H. There is no evidence of the murder rate increasing in the Netherlands because of this.
I. According to Religious Tolerance.com�s articles on PAS and Euthanasia
1. Some people live in excessive chronic pain and no treatment helps them so they�d prefer death over the pain and irreversible suffering.
2. They have a terminal illness and do not want to diminish their assets by incurring large medical costs as their death approaches. As an act of generosity they�d rather die sooner and pass on their assets.
3. A serious disorder or disease has adversely affected them and their quality of life to the point where they no longer wish to live.
4. They have been diagnosed with a degenerative, progressive illness and would rather control when they die rather then have a long strung out death.
5. Some people wish to do this but are not capable of doing it themselves and force their family or friends into committing a criminal act by committing suicide.
6. The state of Oregon and the Netherlands are currently the only places PAS is legal.
J. Michel de Montaigne was one of the first writers for PAS and euthanasia he writes that suicide should be a personal choice and a human right. In his �Defense of legal suicide� �Death is a remedy against all evils: It is a most assured haven, never to be feared, and often to be sough: All comes to one period, whether man makes an end of himself, or whether he endure it; whether he run before his day, or whether he expect it: whence soever it come, it is ever his own, where ever the thread be broken, it is all there, it�s the end of the web. The voluntariest death is the fairest. Life dependeth on the will of others, death on ours.� Source Religious Tolerance.com
K. Citizens in Oregon State approved Ballot measure 16 in the November 1994 ballot which lists criteria as to how a person may seek PAS.
1. Must be terminally ill
2. Must have 6 months or less to live
3. Must make two oral requests for assistance with dying
4. Must make one written request for assistance
5. Must convince two physicians that they are sincere, is not acting on a whim, and that the decision is voluntary
6. Must not have been influenced by depression
7. Must be informed of �the feasible alternatives, including, but not limited to comfort care, hospice care and pain control.�
8. Must wait 15 days.
9. If criteria met they would receive a prescription barbiturate that would be sufficient to cause death. Mercy killing by a family member or friend would not be allowed nor physicians doing lethal injections. (Religious tolerance.com)
L. Many people expected that large numbers of the terminally ill would use the law when in fact only 23 during �98 did.
M. everyone who used the pill was unconscious within 5 minutes and dead within the hour. (Religious tolerance.com)
III. (MAIN POINT III)People who needed this but didn�t get too
A. Peter Singer repeatedly tells stories of people involved in this situation here are some of them.
B. Derek Humphry has told how his wife Jean, when dying of cancer asked him to provide her with the means to end her life swiftly and without pain. They had seen the situation coming and discussed it beforehand. Derek obtained some tables and gave them to Jean, who took them and died soon afterwards.
C. Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan Pathologist, created a �suicide machine� in which he hooks the patient up to a normal saline IV drip and then leaves the room. If the patient decides to they call flip a switch which causes a coma inducing drug to be pushed followed by a lethal drug contained in the third bottle. He was arrested for using this on a patient and is now serving in jail for second degree murder.
D. In 1973 George Zygmaniak was injured by a motorcycle accident and was paralyzed from the neck down. He was also in considerable pain. He told his doctor and his brother he didn�t want to live like that. The doctor said his chance or recover was nil but said that he wouldn�t help kill him. So his brother brought a gun into the hospital and asked his brother if it was OK to kill him. In a respirator now he nodded his head and his brother shot George in the temple. Unfortunately since euthanasia or PAS is not legal something gruesome and horrible to the others in the halls had to happen instead of something peaceful and loving.
E. In some cases doctors responsible for treating infants with spina bifida believe that the lives of the very worst effected children will have lives filled with pain and discomfort. They feel the children are so miserable it would be wrong to DO the surgery to keep them alive.
F. In most other cases many of the people who we in the US merely �keep alive� would not be able to live without being attached to numerous machinery and who would normally be called dead, unable to breath, eat, think, or move on their own. There life no longer has any intrinsic value, their journey has come to an end. Families who merely want these people alive are selfish of their own needs and not that of others.
G. In these cases there can also be other distressing conditions according to Peter Singer �like bones so fragile that sudden movements will fracture them, or uncontrollable nausea and vomiting, slow starvation due to cancer, inability to control ones bowels or bladder, difficulty in breathing an so on.
H. Betty Rollin found it difficult to help her mother who was suffering from cancer to the whole body, no physician would help and she couldn�t find any information. After her book on her mothers death was published hundreds wrote in who had tried, and failed, and suffered more because of the failed Euthanasia not given by a doctor. Perhaps someday a doctor will be able to help in a fashion that doesn�t cause further harm.
I. Dr. Koop Ronald Reagan�s Surgeon General said there are three condition in which he said life sustaining treatment was not appropriate anencephaly infants ( or those born with no brain ) suffered such sever bleeding in the brain that they would never be able to breath without a respirator, and infants lacking a major part of their digestive track to where they�d have to be fed through an IV their whole life.