LivesWorthLiving  Australia really is drawing together the best in commentary opposed to euthanasia from a disability perspective.  Continue reading

An excellent characterization of the pro-assisted suicide lobby int he USA. Lessons and truths for us all.  This blog from Continue reading

This is a shocking expose of abuse of the rights of elderly people and their families. It is, in effect, institutional Elder Abuse.Like the Liverpool Care Pathway, even the best intentions go awry. When dealing with people's freedoms and rights to 'life and liberty' it will never end well. The Daily Mail report in full:Read these stories of how the secret courts imprison the elderly in care homes against their will - and weep Continue reading

Mary Warnock, for example, often described without irony as "Britain's leading moral philosopher" has opened the door to the State becoming a mass killer of its older, sicker citizens. As well as supporting euthanasia for the terminally ill, in a magazine interview she recommended a much wider use of the lethal injection or poisoned broth. "If somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die," she has said, "because they're a burden to their family, or the State, then I think they too should be allowed to die." Lord Falconer of Thoroton would not admit to such an ambition for his much more modest assisted suicide Bill, now in its early parliamentary stages, but we shouldn't be under any illusions about the journey it would set the country on. Wherever assisted suicide (or any other form of euthanasia) has been legalised for narrow circumstances, a loophole opens up through which convoys of hearses are driven.In the Netherlands people with early dementia are already being visited by mobile euthanasia units. In Belgium the law allows euthanasia only when, technically, "the patient is in a medically futile condition of constant unbearable suffering". Wesley J. Smith, of the US-based Centre for Bioethics and Culture, has listed examples of ways in which the law has been interpreted much more expansively. Continue reading

Philosophers with no suspicion that anything is beyond their professional competence, or may be too deep for their individual talent, 'mistake [their] vices for the virtue of thinking radically, courageously...', [and they] have contributed to a drive that feeds an aggressive and now much less self-reflective lobby, who make the same mistake of vice for virtue. (Rai Gaita, 1991)  Continue reading

A recent court case in Canada parallels the situation of Mrs De Ravin. Mrs Margaret Bentley was living in a care facility and was suffering from dementia. She also had a living will - two in fact â��  the second of these being contested as part of a case taken by her family in the BC Supreme Court seeking a ruling that spoon feeding constituted 'medical care', not basic care and arguing, therefore, that the nursing home should cease to feed Bentley.  Continue reading

A group of Canberra MLA's, advocates and people in the aged care and allied health sector today got an insight into the moral, legal and political puzzle that is voluntary euthanasia. Suicide is now decriminalised in all States and Territories so there was discussion about whether choosing to end your life should still be stigmatised. Should we talk about suicide at all or maybe have a term like elective death? A valid question given where the law stands. But it begs other questions which I asked at the forum.Back on earth we regulate autonomy all the time - to guard against the worst decisions and outcomes. There are a long list of choices we regulate where autonomy intersects with the lives and wellbeing of others, such as selling and consuming hard drugs or naming your child Adolf Hitler. Continue reading

From :Alex Schadenberg's Blog Continue reading

A reflective piece by Theodore Dalrymple from the website:Taki's Magazine Continue reading

(see link to voter guides at bottom of this page)  SA voters will go to the polls on March 15th to elect a government for the next four years. Continue reading