In commenting on the case of Sean Davison - the man who has just been convicted of assisting the suicide of his terminally-ill mother – John Kleinsman (the director of the Nathaniel Centre, the New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre) makes the salient point that legalising euthanasia will leave the elderly vulnerable to pressure from family, health professionals [...]

There is much commentary in the blogosphere about the rather poignant letter of Dr. John Pollock to the New Zealand Doctor magazine advocating euthanasia. Dr Pollock is dying from terminal malignant melanoma. While I very much empathise with Dr. Pollock, I think neither he, nor the blogosphere supporters of euthanasia, actually understand the implication of [...]

I might have known that the case of Margaret Page, the woman who has decided to starve herself to death, has been taken up as a cause célèbre by the euthanasia lobby, notably Lesley Martin. It seems to me, however, that there is a substantial difference between actively participating in the ending of another person’s [...]

The Herald reports a 17 year old boy (who has name suppression for no apparent reason – go get ‘em, Whale) has been sentenced to 8 months home detention (on top of 4 months in custody – an effective 12 month sentence) for assisting the suicide of 16-year-old Ben Dowdell. I won’t be revisiting the [...]

Scientists have shown that a patient in a persistent vegetative state can actually understand  and “answer” questions. Use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has shown very specific brain activity in response to questioning. Activity that can be interpreted in no other way than as a response to a question. This would tend to indicate that [...]

The Herald carries a fairly level-headed article (from the Independent) on the differing verdicts in the case of two separate “mercy killings” in the UK. I say level-headed because it actually does explore the reasoning behind the difference in verdict and vaguely explore the problems associated with strong mandatory sentences. One woman killed her 31 [...]

Quantity of Life – Eugenics and Social Darwinism This is almost always represented as a quality of life issue and wrapped up in a “compassionate” guise. Where it differs from the quality of  life decisions is that it is founded on a single criteria, often related only superficially to the quality of life issues. In [...]

Quality of Life Issues (involuntary euthanasia) Now we move into tiger country. Involuntary euthanasia is where someone other than the person to be killed makes that decision. Typically, the person whose life is being decided upon is not able to participate in the decision. This is where a current living will comes in handy (see [...]

Quality of Life Issues (voluntary euthanasia) In end-of-life euthanasia, there is, at least, some objective standards which we can use to determine whether a patient is truly dead. When the discussion moves to quality of life, the criteria are far more subjective. What, exactly, determines quality of life? Productivity? Mobility? Social Activity? Dignity? Any and [...]

End of Life Issues I have blogged about these issues before, using the sad case of Eluana Englaro as an example, here and here. For most of us, death comes as a discrete event. The doctor pokes your corpse a bit, listens for a heartbeat and breathing, finds none and writes out your death certificate. [...]