Overseas news
Last month, a spellbinding 10-hour debate to legalize physician-assisted dying took place in Britain’s House of Lords. Since Americans are unfamiliar with this legislative body, it bears mention that most peers in the upper house of Parliament have been appointed for life for their experience in public service or for…
Hospitals resuscitate too many elderly people because society does not see enough death and accept we are mortal, a leading cardiologist has said. Elderly people who are frail and suffering from dementia are routinely given a number of medical interventions in hospitals such as statins, aspirins and flu jabs which…
The manner of Nelson Mandela’s prolonged death was an affront. I have spent my life working for dignity for the living. Now I wish to apply my mind to the issue of dignity for the dying Desmond Tutu plea for ‘assisted dying’ before historic Lords debate
A few highlights from the debate in the House of Lords. Thanks to everyone campaigning with Dying In Dignity UK
On the same day that the UK supreme court dismissed an argument that doctors in the should escape prosecution if they help patients end their lives, a doctor in France who gave lethal injections to seven terminally ill people was cleared of wrongdoing.
Terminally ill patients in Quebec have the right to choose to die. The non-partisan Bill 52, also known as an act respecting end-of-life care, passed Thursday afternoon in a free vote at the National Assembly in Quebec City. Read article …
Sadly, but with conviction, I recently removed breathing tubes from three patients in intensive care.
Anil Bahnot, one of the founding members of Hindu Council UK , wrote a letter to The Times published last week (March 26th £ ) in which he explained the tolerant Hindu attitude to assisted dying for terminally ill adults:
Neil Lyndon’s mother was a ‘tough old bird’, healthy well into her ninth decade. But when the end came, he felt powerless to ease her suffering.
There’s nothing so sad as a good policy thrown out because of vague fears about where it might lead, one day, if we made absolutely no effort to stop it, put no safeguards in place, deliberately switched off the electric fence around the T-Rex pen and morphed spontaneously into the full cast of the Lord of the Flies.
During the summer of 2006, my father suddenly developed a deep, science-fiction-scary cough unlike anything my family had ever heard before. It wasn’t the kind of cough that comes with an ordinary cold. It was the kind of cough that makes anyone who hears it — even strangers in the…
