Media Share 9/MEDIASHARE_09.ISO/mag&info/anr9302.zip/9302EU.ANR

Text File | 1993-04-06 | 16KB | 297 lines

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(39)   Mon 8 Feb 93  3:52p
By: John Covici
To: All
Re: Ama endorses nazi euthan
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Feb. 5 (EIRNS)--AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION ENDORSES NAZI EUTHANASIA.
The same American Medical Association which forced the resignation of
the World Medical Association nominee because of his possible support
of euthanasia in Nazi Germany, came out endorsing euthanasia in the
page of the Washington Post. James Todd, the executive Vice-President
of the AMA is not even pretending to do it for the ``right to die'' of
the patient, he is very blunt: ``we've got to develop a system, that
says it's okay to omit treatment on occasion, that it's all right on
occasion to let people die gracefully''

``We've got 87% of the population covered by some kind of insurance
and 13% of the population that are just adrift. And we need to find
ways to bring them in. And it seems inconceivable to us that you can
bring 35 million people into a health care system and expect
expenditure to drop, or even to stabilize. What it indicates is that
we have to give less health care''

Todd used the example of people who suffer from cancers which are
usually terminal, like cancer of the bowel: ``These are the kind of
things that can be eliminated. You are not doing violence to
anybody.''

* Origin: The Lincoln Legacy  703-777-5987 1200-14400 HST DS
(1:109/909)

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(58)   Thu 11 Feb 93  8:43a
By: Joe Chamberlain
To: All
Re: Euthanasia
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The Netherlands adopted the most liberal euthanasia guidelines in Europe
Tuesday after years of keeping the widely accepted practice in legal limbo.

The compromise was an attempt to placate right-to-lifers opposed to
repealing the ban on euthanasia entirely, while giving legal protection to
physicians performing the mercy killings.

Until the guidelines take effect, euthanasia is still punishable by up to
12 years in prison.

Many Dutch view euthanasia as a generally humane practice, but conservative
religious groups warned the nation is losing respect for human life.
Euthanasia supports will press for full legalization.

The lower house of parliament voted 91-45 to append the guidelines to the
1955 Disposal of the Dead Act.  They were developed over the years by the
Royal Dutch Medical Association.

The action must still be approved by the parliament's upper house later
this year and receive the crown seal.  Both are considered formalities.

The guidelines say euthanasia can bapplied only to a patient suffering a
"perpetual, unbearable and hopeless" condition who requests it repeatedly
and while lucid.  The patient need not be terminally ill.  A second medical
opinion must be obtained.

The physician must document the entire decision making process -- including
why euthanasia was chosen and how it was carried out -- and submit it to
the district coroner's office after the death.

* Origin:  Joe's Point - A Tri-Pacer In The Sky - Delaware (RAX
1:150/175.1)

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(77)   Sun 21 Feb 93  7:05a
By: John Covici
To: All
Re: Dutch parliment oks eutha
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Dutch Parliament Okays Euthanasia, Gives Nazi Doctors License To Kill
by Linda Everett U.S. Club of Life

Feb. 15 (EIRNS)--On Feb. 9, the Parliament of the Netherlands passed a law
approving the medical extermination policies used by Nazi doctors in the
Third Reich on thousands of mentally and physically ill patients. Ignore
the propaganda about the ``gentle Dutch model'' of euthanasia; the
Netherlands has legalized the murder of any patient the death fanatics in
the Dutch Medical Association see as a burden to society.

For years, euthanasia was a crime in the Netherlands, but was allowed
anyway, as long as doctors followed certain ``guidelines.'' They had to
report to authorities that they had administered euthanasia to a
``terminally ill'' patient who was in pain and had repeatedly asked for
death. Doctors who performed euthanasia without a patient's consent faced a
12-year jail term, but prosecutions rarely occurred for even flagrant
violations of that ``guideline.''

Now, as Nazi doctors once created ``procedures'' to give their murders what
they hoped was a veneer of medical legitimacy, so too the Dutch law, which
says it allows euthanasia only under ``tightly controlled conditions.'' And
so, under the law, which goes into effect in 1994, euthanasia remains
``completely forbidden'' and illegal--but doctors are guaranteed immunity
from prosecution if they follow a 28-point checklist.

-       Guidelines for Death -

A doctor who performs euthanasia, whether at the explicit request of the
patient {or not,} is required to inform the coroner, and show in a report
that he has paid strict attention to various ``requirements of
carefulness.'' The coroner is {forbidden to do an autopsy} to confirm cause
of death; he may examine the body only superficially.

The report is reviewed by the public prosecutor, who will dismiss the case
if he sees no irregularities.  Since he must judge the case {only} on the
basis of the doctor's report (and who would incriminate himself?), and the
witness is dead, a prosecutor will find few irregularities.

Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch-Ballin says the new law will bring
mercy killing into the open to be ``regulated,'' since, at present, only a
fraction of cases are ``properly'' reported. Having problems with your
country's murder rate? Make it legal, regulate it. Where's the problem
then?

Making murder legal has been a campaign in the Netherlands since 1973, with
the founding of the Stichting Vrijwillige Euthanasie by Baroness Adrienne
von Till-d'Aulnis de Bournuill, who wrote the ``ethical'' rules on
euthanasia approved by the Rotterdam Criminal Court in 1981.  Another
driving force was Dr. Pieter V.  Admiraal, who boasted in 1986 that he had
already killed 50 people. His journal on methods of medical murder was sent
to every Dutch medical group and hospital. The Dutch Physicians Association
called for the ``right'' of children aged 8 and over to ask for euthanasia.
Socialists in Parliament supported this ``right'' {without parental
interference.} Monstrous!

In 1987, as the world depression hit hard, pro-death groups shifted focus
from patient's ``rights'' to the ``hard choices'' society must make because
it can't afford to treat ``everyone in the next 30 or 40 years,'' as death
specialist Eugene Sutorius said. Admiraal added that, for ``purely economic
reasons,'' we may need to kill sufferers from Alzheimer's disease after
``three years of dementia.'' The Dutch courts even excused doctors who
killed mentally ill patients. And last year, the Dutch Pediatric Society
indicated that pediatricians give lethal shots to gravely ill newborns.

-       Kill, Kill, Kill -

Recently, a committee of the Dutch Medical Society committee recommended
that such infants be killed outright.  The same committee recommends that,
after three months in a coma, a comatose patient be given a lethal
injection; the committee argues that, even if a patient recovers (as many
do), he remains a burden to society and himself--so get out the needle.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Medical Society will soon release a third report,
recommending the outright killing of psychiatric patients. All these
recommendations for murder come from physicians, whose heritage is the
healing tradition of Western medicine and civilization, and whose most
fundamental promise, under the Hippocratic Oath, is to ``do no harm.''

American ``ethicists'' hail the Dutch model because, they say, since the
Netherlands has national health care for everyone, Dutch patients aren't
under economic pressure to die to save their families the costs of their
care. But that's nonsense. Instead of explicit top-down budget controls
that ration care, the Royal Dutch Medical Association chose explicit
top-down Nazi medical protocols for the same reasons the Nazis chose them:
namely, cost-cutting.

Interestingly, the Netherlands' new law was proposed {after} the Dutch
government ran a study and found that one in every six deaths in the
country is caused by the {intentional} killing of a patient. Involuntary
killing is so rampant in the Netherlands, that many citizens carry cards in
their wallets asserting that, in case of accident, they do {not} want
euthanasia.

In a study of 20,000 deaths, 2,300 people were killed by euthanasia after
asking for it. One thousand patients who were killed by fatal injection had
{never} asked for it. Some 8,000 patients who had never asked to die were
murdered by doctors who ended their treatment or food or water. And 8,000
more who had never asked to die, were intentionally overdosed. (Cases in
which patients are killed without seeking to die, are not reported as
euthanasia--since the patients died involuntarily! These cases the
government calls ``normal medical practice.'')

As Dr. Karel Gunning, president of the World Federation of Doctors Who
Respect Human Life, told the Club of Life, ``The Netherlands abolished the
Hippocratic Oath. I regret to say we are becomming a barbaric nation.''

From New Federalist v6, #8.

* Origin: The Lincoln Legacy  703-777-5987 1200-14400 HST DS (1:109/909)

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(78)   Sun 21 Feb 93  7:08a
By: John Covici
To: All
Re: Vatican officialsdenounce
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VATICAN OFFICIALS DENOUNCE DUTCH EUTHANASIA.

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)   Various Vatican officials have denounced the Dutch
parliament's Feb. 9 euthanasia legislation. Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini,
president of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care
Workers, called the measures "a very grave offense to human dignity", a
"vile surrender of the authentic science of medicine," and "a dangerous
retreat on the march to a truly human civilization." Bishop Elio Sgreccia,
vice-president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said, "Once again
death is inflicted on people in an extremely fragile state." He said that
euthanasia is a "direct consequence" of modern secular societies. "When
life becomes a burden for oneself or others, you legalize supression
instead of promoting aid." Modern society "cannot stand looking death in
the face and, even less, welcoming times of suffering." An editorial in
[L'Osservatore Romano] said that medicine is "for human life and never for
death."

* Origin: The Lincoln Legacy  703-777-5987 1200-14400 HST DS (1:109/909)

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(79)   Sun 21 Feb 93  7:10a
By: John Covici
To: All
Re: Infant euthanasia on rise
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WIESBADEN, Feb. 18 (EIRNS)--EUTHANASIA COMMITTED AGAINST NEWBORN INFANTS
who are adjudged to face a "poor quality of life" if they were allowed to
live, is becoming an increasing trend in Holland, the London <Independent>
reports.

One main advocate of this is Professor Zier Versluys of the University of
Utrecht, who says that "newborn euthanasia" should be carried out in those
circumstances in which the child's quality of life will be severely
impaired. The <Independent> reports that Versluys "has written a report for
the Dutch Pediatric Association's panel on neo-natal ethics asking the
government to permit euthanasia for infants who are so incapacitated that
their quality of life will be impaired. Under the new Dutch guidelines on
euthanasia, the patient has to ask to be killed to be put out of pain.

In the case of `newborn euthanasia', it is left to the parents and the
doctors to decide, and a report is then made to the coroner who can decide
whether a crime ... has been committed." This practice toward "newborn
euthanasia" will only exacerbate the prevailing trend in Holland, the
<Independent> stresses: "Following the adoption of a new euthanasia code of
practice by the Dutch parliament last week, physicians will have even more
liberty than they already had to dispatch their patients.

`Newborn euthanasia' is now gaining acceptability in the Netherlands and,
like euthanasia for older patients, the practice is expected to become more
common as the legal barriers against it are torn down.

`Only a physician can commit homicide with impunity,' Pliny the Elder said.
Some 2,000 years later in the Netherlands, `mercy killings' are routine."

WIESBADEN, Feb. 18 (EIRNS)--"I FIND THE RATIONALIZATION THAT THE CHILD WILL
BE A BURDEN TO ITS PARENTS TO BE OBSCENE," states the University of
Virginia's Carlos Gomez, in a statement to the London <Independent> on the
practice of "newborn euthanasia" in the Netherlands.  "We should have
learned something from the history of the 20th century," he goes on,
referring to the Nazi practice of euthanasia on deformed children and
psychiatric patients.  Gomez is the author of a study, "Regulating Death:
Euthanasia and the case of the Netherlands."  The <Independent>'s Leonard
Doyle says this is one of many critiques from those who believe that the
Dutch have become "carried away with their ethos of Protestant pragmatism."

WIESBADEN, Feb. 18 (EIRNS)--HOLLAND IS NOW ON A "SLIPPERY SLOPE" that is
leading it in the same direction as Nazi Germany, warns Professor Henk Ten
Have of the University of Nymejen, in comments made to the <Independent>'s
Leonard Doyle.

First euthanasia becomes legitimized for the terminally ill in intractable
pain, such as AIDS sufferers. Next comes newborn infants whose "quality of
life" is judged to be poor because of congenital disease. With the Nazis,
one next step was the clearing of psychiatric wards by means of euthanasia.
In Holland, Ten Have says, it will not be long before patients with
Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenics, and the mentally ill are dispatched,
because they are a "burden on society."

Ten Have also disputes official statistics (for 1990) of 2,300 cases of
"requested" euthanasia and 1,000 cases in which patients were killed by
their doctor without requesting euthanasia.  He says that the actual figure
of deaths by active euthanasia per year is between 8,000 and 10,000, the
latter figure being 8% of all deaths.

WIESBADEN, Feb. 18 (EIRNS)--THE ESSENTIAL ARGUMENT USED BY PRO- EUTHANASIA
DOCTORS IN HOLLAND TODAY is alarmingly similar to the argument used by many
doctors in Nazi Germany, a "medical ethics" expert opposed to euthanasia
commented to EIR today.  "The parallels I see are not so much in the
motivations of the doctors, which were often economic or racial under the
Nazis and are not like that here, but rather in the argumentation on the
matter of suffering.  In both cases, doctors have put forward the argument
that suffering as such is a reason to be killed.  When I hear arguments
about how suffering worsens the `quality of life', or undermines the
`dignity' of the patient, I am reminded of arguments heard under the
Nazis."  He said that what is now happening in Holland, after the recently
legislation effectively legalizing euthanasia, is "very dangerous."

* Origin: The Lincoln Legacy  703-777-5987 1200-14400 HST DS
(1:109/909)