Doctors speak against ‘assisted suicide’ bill

SANTA FE — A group of doctors and other health care professionals gathered inside the Capitol on Tuesday to speak out against legislation that would allow terminally ill patients in New Mexico to seek a doctor’s help to end their lives.

They said “assisted suicide” could lead to elderly or incapacitated patients feeling pressure to end their lives for financial reasons. Caretakers might take advantage of them as they seek an inheritance, opponents said.

“It’s the perfect crime,” Rep. Gregg Schmedes, R-Tijeras, said, “and it’s an unnecessary bill that will incentivize people to die early."

Corticosteroid Treatment Improves Adult Sepsis Outcomes

A new study concludes that administration of corticosteroids to patients with sepsis is associated with significant improvement in health care outcomes and reduced mortality.

Is there a difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia?

Is there a difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia?
One common argument in favour of legalising euthanasia is that several accepted medical practices already involve hastening the death of patients. Some ethicists claim, for example, that we are already hastening patients’ deaths in palliative care contexts through the administration of toxic levels of opioids and sedatives to patients. In palliative sedation -- a relatively common procedure in end of life scenarios -- doctors administer strong doses of drugs such as midazolam to sedate a patient. Ostensibly this is done to relieve refractory symptoms, yet some suggest that doctors are fully aware that the drugs may bring about a quicker death. In light of this, some ethicists argue that we need not be so concerned about hastening death through euthanasia -- this is a mere extension of the already existing practices in palliative care.

Nurse arrested in sexual assault of incapacitated woman at Phoenix facility

PHOENIX – Phoenix police arrested a 36-year-old nurse at Hacienda HealthCare facility, alleging he sexually assaulted and impregnated an incapacitated woman at the center.

The woman gave birth to a boy Dec. 29. Staff members told a 911 operator that they had not known she was pregnant.

The old days of medicine are gone

In the last decade, specifically in the last five to six years, we have seen the gradual disempowerment of America’s physicians as well as their unfortunate patients.

Starting with health management organizations, managed care, all the way to the insurance exchange, doctoring has been forcefully wrestled away from physicians only to be placed into the hands of large insurers, administrators and the United States government.

The common denominator was never about improving the quality of care for the American people but rather an obscene money-grabbing agenda by the above powers that be and the pharmaceutical industry.

Why the Royal College of Physicians will go ‘neutral’ on assisted suicide and why that matters

Undemocratic efforts to neutralise doctors' moral responsibility.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is going to poll its 35,000 members to ask whether "they would help a terminally ill patient to die and whether the law should be changed to allow assisted dying."

Why, despite the RCP polling all its members just a few years ago with the same question, has it decided it needs to poll members again? Could it possibly be part of a deliberate attempt to go officially "neutral" on "assisted dying" and from there, to support it?

Delaware bill defines assisted suicide as a palliative care option

Delaware bill defines assisted suicide as a palliative care option

The assisted suicide lobby has instituted a new direction by redefining assisted suicide as palliative care. This has long been a talking point for assisted suicide advocates but now they are attempting to change the legal definition of palliative care.

Assisted suicide laws give physicians, or others (New Mexico bill) the right in law to assist the suicide of their patients.