Word: euthanasia
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What begins as an accepted practice sanctioned by law can easily turn into an obligation, as society comes to expect what it at first merely tolerated. The logical next step: the old and seriously ill will feel pressured to request euthanasia rather than burden their families with ever rising medical or nursing-home costs. Unscrupulous heirs could take advantage of a law legalizing euthanasia to accelerate their inheritance. How fitting if the generation that ushered in these changes became the first to succumb to them on a grand scale. Our fragile civilization is grounded on Judeo-Christian ethics, which uphold...
After reading Charles Krauthammer's piece [VIEWPOINT, April 15] against allowing doctors to aid people in committing suicide, I was incensed at his cheap shot of inflammatory rhetoric when he derided the Dutch policy on euthanasia. He seems to want to instill fear in an aging American population. Not only did Krauthammer willfully overlook the profound differences in the Dutch and American health systems, he also seemed to misrepresent intentionally the facts of euthanasia in Holland, implying that involuntary euthanasia is a threat there...
...discussion of this very sensitive issue even more. His quotation of the Hippocratic oath was quite out of place: in Hippocrates' time, there were no life-prolonging devices that could reduce a dying person to little more than a houseplant. His quotation of the oath with respect to euthanasia should be compared to a doctor's admonition to use the time-honored method of bloodsucking by leeches to cure high blood pressure. JOHAN ROORYCK Leiden, the Netherlands Via E-mail...
...EUTHANASIA DECISION...
...America the great moral barrier protecting us from such monstrous God-doctoring is the one separating passive from active euthanasia. Pulling the plug for the dying is permitted. Prescribing death-dealing drugs to those who are quite self-sustaining is not. It is this distinction that the judges are intent on destroying...