No Slippery Slope Here!

May 12, 2015May 12, 2015 / newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

Euthanasia advocates always say there will be safeguards in place and only those who really want to die will die.

You know they are lying because the reality is that when you embrace the culture of death it just keeps on extending ever outwards.

From The Christian Institute

Dutch judge rules dementia patient must be euthanised

A judge in the Netherlands has allowed an 80-year-old woman to be euthanised, despite objections from the medical staff looking after her.

According to media reports, the woman was living in a dementia care home and doctors thought she was incapable of expressing her will to die.

But the woman’s family claimed she had a ‘death wish’ and obtained a court order when the care home refused to let her be euthanised.

Medical staff treating her fought against the decision, but a judge rejected the appeal and the court order remained.

Last month she was removed from the care home and killed by the ‘Life End Clinic’ which was started by activists to make euthanasia more accessible for people in the Netherlands.

Euthanasia was legalised in the country in 2002 and under the law doctors must fulfil certain criteria such as ensuring that a patient’s request is voluntary and being satisfied that they are suffering unbearably.

If a patient has dementia, doctors can only euthanise them if an ‘advance directive’ or ‘living will’ is in place.

A survey of doctors in the Netherlands who specialise in euthanasia has revealed that more than half approve of the practice for patients with dementia.

Of the 547 doctors surveyed, 52 per cent could imagine themselves personally allowing the practice in cases where the dementia patient has made an advance directive but is now unable to express their will.

Last year a Dutch academic warned Westminster not to legalise assisted suicide because the number of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands has soared since the legalisation of the practice in 2002.

Theo Boer originally supported euthanasia, but has now reviewed close to 4,000 euthanasia cases and said that it is becoming the “default” mode of dying for cancer patients.

He said: “Cases have been reported in which a large part of the suffering of those given euthanasia or assisted suicide consisted in being aged, lonely or bereaved.

“Some of these patients could have lived for years or decades”, he added.

Why We Need to be Careful.

January 14, 2015 / newlifenarrabri / 1 Comment

It’s easy to assume that there is no hope for people in certan medical conditions. Sometimes we write people off too quickly. From Lifesitenews.com

Man wakes up after 12 years in ‘vegetative state’: reveals, ‘I was aware of everything’

Vegetative State

Martin Pistorius hates Barney. And it’s no wonder why. For 12 years, while he was in a coma that doctors described as a “vegatative state,” nurses, thinking that he couldn’t see or hear anything, played endless re-runs of Barney as he sat, strapped into his wheel chair.

But Martin wasn’t the “vegetable” that doctors said he was. In fact, he could see and hear everything.

“I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney,” he recently told NPR.

In the 1980s, Martin was a typical active youngster growing up in South Africa. But, then, at age 12, he came down with an illness that baffled doctors, and that eventually resulted in him losing his ability to move his limbs, then to make eye contact, and finally to speak.

His parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorius, were told that he was a “vegetable” and the best thing for them to do was take him home and keep him comfortable until he died.

But the youngster continued to live despite the diagnosis.

“Martin just kept going, just kept going,” his mom said.

Now, in a new memoir, “Ghost Boy: My Escape From A Life Locked Inside My Own Body,” Martin has revealed that, although he was initially unconscious as doctors thought, after about two years he started waking up, eventually becoming fully conscious of everything around him.

Martin’s dad, Rodney, cared for his son throughout the ordeal, and recalls the daily routine of rising at five in the morning to get Martin ready for a day at a special care center.

“Eight hours later, I’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, put him in bed, set my alarm for two hours so that I’d wake up to turn him so that he didn’t get bedsores,” Rodney said in an NPR report.

Martin remembers, however, that his mom at one point lost hope, and while gazing at her son and thinking he could not hear her, said “I hope you die.”

But he did hear her.

“Yes, I was there, not from the very beginning, but about two years into my vegetative state, I began to wake up,” Martin said.

Read the rest here