Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Go to sleep forever as they take your face from you.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Transplants are nothing new, but euthanizing a patient to use the patient’s face in a transplant is Hollywood become real.
“Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia.
“Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours
“…
“The euthanasia law in Spain, which came into force in June 2021, opened up a new possibility for transplants.
“In the case of this transplant, as the donor had received prior authorization, medical workers could do more planning than usual.
“The transplant was also the first in the world in which 3D planning could be done on both the donor and the recipient.
“The donor was a woman who had requested euthanasia and who had expressed her desire to be a donor, also of the face if necessary.”
Is it really euthanasia if the patient doesn’t want to die? In France, the answer is yes!
“A 60-year-old man who does not want to die may still have life support withdrawn because ‘the patient’s will ends with the law.’
“No sooner had France passed its law authorising euthanasia than a borderline case emerged in the press, bearing witness to the deadly spiral into which the country is being drawn. It undoubtedly illustrates the concerns of those who had been warning of a gradual shift in decision-making power towards the medical profession.
“At the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Rémi, a man who emerged from a coma following a serious accident, now consistently asserts that he wishes to continue living. However, his doctors consider that the treatments keeping him alive constitute ‘unreasonable obstinacy’ and have initiated proceedings to have them withdrawn. The Council of State has just ruled in their favour, in a decision containing a chilling phrase ‘the patient’s will ends with the law.’”
If you want to make sure your patient dies, knock ‘em out before they change their mind!
“In a newly released paper in the prestigious journal Bioethics, three prominent bioethicists argue that when someone decides to commit suicide via self-starvation and dehydration — known in euthanasia movement parlance as ‘voluntary stop eating and drinking’ (VSED) — doctors should be allowed to ‘terminally sedate’ the person trying to die when necessary to prevent intractable suffering.
“Patients who commit VSED are often not terminally ill. In fact, euthanasia organizations promote self-starvation to the elderly who are not dying and as a means of becoming eligible for assisted suicide where it is legal by making oneself “terminal” via lack of sustenance.
“VSED must be distinguished from the common circumstance when actively dying people stop eating. That’s a natural process and often peaceful because the body cannot assimilate food as organs shut down. VSED, in contrast, deprives the body of sustenance it needs to remain alive toward the end of causing death, i.e., it is a suicide method.
“Without palliation, many people attempting VSED would abandon the attempt. The bioethicists know this and claim that once the decision to commit suicide is made, doctors are duty-bound to medically ameliorate the suffering that inevitably results:
“’If a patient is adamant in their refusal of food and water, the same physician must respect the competent refusal by not force‐feeding the patient and should offer standard palliative care, as they would for any other dying patient. Medical support for patients undertaking VSED should be adequate and proportionate to their symptoms, as per any other form of palliative care. This is arguably not assisted suicide.’
“No, it is precisely that. First, but for the self-starvation, many people who undertake VSED would not be dying. Second, palliation permits the patient to complete the suicide that would otherwise be abandoned. Hence, the palliating doctor is facilitating the patient in becoming dead, i.e., it is a form of suicide assistance.”
TTFN.
