more able bodied person could user? because she drains bank accounts, costs the state a few dimes to maintain?(compare her care to the cost of this liars war and the disabled veterans this war creates in Iraq)

Terri's situation isn't the same thing as euthanasia you described where a person consciously voluntarily takes powerful drugs to die on purpose because they are very sick and do not want to suffer. The state isn't forcing these terminally ill patients hands for them, over the objections or urgings of parents and kin to live or to die.

[sandnsea]

38. "It can't be used for someone like Terri Schiavo"

That's what I said, isn't it?

If you want to get into a tizz over the state forcing terminally ill patients' hands and balking over a few dimes, you might want to look at the State of Texas.

Terri's case is one of medical autonomy to make end of life decisions. The husband AND the parents both presented their cases to the judge and the judge decided Terri would not want to live hooked up to machines. That's all, none of the other things you mentioned have anything to do with her case. But again, you might want to turn your attention to the State of Texas because money is definitely causing people to be removed from life support there.

[undergroundpanther]

40. It's Bigger than her case

It's laws being made because of her case.Laws that can be usedd by the state to interfere with my rights,my freedom,my power to decide how my life ends.. Nobody has the right to tell me my life is worthless.

[sandnsea]

43. Texas can

You're focusing on the wrong case. Texas is the place where they actually have the laws that the hospital can disconnect life support over the wishes of the next of kin. I support continuing to allow the next of kin to make these end of life decisions, because they have to be made. Keep pushing for more laws, like Barney Franks is doing now, and we're going to have national laws giving hospitals the authority. Mark my words. The disabled community is making a HUGE mistake getting in bed with these fundies, they ought to know better.

[undergroundpanther]

49. Fuck the fundies

They are being used like tools by Bush.If they are on the same side as I ,I don't give a shit.I am not gonna be so stuck on being opposite where the fundies are on this that I will blind myself to the implications of what is really going on..If the state rules she dies they override her parents,if the state rules she lives the state overrides her hubby.Don'tcha see Laws are being written to do the same thing whether Terri LIVES or DIES!!.I am worried about bigger fish than the fundies. The Fundies are being used to pass a bad precedent just like the right to die people are being used in this situation.It does not matter which side wins Terri's fate because the state will get to decide all of our fates now the senate and Bush are interfering in family rights and writing new laws about who lives and who dies with language that goes beyond Terri Shiavio!
Don't you get it? Bush wants to EXPAND that awful Texas law into a NATIONAL law. And if he gets to get the senate to DECIDE if she lives or dies the state has won and has taken OUR rights away.I am against the Texas law becoming a law for all of America. I am against the Texas law too. BOTH laws should be scrapped and congress get the hell out of it..
Sheesh!

[sandnsea]

52. Yes I get it

Do you not get that the judge in Florida is trying to protect the legal next of kin, the legal guardian, to make that decision? The STATE isn't deciding, the NEXT OF KIN is deciding because the court upheld his right and upheld that he was following the will of his wife. That's the whole damned point. If we remove the right of the legal NEXT OF KIN to decide, then we open the debate up for anybody to decide, including hospitals and the State. California has these futile care laws too, by the way.

In addition, the Born-Alive Protection Act has meant that doctors have to provide treatment to any infant, with any disease, in any condition, when a few years ago they wouldn't have. So now we have babies suffering and being kept alive, when doctors know that there is no hope for them. Sun Hudson wouldn't have been put on machines without that law.

We have the same view. It's just that you equate courts upholding individual rights under current law as the same thing as state laws taking away individual rights, and it's not the same thing.

[DemBones DemBones]

50. "Futility of life" laws, like the one * signed while governor

of Texas -- the law just used to kill a black baby -- exist in 21 states. They're getting REALLY popular in our the-botttom-line-is-all-that-matters society. They were put in place by lawyers like George Felos, who represents Michael Schiavo. Felos used to be on the board of the hospice where Terri is being starved at this moment. He's been very involved with the for-profit hospice movement and the so-called "right to die" movement, which has a nasty tinge of "DUTY to die" behind the "right to privacy" and "death with dignity" rhetoric.

Another link that needs to be made is Art Caplan, the "bioethicist"from U of Penn, often trotted out to talk about how ethical it is to kill Terri Schiavo. He supports those "futility of life" laws that are all about denying treatment to people whose wallet is a little on the thin side. Then there's good old Peter Singer, "bioethicist" at Harvard, who thinks parents should have the right to kill a child up to the age of two years or thereabouts. They're not really people under two, asserts this "bioethicist."

The new Nazis are more like the old Nazis than some want to admit.

[undergroundpanther]

51. Thank you !!!

Good post Dem Bones!
That is what I have been trying to say!

[sandnsea]

53. I didn't find them

I looked for the info and the only article I found said futile care laws exist in Texas and California, that's it.

I do not support these laws. I also think "duty to die" is coming from corporations and not traditional hospice caregivers.

If Terri were single, then her parents would be her next of kin and I would be supporting their right to make end of life decisions. That is the whole point. Medical autonomy requires the decision be left in the hands of the next of kin, and in Terri's case, it's her husband.

[LisaL]

55. The problem with that is that her husband basically has

new family, in every way but on paper. He is living with another woman and has 2 children with her. Why should he be allowed to make decisions, when clearly he moved on with his life a long time ago?

[Sapphire Blue]

58. A thought provoking article by Dr Jane Campbell MBE

Get A Life! - Euthanasia and human value
by Dr Jane Campbell MBE
STIL Seminar, 26th May 2003


Excerpt...

If we accept that all human life has value, it follows that we should strive to make each life valued. Sadly, in current society, some lives are deemed more valuable than others.

My presentation is not centred on a moral or ethical position on the right to live or die. What I wish to discuss here is the impossibility of a regulatory framework, which would ensure that disabled peoples’ lives are not put at risk. I will argue that, currently, our lives are seen as inferior to those of non-disabled people. Therefore, legalising euthanasia or even assisted suicide would place disabled people in potential danger.

When I was born my mother was told to take me home and enjoy me, as I would die within a year. As so often with severe impairments the doctors were wrong. I was frequently unwell, mostly with chest infections that were life threatening. The doctors always treated me appropriately with antibiotics and ventilation. . So, here I am today.

Unfortunately, four decades later, so-called progress and the pursuit of perfection, has meant that treatment is being denied to people with a variety of impairments, including my own as I will exemplify later with the Baby C law case.

The full article is available @ http://www.independentliving.org/docs6/campbell20030526.html

[IndianaGreen]

59. And what Joe Lierberman said on Meet the Press yesterday

Here is what Joe Lieberman (remember the 2000 VP nominee?) said about the Schiavo case on Meet the Press on Easter Sunday:

The fact is that, though I know a lot of people's attitude toward the Schiavo case and other matters is affected by their faith and their sense of what religion tells them about morality, ultimately as members of Congress, as judges, as members of the Florida state Legislature, this is a matter of law. And the law exists to express our values.

I have been saying this in speeches to students about why getting involved in government is so important, I always say the law is where we define the beginning of life and the end of life, and that's exactly what was going on here. And I think as a matter of law, if you go--particularly to the 14th Amendment, can't be denied due process, have your life or liberty taken without due process of law, that though the Congress' involvement here was awkward, unconventional, it was justified to give this woman, more than her parents or husband, the opportunity for one more chance before her life was terminated by an act which was sanctioned by a court, by the state.

These are very difficult decisions, but--of course, if you ask me what I would do if I was the Florida Legislature or any state legislature, I'd say that if somebody doesn't have a living will and the next of kin disagree on whether the person should be kept alive or that is whether food and water should be taken away and her life ended that really the benefit of the doubt ought to be given to life. And the family member who wants to sustain her life ought to have that right because the judge really doesn't know, though he heard the facts, one judge, what Terri Schiavo wanted. He made a best guess based on the evidence before him. That's not enough when you're talking about aggressively removing food and water to end someone's life.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7284978/