dying / euthanasia and the use of drugs

[ohm860]

What's dying with a terminal illness / euthanasia and the use of drugs like?

[lena]

Ohm,
I don't know what drugs they use for mercy killing and nor would I tell you.  My belief is that God has allotted time for every human being on this earth.  You can't speed up or slow down the approach of death.  Euthanasia is just a Euphemism for suicide.  In my religion and Abrahamic faiths suicides go to hell.  My faith also believes that illness is a mercy from God.  It is a way to reduce your sins.  
The other side of the coin is the person assisting you with Euthanasia, in actuality, thinks they are helping you out of your pain.  That's how they justify their actions which are simply and bluntly murder.

Lena 

[Jedi]

www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html


Try the above article.  Dr Kevorkian was famous for helping people die with drugs.

[ren]

Lena, i really appreciated what you had to say in answer to this question and it was informative about your beliefs, and i have utmost respect for you and your faith.

my personal beliefs about euthanasia are a little different and don't involve anything like my faith or religion as i am an agnostic/atheist.

however, just a thought, to agree with that last thing Lena said. as you know we have capital punishment here in the US, and it is not something i am proud of as i am very much against state-sponsored killing. again, this is related less to Ohm's question but in direct response to the last bit of Lena's comment:

Lena said: "The other side of the coin is the person assisting you with Euthanasia, in actuality... That's how they justify their actions which are simply and bluntly murder."

In most ways I believe Lena is right on this point. While i do believe that in some [rare] cases, euthanasia is acceptable, i have to think about the person who is "helping". This always reminds me of my vehement disagreement with capital punishment. Somebody has to start the IVs, set up the bottles of what will be used as deadly medication, and physically set the act of ending the person's life in motion. That varies, in euthanasia it can be the pushing of the medication through the syringe into the person's vein, or it can be like what was once called "Kevorkian's Machine" -- i don't know the details of how that works but in some sense the administration of the deadly medications are somewhat automated. Which leads me finally to the execution room in the prison where a human being - regardless of what wrongs he has committed against others - is strapped down to a thin table, hooked up to these medications, and as they course through his bloodstream, he is put under sedation, and his heart and his breathing are stopped by the mechanism of action of the medications. In medical school, and here's my real point, as most people know the first rule of the Hippocratic Oath is "First Do No Harm." As students, future doctors and nurses are taught, not once, but many many times during their education, that as medical professionals, we do not harm. We certainly do not intentionally kill, through a direct act or through negligence. What i have wondered is Who is pushing these deadly meds through the vein of the convicted man or woman; is it a prison employee? Is it one of the people who make up the team of executioners who has been specially trained to deliver poisonous substances into a man's body? i hope it is someone within the prison facility workers. Because in my education, in my teachings, there is no doctor or nurse who will willingly commit --yes what Lena said -- basically murder using their medical license. Severe repercussions would result including the suspension of that health professionals medical licensure, which is controlled by the Board in the state in which the healthcare professional practices. It can include jailtime in anecdotes I've heard. So i'm just saying -- it's the same question Lena brought up with euthanasia, and it is not dissimilar enough to not mention briefly in this post, who is committing this act of what basically amounts to murder?

I do have lots of opinions about euthanasia and it gets really sticky and convoluted when you start talking about Who is going to perform this task of ending this person's life? As Lena excellently described. While I MAY agree -- in some very few, very rare cases -- with [very few cases of] euthanasia, if the question of "Okay, so who's going to kill them?" comes up, I have a real problem with the entire concept as a whole now. And it would come up. There won't be an easy answer to this, will there?

An afterthought. Maybe someone who knows the answer to this can fill us in, about who is the one who delivers the deadly medication to a prisoner in the execution room. NO doctor or nurse who has any plans of returning to continue his/her regular practice would dare perform an execution. I guess i hope it's a specially trained prison employee, but i think that's horrible as well. As humans, the vast majority of us believe in the sanctity of life and there is a code that human beings follow and probably number one on that big list is "Let's all agree first of all -- we don't kill each other." Right? So i guess i have a problem with whomever carries out either an execution or a euthanasia. It may be seen differently in other societies where the 'helper' is carrying out an act of mercy and kindness in providing an end to the patient's agonizing suffering. Still fits the definition of murder to me. If someone has another way of explaining it, here or privately, i would be very interested in hearing it and thinking about it.

[two hours later: ren, you can stop writing about this now]

[lena]

Euthanasia is a choice made by an individual to commit suicide.  Executions are a sentence mandated by the legal system.  In my opinion both types of deaths contradict the Hippocratic Oath that all medical professionals follow.  Thereby, i believe that any doctor administering drugs used to kill someone is breaking the oath and should lose their license.
I am for capital punishment but i do not think executions should be performed by medical professionals.  It is not fair for the citizens of a country to pay tax dollars to keep inmates alive.  It is bad enough that an inmates crimes affected the life of others but then to ask citizens to pay for the criminals room and board seems to me that society is being punished twice.  
In middle eastern countries death penalties are carried out in two ways: 1) hanging, 2) decapitation by sword.  A doctor is present just for a death certificate.  Based on the movies I have seen with execution scenes, the prison guards prepare the prisoners for their executions.  The now also have machines to administer the dosage so all a guard has to do is to set up an iv.
Capital punishment, again, is not the prisoners choice like euthanasia is.  Prisoners go thru a trail and are sentenced to death by the court system.  Carrying out a death sentenced is not murder but i dont believe a medical professional should assist with it.  Euthanasia is a suicide/murder.  Being a chatter at the village, we have seen many instances when chatters have attempted and when chatters have succeeded.  Our website has contact information to suicide hotlines and when we do see someone threatening suicide we all pitch in to talk the person out of it.
A doctor cannot force treatment on a person but they can help to give pain relief and make their patients as comfortable as possible.  That's as far as a doctor committed to his profession and oath should ever go.