"TODAY I LEARNED TO BE A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD ..."

Learning to be a citizen of the world

A video for child empowerment was released today.  It is an inspirational video promoting citizen action through a number of children, including my grandson. The concluding message by a child summed up the message: "Today, I learned to be a citizen of the world  and a child of the world." Perhaps this new generation understands idea of what means to be a part of the collective human family more than the self-serving generation of their  'boomer grandparents. Click link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aXJGsH9FV8&feature=em-share_video_user

EUTHANASIA: ARE WE BECOMING A SOCIALLY PSYCHOTIC SOCIETY?

EUTHANASIA: ARE WE BECOMING A SOCIALLY PSYCHOTIC SOCIETY?
By Jean Echlin

RN, MSN

Consultant-Palliative Nursing

(This column originally appear in the Windsor Star, Canada. Posted with permission of the author)

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What kind of a society are we becoming? I question the existence of a societal psychosis, characterized by a break with reality and deviation from normal thought processes.   We abandon the notion of executing our most heinous criminals and now appear to be accepting the idea of executing our most vulnerable citizens.  We provide our criminals with good medical, occupational, entertainment and educational programs for their betterment. In the case of our elderly we often fail miserably at providing them with quality of life in our health care institutions. Many label our elderly and persons with disabilities, including children, as ‘lives not worth living.’  In addition this applies to persons with mental health issues. These are the ones at high risk for abuse if euthanasia is introduced. 

This is exactly what the Quebec National Assembly is proposing in Bill-52 now before the Assembly for discussion and vote.  The ideas were concocted by the Dying with Dignity Committee report following a request by the Assembly for research regarding euthanasia and assisted suicide in Quebec.  The recommendation in Bill-52 attaches euthanasia as a component of palliative hospice care.  The euphemism used for euthanasia in their documents is “assistance in dying.”   Thus end-of-life care will include both palliative care and euthanasia.  This flies in the face of the Federal Government’s defeat of Bill-384, introduced by Francine Lalonde MP, Bloc Quebecois, in 2010.  Bill-384 sought to change our Criminal Code to allow euthanasia and assisted suicide and was overwhelming defeated by 228 to 59 votes.  

 Bill-52’s legislative package designates doctors as the healthcare professionals who will do the euthanizing/executing.  Interestingly in a recent poll, 88% of Canadian palliative care physicians opposed euthanasia.  Moreover in August 2013, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) reaffirmed its’ policy on this matter:  “Canadian physicians should not participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide.”  The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Nurses Association (ANA) have taken the same stand.  

Those in our society, who want euthanasia as an option, are seeking autonomy without thinking how this will affect the many vulnerable and often silent voices who cannot protest.  How do you define autonomy, meaning: "I want death my way, at my request,” when you actually give your life over to another person who will kill you?  I do not see this as autonomy because you are giving your power to another person.  Executions have been botched!  Mistakes are always possible even with health care professionals. 

Another highly charged item in Bill-52 is chronic depression and mental pain/discomfort (which may be related to existential or spiritual anxiety) qualifies a person for euthanasia.  Who defines this type of suffering? 

Look back to 1972 at the history of abolition of the death penalty in Canada. The law was changed because; first, a wrong decision could be made and an innocent person put to death; second, doctors debated and decided that putting someone to death was unethical and against their mandate.  Further it was declared INHUMANE to ask one person to kill another person.  Now in 2013 the Quebec National Assembly has put forth a plan, subject only to provincial jurisdiction that designates doctors to kill another human being.  Who defines the ethical and moral action of this designation?  I do not believe that this designation is ethical, moral or humane.

THE PROBLEM WITH HELLO IS GOODBYE

See Mark Davis Pickup's latest blog "THE PROBLEM WITH HELLO IS GOODBYE" at http://markpickup.org

PLANNED PARENTHOOD EXPOSED

https://sfla.webconnex.com/ppvideo

Students for Life of America has produced an important video entitled PLANNED PARENTHOOD EXPOSE: ABORTION NO MATTER WHAT. Please click on the link above to view this short but informative video. Students for Life of America is doing excellent pro-Life work. If you are able, sent them a donation at: Students of America, 9255 Center Street, Suite 300, Manassas, Virginia, U.S.A., 20110. 

American citizens of good will need to challenge national and state governments to stop funding Planned Parenthood and its affiliates across America.

MDP

PREYING ON THE DISABLED?

I came across a headline that posed a bold idea: “Killing MS Patients VIA Assisted Suicide to Harvest their Organs?” As a theoretical question for provocative bioethicists to ponder or advocate, it may be interesting, but I live in the real world far from academia. The real world is being asked to answer that very question, by a woman with advanced MS.
 



Sherri Muzher

Michigan resident Sherri Muzher (43) recently told a Fox news affiliate that she wants to have an assisted suicide and donate her organs for transplantation. She said it would be a “nice legacy to give” and that “We ought to be able to make our own decisions, and if that collateral effect means helping others, why would anyone have a problem with that?” Sherri’s proposal sounds so altruistic, so selfless and generous beyond measure.

Although the media said Sherri is terminal, MS cripples its victims but rarely kills them. I have had MS for nearly twice as long as Sherri; mine has reached an advanced stage too.  If Sherri’s wish for an assisted suicide and donation of her organs were to happen, it would have awful implications for her in the short term and ominous implications for the futures of other seriously disabled people like me ― particularly with organ shortages intensifying.

Let’s examine the reality of Sherri’s assisted suicide proposal: If done by poisoning, there would be a high likelihood of contaminating her organs making them unusable for transplantation. But let us pretend that somehow she was poisoned but her organs were not. There are some medical realities once she dies. After death there is no heartbeat, circulation or respiration, thus no oxygen for her organs.  Without oxygen, irreparable damage would begin to occur to her liver and heart within 4-5 minutes and her kidneys by 30 minutes, quickly making them useless for transplantation.

A highly renowned medical authority I consulted for this column stated, “To make use of her organs the transplant team would have to insert tubes into her while she was very much alive.” This would be painful. They would hover near Sherri, monitoring for her moment of death, then immediately plunge a scalpel into her chest and abdomen making an incision from collar-bone to pubis. The clock would be ticking.

Once they artificially oxygenate Sherri’s organs, it would take about 30 minutes to remove her kidneys, 3 hours to remove her liver and about an hour to remove her heart. Recipients would probably be waiting in adjacent operating rooms.

Okay, take poisoning out of the scenario. If Sherri’s death was achieved by organ removal while she has a beating heart, circulation and respiration, it would not be an assisted suicide as she presently envisions; it would be imposed death by a transplant surgeon. Altruistic romance and sterile operating rooms are not a good mix, especially when death is the goal.  Sherri’s death would be achieved only upon the final removal of her heart. Her gutted and mutilated body would be returned to her family for burial or cremation.

The Sherri Muzher case would create the thin edge of a bloody wedge in North America. It would begin to establish a precedent for organ procurement programs to view people with severe disabilities as sources of much needed organs. In case you think I’m drawing an extreme case, let me inform you that it’s already happened in Belgium.

Wesley J. Smith

National Review columnist Wesley J. Smith chronicled this in an August 30^th column entitled “Hunt on for Disabled “Euthanasia Organ Donors””.  He quoted a document from the 21^st European Conference on General Thorasic Surgery that was held in the U.K. last May. The document detailed how doctors euthanized “patients suffering from an unbearable neuromuscular or neuropsychiatric disorder with explicit wish to donate organs. Euthanasia was executed by an independent physician in a room adjacent to the operating room in the absence of the retrieval team.” In other words, suicidal people with physical or mental disabilities were killed by one set of doctors then their warm bodies quickly wheeled across the hall to another operating room where a different set of doctors began the harvest.

Will people with severe disabilities (like me) be considered commodities rather than patients in our own rite? If this happens, people who are comatose will be at even greater risk and their families pressured to stop life sustaining treatment or impose death.

The Sherri Muzher case would create a darker cultural deviation and open a Pandora’s box society will ultimately wish had never been opened. It will put other vulnerable lives at great danger and further strip our increasingly secular society of the ideal of the sanctity of every human life.

We must understand a truism of history: Human descent into the abyss of depravity and death is taken one step at a time. It might begin with good but misguided intentions but eventually ends with twisted evil intent masquerading as good.

MDP

NATIONAL DAY OF REMEBRANCE FOR ABORTED CHILDREN

http://abortionmemorials.com/index.php

Above is a link to the website for the NATIONAL DAY OF REMEMBRANCE FOR ABORTED CHILDREN, on September 14th 2013. Gravestones are located in 39 states across the United States for the lives of more than 55 million children aborted in America since 1973 .

Abortion is a national holocaust of unprecedented proportions  It is most appropriate that people of good will recognize this day of mourning. Not only will it bear witness to this crime against humanity that continues even as I write this note, it may help to change people's hearts.

Abortion is the primary human rights issue of our time. Slowly the public mindset is turning against abortion on demand that has been the way of the land in America for more than 40 years. More and more people are becoming pro-Life. Those who are committed to the great cause of ending abortion may not see success in our lifetimes, but I believe that abortion will one day be unthinkable.

Do not think the battle we are in is unique. Remember the epic struggle abolitionists had to stop slavery. Be encouraged by the words of Abraham Lincoln:

"We will gain more converts each day. We will grow strong by the violence and the injustice of our adversaries and unless truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority."

CHINA EXECUTES PRISONERS AND HARVESTS THEIR ORGANS

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/263294-chinese-medical-official-admits-that-organs-were-extracted-without-consent/



Prisoner left before arrest &
right his body gutted for organs

The link above confirms what many of us have suspected for quite some time: China is executing political/religious prisoners then pillaging their bodies for organs for transplantation. (Chinese followers of Falun Gong have been particularly at risk.)

David Kilgour

According to the Epoch Times (August 26th, 2013) a Chinese medical official has admitted to the grisly practise. For a number of years, human rights activists like retired Canadian MP, David Kilgour, have been telling the world about this gross violation of prisoners' human rights. The news conference video below dates back to 2006! Why have the world's governments' responses been so muted over the past 7 years?

Organ shortages and desperate wealthy people willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money -- not only within China but abroad -- are what fuels this barbaric practice. I urge all people of good will to demand their national governments pressure China to stop executing prisoners and taking their organs. (Also see http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20130818_China_s_organ_harvesting_is_murder.html



MDP