Rolling Angels Of Death

Choosing death when terminally ill and in pain is understandable, I just find traveling death teams kind of an overwhelming idea I guess.

I think that as soon as you start treating people medically, you start to postpone death, and you have the obligation to start to think about a graceful reintroduction of the inevitable: that people will die. Medicine has given mankind the opportunity to lenghten the suffering of patients.
Having said that, there is still a large religious community in the Netherlands that believes life is sacred and that patients, therefore, have to suffer ridiciously long.
When my mother was terminally ill, and really tired of trying to survive for her young children, she asked her doctor to help her. We/She had the luck that, although that doctor was part of that religious cult, he had the decency to alert another doctor to discuss her wishes with her.

I believe thet if all doctors in the Netherlands had been enlightened enough, we didn't need this sort of weird nmobile angels of death.

If people want to choose death, then let them.

I agree, if/when someone decides it's time to check out then that is their decision. In the case of the mentally ill, and wanting to suicide is not, necessarily, a sign thereof, and pain is not a factor then, of course, someone else would have to decide.

BTW, anyone seen Soylent Green lately?

Jeroen, my deepest sympathies on your mother's illness and death. It was a blessing that she was able to end her suffering but still such a tragedy for your family. Thank you for giving us some insight from the Netherlands.

If you are in a dire enough condition to be considering assisted suicide, there is a fair chance that you may also find travel difficult and/or painful to accomplish.

The doctor's coming to you would seem to be preferable to a needlessly discomforting trip.

Although I understand extreme pain and suffering bringing the desire to want it to come to an end, our life is not something that we have without it being given to us. Do we have a right to take it away. If you believe in a creator, is this not a case of telling God that we don't want what he gave us?


Curiously, the captcha is 48final

That seems to be the currently (Western?) accepted view but most of the "primitive" cultures which were, IMHO, closer to their Gods, accepted the inevitable and saw the good in not lingering after the time had come to depart.

I live in Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for 15 years. Here where we it is practiced and people get to see the results up close it is clear that the system works very well. While people from other states do occasionally come to Oregon for this freedom, the majority of terminal patients simply aren't able to travel. My mother personally administered the esophageal tube and medication to her dear, dear friend who was so compromised by ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease) that she could not even swallow the capsules by herself. Setting un-reachable per-requisites like travel for terminal patients is akin to granting voting rights to African-Americans and then imposing poll taxes and literacy requirements that effectively bar them from using this freedom. (Of course that is precisely what we did, but I'd hope we learned something)

I can't speak for everyone, but I can tell you that those closest to the process are among the least conflicted about it.

If this was the United States, we'd have a reality show following the doctors around, documenting the comments from the soon to be departed and their family members before and after the euthanasia. Or combine it with American Idol and have the losers put to death. Come on Netherlands! You're missing a great opportunity here.....

kahanamoko -- shouldn't it be the winner who's put to death? After all, these are people who want to die!

Call it Terminal Talent.

What an opinionated, uninformed and biased nonsense the author of this article presents! Those are not traveling death teams. The organisation is a clinic, and people who want assisted suicide have to submit a written request. Then the first team, consisting of a medical doctor and a experienced nurse go and interview the requester in case that person is not able to travel any more. If they find that the person has indeed no future but extreme and continuous physical suffering and that he is mentally fit to be able to take this decision, a second group of medical doctors will make an evaluation; if, and only in case the second group agrees with the first, the requester is given a lethal quantity of medicaments, that he himself will have to take. NO-ONE is injecting him or keeping it a secret that it is a lethal dose. When the person takes the lethal dose, there will be two people present until he is declared dead, if he allows them to be.

Thanks for a closer look at the checks and balances of this system Ed.

I work at a nursing home, and this story was mildly difficult for me to read. These teams are not traveling death squads. They're pretty much angels on earth.

Personally, I totally disagree with trying to keep someone alive when they obviously want to pass away, or are never going to heal. You're merely buying them time and pain. The right to death is just as strong as the right to life.

Another point, for Terry. It's NOT okay to assist someone with dying when they need it, are in pain, and well on the way already--but it IS okay to assist thousands in the middle east with premature death, more than 100,000 CIVILIANS, who weren't doing anything at all. That's just a huge incongruity. Ridiculously unfair, in my opinion.

http://owni.eu/2011/05/05/the-war-on-terror-in-numbers/
Great site for numbers of deaths in this "War on Terror."

You're not wrong about assisted suicide Razzle. I think the fear is that the decision to end life could be taken from the patient at some point. Who'd have thought, 30 years ago, that insurances would be able to second guess doctors on medications and treatments? But now it goes on all the time. There has even been talk of some insurances covering assisted suicide meds but not some chemo therapy meds already. Yes, ending suffering should be available to terminally ill patients if they choose it, but it should never be anyone else's decision. I do not think that is happening over there, but many fear it could happen here and in the name of corporate greed to boot.

I'm not against assisted suicide but like Patty I worry what a profit-minded hospital administrator would do with it.

"Broken leg? We can't justify the cost of an X-ray and cast. Axe him!"

So what's stopping them doing the same now? 😕

What they are doing is a beautiful gift. They are allowing these people to die with dignity in their own homes, next to their loved ones. I wish our country had the same common sense and humanity.