Just consider it to be VERY late term abortion.

...terminally ill people "with no free will," including children...

Anyone who can say children have "no free will" has never watched parents trying to quiet a two-year-old in a family restaurant.

Do you think that the way we do it is better, i.e., allowing a spouse or a parent, instead of a doctor, to decide to pull the plug? Should individuals be able to decide ahead of time? I'm just wondering what your overall position on euthanasia is.

The American way is you don't increase the dosage of pain meds if the respiratory rate is below a certain level even if they are in pain and just leave them to suffer and wait for them to code.

this is so disturbing that I can't even comment....

McGehee..yer killin' me

it's barbarism. A complete lapse or encroaching absence in a society of regard for human life.

Unfortunately, physicians in the U.S. and elsewhere have been taking the lives soon after birth of those born with grave birth defects, where a physician determines that an overwhelming problem exists such that a child will never live "normally" or independently of support...but, not so much nowadays, as used to be. BUT, the significant issue is who decides who lives and who does not? If it's based solely on a medical scientist's estimation, that leaves a huge area for other considerations.

The desensitization about the significance and meaning of human life by many today is astounding -- murdering defenseless humans in the womb is dusted off and called "abortion" or even "termination of a pregnancy" or even more abstractly, a few other medical terms, and murder (that includes suicide) is called, "euthanasia."

Murder is murder. If there's mercy involved with it, it's in the mind and beholding of someone rationalizing the act. I'm not at all impervious to suffering, but, the focus in this issue, here, is not on suffering but on some abstract disregard for the meaning of what it is to be alive.

The Netherlands seems to be a breeding ground (strange term applied in this case) for an increasingly deconstructed concept of civilization. Barbarism. It's barbarism.

Man, this whole situation is just screwed up.

Look, for decades doctors have been quietly helping terminally ill patients pass on comfortably when the time came. Deliberately giving a patient an overdose of morphine — with the family's consent — used to be … well, I don't want to say common, exactly, but it was one of those things doctors would do.

But today something that used to be a private matter between doctor and patient or patient's family is now a question of public policy. And, ironically, something that used to be a very big deal is now trivialized to the point of being a statistic.

In trying to legislate the end of life, we've succeeded only in destroying the sanctity of it.

EUthanasia. EU knew it was coming.

IN DEFENSE OF NEANDERTHALS, however, Paul, they lived among a society that cared for their sick and their ailing members, buried their dead with memontos and ornaments and had a larger brain capacity than us Homo Sapiens. So, I always try to speak up in defense of Neanderthals, given that it's suspected that they were not an inferior branch of humankind, but, perhaps, a superior one supplanted by another, perhaps severe climate changes and challenges dwindled their numbers down to such an extent that they were easily replaced or lost, or some combination of factors that affects life in one or a few generations, but, the point is is that the Neanderthals don't indicate that they were any more or less primitive than our branch of humans, who did survive.

You know, it's only a miracle that we're here today, since what we know from our DNA is that we're all -- everyone alive today on the planet -- we're all descendants of one small group of humans, if not one lone female. It's surmised from that that the human populations were reduced to such extremes at a few points in our human history that only a handful of people on the planet survived, and then reproduced exponentially afterward (thus, our limited DNA variations).

Same thing probably happened to the Neanderthals but they, unfortunately, didn't make it past whatever traumatic event reduced their populations.

But, nothing that I am aware of about Neanderthals indicates that they were symbols of the worst that people can be, but perhaps superior to who we are as to physiology, capability. We'll never know, unfortunately, but I still try to stick up for them, in reverance for the lost people of Earth.

This sort of thing happens in the USA over a million times a year. It's commonly known as abortion. Except in the great majority of cases, the baby killed is perfectly healthy.

Julie and Jennifer, are you suggesting that killing these babies is an okay thing to do? I mean, whether the parents decide to do it or the doctors decide to do it, either way it is so wrong. Whether it is done "humanely" with painkillers, it is wrong. Even if the baby was only going to live a few months, or was going to be retarded its whole life, it is absolutely wrong to kill it. I disagree with euthanasia, but if some old geezer is sick of living in pain and wants to take their own life, at least they made the decision. These are little babies. It makes me so sick that people are doing this in that so-called progressive state. And they call Americans and our moral values infantile.

I don't really care for hysterics from either side of the abortion debate, but I think this crap in the Netherlands is a step too far.

They need to stop and take a long good look at the path they are headed down. Give the hospitals the power to euthanize infants, and the list of reasons to do so will keep growing.

Even if the baby was only going to live a few months, or was going to be retarded its whole life, it is absolutely wrong to kill it.

And is it not wrong to let a child suffer terribly without any hope its life will be more than a few months? Shd an infant be resuscitated over an over again even though their illness is terminal? These kids are generally in pain to begin with. Mental retardation is usually accompanied by other painful genetic defects. Do you think it's fun being used as a pin cushion with all the IV's they are subject to? And as I already mentioned, pain management leaves a lot to be desired. If they were given the appropriate amount of pain meds, it would depress their breathing, which of course, will eventually lead to death. So, do you withhold pain meds and just let them suffer?

What one person may define as making the patient comfortable and not resorting to heroic efforts when death is inevitable, others may label as euthanasia. I base this on my most recent internet pissing match on the subject. It is impossible to understand what is going on by what you read in these little news blurbs.

If an animal is in agony, and always will be until it dies, we consider it barbaric to NOT euthanize it... but if a HUMAN is in non-stop agony and will be until the end, they CAN'T be given euthanasia even if they WANT it? Does anyone else see a problem with that?

You couldn't torture a person nonstop for weeks or months, but you CAN, through inaction, allow a person to suffer an equal amount of torture even if they're BEGGING for release; WHY?!!

To me, the issue of euthanasia is very clear-cut in the case of adults with sound minds; if all they have left to experience in life is agony, let them die with dignity if that's their wish.

Once we get into the areas of children (especially babies), the lower-functioning developmentally-disabled, and those with mental illnesses severe enough to not be able to think for themselves, though, the waters get pretty muddy, because, although we might feel fairly sure that they have no quality of life left when they're in constant pain, how can we KNOW that they don't still cherish every breath they take? After all, plenty of adults with sound minds do NOT want to be euthanized even if their lives are non-stop agony, right? I think that there might well be some cases where even a person with minimal mental capacity could express a desire to end their pain, but a POLICY to just put people like that to death would be an abomination.

And in the case of an infant, with no ability at all to express its desires... we just can't know. It's terrifying to think that infants might be being kept alive in agony for no reason, but what if their survival instinct is making them want to fight to live and we KILL them-isn't that worse? I can see a good case for not giving them endless fruitless medical procedures if they can't actually be saved, as that's only increasing their suffering, and even for not feeding them through a tube so that nature can take its course quickly, as it would without intervention... but nothing should be done to bring death before the child's body would naturally shut down.

As to those doctors who've taken it upon themselves to hand out death sentences to babies without there even being an official policy telling them to do so; if I were ill or injured, I'd rather go to a voodoo witchdoctor than to any of them.

- "There are areas of human enterprise I treasure and other actions, plans, and deeds of our species I absolutely abhor....To the extent I am able to balance the bad with the good, I feel myself sane, and a viable contributor to my place in society" -
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (excerpts from "Innocents Abroad" - 1885)

- Buckle your seat belts people... as density increases and privacy declines we will be called upon to make ever many more life and death choices and it will be hard, frustrating, and ugly. In quieter times Doctors made all the decisions, privacy was the working word. As our science hands us more possibilities we will find some of those paths lead to diabolical problems. When we can justify drilling out the head of an innocent child because of any number of selfish reasons we're not on a slippery slope but a vertical wall into the pits of social hell. Whatever we gain in the short haul we will lose ten thousand fold in the end.....

- Paul - I fully believe you're anthropological prose was not meant in the way some may have taken it. But truth be known there is not a wit of evidence that we have "evolved" a micro inch. Materialism is no arbiter, nor even science and education, since these things just seem to push us further toward the cliff. We may indeed be the animal version of entropy....Not a happy thought I know, but there you are.....

- Deb - You say this is simply too disturbing to comment on.... Well you should be disturbed even at the thought, as all of us should be, and pray we can find the answers when we need them.....

IN DEFENSE OF NEANDERTHALS, however, Paul,

Now I've seen everything.... LOL

All socialist medical plans do not have enough money to treat chronically ill patients. The government has to kill them off so that there is money to treat the people with flu.

From the article:
"...a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates."

Actually, euthanasia opponents view it as a natural evolution, too. Which is why they are so horrified by it.

I mean, c'mon. We all knew this was the next step, right? It will move from euthanizing newborns with incurable diseases to newborns with really-hard-to-cure diseases to newborns with inconvienient diseases.
It will 'progress' from euthanizing for extreme deformities to pretty bad deformities to inconvienient deformities to 'less-than-'perfect'' babies.

It reminds me of the treatment of the disabled,
and psychiatric patients by Hitler's Nazi Germany.

That is what scaires me about an overly aggressive
government (either democratic or republican).
We know what is best for you and society.

This is NOT a slippery slope. This is NOT a slippery slope.

Take every four to six hours, as needed, for soothing your conscience. Until they come for you.

"To beg the question" does not mean "to raise the
question". Instead, it means to use circular reasoning,
i. e. to assume what is to be proved.

To conflate what they're doing here with giving a patient enough pain relief, knowing that there's a strong possibility that the result will be death, is simply wrong.
I do everything I can to ensure that a patient suffers no more pain than absolutely necessary, but to kill a patient in obedience to a government directive is simply murder.Period.

"The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best."

It isn't just at the whim of the doctors, contrary to most of the comments. Generally unless it's truly hopeless, a parent wouldn't let their child be euthanized.

Keith: Recently, there have been several highly publicized cases out of the UK where people claimed that the state was practicing euthanasia on kids by withholding care. This was a lie. In fact, the care was no different then what is offered in the US. Though I disagree with giving pediatric patients a lethal injection, I also disagree with withholding pain meds from terminally ill patients because it may hasten the inevitable. In this story about the Netherlands, the decision is made by the patient's medical team, independent doctors and the parents. It may be euthanasia but I don't know if it qualifies as euthanesia by the state.

I'm sorry I have a very huge problem with the way a few of you commenters present it.
There is a difference between active euthanasia and passive euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is "pulling the plug". Active Euthanasia is reaching in and actively killing them. The point is whether without help they will go on living naturally. Those who are on life support, and without life support they will die, pulling the plug is passive euthanasia.

Dr. Kevorkian practiced active euthanasia, which in my mind is murder. Sure they sign on the line saying "kill me", but it still doesn't make it right.

-In reference to the question "Jennifer" placed above.

The Money quote: "The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates."

Note that the advocates of this procedure are the ones who view it as a natural evoluton, thus justifying the 'slippery slope' arguments of the other side. Also note that it has taken about three years to go from ' only with a person's consent' to ' those unable to give consent'. Is there any logical reason not to expect that it will one day reach the point of ' those able but unwilling to give their consent'.

This is particularly relevant in countries with large socialized medical systems such as the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada. After all, once this option becomes legally availible - as it surely will, why should the government not just kill you rather than treat your expensive ailment? On the grounds of a wise use of funds, absent any pesky and outmoded moral considerations on the value of human life, it could even be cost justified since the most expensive medical care is generally delivered in the last two years of your life, and that money is probably better spent elsewhere - like buying hookers for the UN staff, and teaching kids how to put condoms on cucumbers and so on.

Unfortunately this is not only happening in Europe. In American Medical Schools and Hospitals a new theory in Bioethics called 'Futile Care Theory' advises hospitals to set up pretty much exactly the same set of protocols as the one described in this article. This hospital looks to be following the same blueprint advised by proponents of Futile Care Theory.

Although hardly scientific, everyone I know who is ardently pro-choice is also pro-assisted suicide (Euthanasia). It's also difficult not to notice that right about the time they had to change the Hippocratic Oath to remove all of those pesky references to abortion (as in making the Dr. promise to not ever do one) something changed in Med Schools. Medical ethics had no bioethicists and a doctor's primary responsability was to the patient as an individual. Now there are professional bioethecists and these people spend most of their time trying to convince the doctors that their main responsability is to society or humanity rather than the patient.

Oh what a brave new world we have made, where the product of our labor makes us more and more afraid.

-->>"In defense of Neanderthals..."

For Heaven's sake, Paul and a few others here, lighten up!

The diss -- calling people you disdain as "Neanderthals" -- was made notoriously awful by Teresa Heinz Kerry a month or so ago. She can no longer be "progressive" and call someone "mental" or make a racial slur, she can't remain "progressive" and call someone "poor" or "uncouth" so the last ditch 'acceptability' to liberal progressive language is to use "Neanderthals" to represent some penchant of uncivility.

MY ONLY POINT was that Neanderthals just may have been far more "civil" and actually "progressive" than those today.

But, as to this conversation, if that's what it is, again I write, LIGHTEN UP. It was a tongue in cheek comment by me earlier.

I was curious about the definition of "suffering," however, that some used in this thread. Like being wounded to the point of death is pleasant, by comparison? As I wrote earlier, today's liberal concepts are skewered: that murder and death are less sufferable than is life, in living. That war is vile but murder is alright as long as someone says that they are 'suffering' beforehand.

There is a grave responsibility to taking another person's or one's own life. Which seems to escape some today, which is driving this madness of disregard for life. People who commit suicide commit murder and the fact is, if they're capable of that level of violence against any life, including their own, they are capable of the same violence against others. There's nothing understandable about suicide, or about murdering defenseless life.

ravenshrike:

Yes, it is, ultimately, the decision of the physicians. They have to interpret the Administrative Code and implement the acts that result in persons living or being rendered dead.

So, yes, the responsibility rests with the physicians, as to the acts themselves, while the Code that establishes the actions is also responsible. But, without anyone to implement the acts, no one would be put to death. Physicians make legal and ethical interpretations at nearly every point of practice, which is a great part of who they are and how they are trained: to respond to administrative requests and dictates with a medically scientific solution. In THIS case, they're acting out the Administrative orders, but are still the hands that determine the fate.

Maybe my point is made more clearly by writing this, in all seriousness now:

It isn't Neanderhals who are "kill(ing) babies." It's the people in the Netherlands who are. Acquainting them with Neanderthals contradicts the point of your editiorializing statements that follow.

That is, the people in the Netherlands are responsible for this behavior. They are. Call it what it is because otherwise I agree with what you've written afterward. Neanderthals probably maintained a civilized society, based upon what's been determined about their societies and physical capabilities, and PROBABLY like many other humans since, cherished and nurtured each new birth both before and after. I bet that the last thing any Neanderthal would have imagined was killing an unborn or birthed child, based upon the necessity for ongoing generations: my earlier point.

Maybe I'm missing something. This is just a case of post-partum abortion.

Like Ann Coulter said, if they don't have a high school degree yet, it's still the mother's right to choose.

And hey, this sounds like the answer to the Social Security problem. People only get out of Social Security what they put in, and when they run out, well, it was nice knowing you.

I just have a problem with conscience here...I can't in clear conscience say or agree that taking the life of a defenseless child who in unable to dictate it's own future is a good thing...An infant cannot discern between right and wrong and certainly doesn't have the ability to express it's desire to live. The sheer will that the child exhibits regardless of it's physical or mental state is indicative of its desire to live though. Who are we to determine a childs fate? Who are we to say that the