Evidence for God from Science

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Thoughts?

I don't think medically assisted euthanasia should be legal in the case of mental illness. By the very nature of the illness people can make decisions that may not be in their best interest. I don't think death for an otherwise physically healthy person is ever in their best interest.
I don't have an issue with euthanasia for people suffering an incurable illness who are at the grips of deaths door. Those that are strongly against it I think fail to realise that medically assisted euthanasia happens everyday whether it's legal or not. Nurses and Doctors make decisions with patients and families everyday to end lives. Whether it's a do not resuscitate decision or a lethal injection of morphine.
But mental illness as debilitating as it is should not have euthanasia as a legal option. In this case it really is assisted suicide.

Killing, other than to preserve another life, is wrong.
We must start from THAT premise.

There is nothing more painful than to see a loved one in pain, dying, with no hope of cure or treatment.
Yet, to take a life is just that, to kill someone.
To extinguish that which YOU did not give.

This is coming from someone that watched his father die from ALS.

There were many times that I thought about ending his suffering, that we discussed it ( my dad and I) while he was still able to talk and had all his mental faculties.
He knew I couldn't live with myself if I did, He knew...and even though there were times when I saw in his eyes that part of him wanted to go and he knew what I as thinking of doing, he never let me.
Christ, never let me.

As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

Thing is, a decision to stop measures that are the only reason someone remains alive - hooked up to machines, unconscious, with no reasonable hope they can get better, that only prolongs their suffering, crippling costs for every extra week - that seems going far beyond what is reasonable and natural. But even there, a family should have the decision. My dad, at almost 80, brain dead after a heart attack, only a resperator was keeping him alive - unnaturally, with no hope for recovery or mental awareness, my siblings and I made the decision to let him go Home. Mom, at 85, after having Alzheimer's for 16 years, finally her brain began shutting down and she eventually entered a state where she could not eat - only a feeding tube would have kept her alive. Which we rejected as unnatural with no hope for recovery, and which would have prolonged her misery. In her last day or so of semi-consciousness, we couldn't even give her liquids. It was her time to meet the Lord. We kept her in her own home to her dying breath. So, my four siblings and I all faced this decision, and we were all there as both of our parents took their last breaths. - a tremendous blessing for us all.

Point is, there is a natural time to die, in which prolonging it serves no reasonable purposes. But euthanasia as practiced in otherwise situations is wrong, God gives life, and only He should take it. Giving such decision authority to medical authorities or the government - that' s really dangerous. Because as these entities operate like a business, they will start looking first at mere cost-driven incentatives to terminate lives. And so they will begin to first eliminate the lives of the most vulnerable, as they'll be viewed as an unnecessary and costly inconvenience.

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

It is up to the individual to decide to what degree but what I meant was, as an example, giving a terminally ill patient morphine so as they do not feel the pain anymore as they die.
I didn't mean to imply that it is ok for them to play God.
We are talking about those patients that WILL die, that ARE dying and being kept alive via machines or other artificial methods, and there is no cure or treatment.

PaulSacramento wrote:

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

It is up to the individual to decide to what degree but what I meant was, as an example, giving a terminally ill patient morphine so as they do not feel the pain anymore as they die.
I didn't mean to imply that it is ok for them to play God.
We are talking about those patients that WILL die, that ARE dying and being kept alive via machines or other artificial methods, and there is no cure or treatment.

I don't consider turning off a machine nudging someone to death.

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

It is up to the individual to decide to what degree but what I meant was, as an example, giving a terminally ill patient morphine so as they do not feel the pain anymore as they die.
I didn't mean to imply that it is ok for them to play God.
We are talking about those patients that WILL die, that ARE dying and being kept alive via machines or other artificial methods, and there is no cure or treatment.

I don't consider turning off a machine nudging someone to death.

What do you consider it then? allowing nature to take it's course?

There is a point and level of narcotics that will hasten death. Finding the appropriate balance - not hastening death, but providing pain relief - that's sometimes not an easy call. Particularly when the patient can no longer communicate.

We had to make a decision like this with my Mom. It may have been a very difficult decision, if my Mom hadn't made her wishes clear.

Edit:I'm referring to taking her off of a machine that was giving her oxygen, not euthanasia.

PaulSacramento wrote:

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

It is up to the individual to decide to what degree but what I meant was, as an example, giving a terminally ill patient morphine so as they do not feel the pain anymore as they die.
I didn't mean to imply that it is ok for them to play God.
We are talking about those patients that WILL die, that ARE dying and being kept alive via machines or other artificial methods, and there is no cure or treatment.

I don't consider turning off a machine nudging someone to death.

What do you consider it then? allowing nature to take it's course?

Yes

Hey the Nazi's did this...

So did the Communist countries...

Not surprising that the Post Modernist Progressives support this as well too.

As they say, The apple don't fall far from the tree...

Clarification is needed here, as to what people mean by what they support. For instance, unplugging an unconscious, brain-dead person from a machine, as A) they have no reasonable hope of recovery from their condition and B) as the only reason they are alive is per a machine - well, that's one scenario, and it's one why so many have a legal, "do not resuscitate" directive. But someone, otherwise mentally functioning, etc., while hooked up to available dialysis - totally dependent upon a machine - taking that away is another matter. Withholding medicine from someone who is totally dependent upon it to live - these are very different issues.

There are also cost issues - how do we pay for whatever level of critical care, for how long, and for whom, and who do we deny other critical care to - perhaps even as a preventative so other conditions won't become terminal - as we society decides how it deploys the available financial and other resources to those with terminal conditions who will soon die anyway? It's not always easy to decide what is best. Modern medicine has brought us decisions that past generations did not face.

One thing is certain, we must really guard our hearts and motives when it comes to boiling life and death decisions down to a mere issue of financial priorities or the inconveniences - are those not the primary reasons so many seek totally unnecessary abortions?

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:

Nessa wrote:

PaulSacramento wrote:
As for doctors and nurses, yes there are many times that they, and I say God Bless them for this, take the decision making out of their hands and give the patient a painless "nudge" on their way.

So a nudge is ok? What if you are standing with someone on the edge of a cliff?

It is up to the individual to decide to what degree but what I meant was, as an example, giving a terminally ill patient morphine so as they do not feel the pain anymore as they die.
I didn't mean to imply that it is ok for them to play God.
We are talking about those patients that WILL die, that ARE dying and being kept alive via machines or other artificial methods, and there is no cure or treatment.

I don't consider turning off a machine nudging someone to death.

It's a combination of with holding life sustaining treatment (think of Bipap) and titrating the morphine up so the patient doesn't feel like they are suffocating to death (that's really what the morphine is for, pain caused by the passing into death).

Paul, I forget, where do you live? End of life planning is all in the hands of the family, not in Drs or RNs hands, if you're in the U.S. If you're in a socialized medical world (like the UK for example), the family nor the patient decides. The hospital does then the laws of socialized medicine if there is disagreement (which the hospitals follow or are supposed to).

It's been years since I've helped someone die without pain, now I'm in a world where one of my main populations are chronically ill children. Now there are complex ethical dilemmas especially form birth to kid/teen age, increasing interventions needed for bodies that will degrade in function until death, decisions of if babies to drug addicts should really go home with mom and dad (they almost always do and some die because of it, because of our laws and ignoring nursing input). I could go on so I'll stop.

As Melanie said, I have no idea how they are justifying mentally ill persons to be competent enough to make the decision to end ones own life. Shows mental illness in the decision making process of higher ups (all too common...).

I am in Canada.

Helping someone die without pain is one thing, killing them is another.
I don't think that anyone has issues with allowing someone one to die and giving them meds to ease the pain and suffering.
Meds that "speed" up the process may be a gray area I guess, for some.

Killing someone outright ( use of inert gas for example) is wrong since it is, well, the taking of a life.