Talk about efficiency. Some enterprising Canadian funeral homes are offering their, er, customers, the option of one-stop death and mortuary services, renting out a room in which to be killed and then quickly prepared for final disposition. Read More ›
Compelling doctors to hew to secular cultural values in their practice of medicine is both authoritarian and un-American. If the anti-medical conscience campaign succeeds, we will all be the poorer for it. Read More ›
Please understand, dear readers, that when assisted-suicide advocates promise strict guidelines to protect against abuse, they don’t really mean it. The promise’s purpose is to get the law passed, not to be kept. Read More ›
Readers may recall the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases from the U.K. — in which doctors both wanted to remove life support and prevent the children from being transferred to other hospitals willing to continue care. Because the law in the U.K. permits courts to decide the “best interests” of children in medical extremis, the MDs got their way. Read More ›
Dutch euthanasia enthusiasts always pretend that doctors there commit homicide by lethal injection “only as a last resort” when nothing else can be done to eliminate “unbearable suffering.” What a pile of manure! Read More ›
As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live. Read More ›
“Futile care” — the forced removal by doctors and hospital bioethics committees of wanted life-extending treatment over patient and family objections — is, alas, still the law of Texas. And now a hospital in Florida has sued for the right to do the same thing to Genea Bristol, age 41. Read More ›
Readers may recall the sad case of Jahi McMath out of Oakland, Calif. In 2013, Jahi experienced a severe bleeding event after throat surgery and a subsequent cardiac arrest. She was successfully resuscitated, but her brain was catastrophically injured from loss of oxygen. Doctors at Oakland Children’s Hospital declared her brain dead and announced plans to remove Jahi from life support. Read More ›
Should psychiatrists and other doctors assist the suicides of mentally ill patients? Not that long ago, the answer to that question would have been unequivocally, “No” The job of a mental health professional is to save the lives of suicidal patients, not help them die. Read More ›
