'"Revocation of his medical license is a good thing and long overdue," said Stephen Drake, a research analyst with Not Dead Yet, a Rochester, N.Y., group that advocates for people with disabilities and the elderly'.
Using myself victim of HITTING-----being able to be 'used' for whatever reason--------we already KNOW-----these EUTHANASIA AND HOSPICE policies tied to EUGENICS will indeed be USED/ABUSED/TURN BRUTAL. I will say that the 2010 ILLEGAL IMPLANTING of me came with a dose of anesthesia that could have KILLED ME.
This article by BALTIMORE SUN is as we say FALSE FLAG because these TELEMEDICINE EUTHANASIA/HOSPICE ROOMS are saturated in each community in Baltimore as too in YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS.
2014 I was being USED with 7 implants with goals of euthanizing ME ---- happening as of JAN 2019.......KILL ROOM FOR/BY WHOM?
Maryland strips doctor of license for assisting in six suicides
By Scott Dance
The Baltimore Sun |
Dec 30, 2014 | 9:37 PM
A Baltimore anesthesiologist who made national news as "The New Doctor Death" held the hands of six elderly Marylanders as they asphyxiated themselves with helium and then covered up their suicides, officials said in a state order they filed this month to strip him of his medical license.
The suicides are among nearly 300 nationwide that Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert said he helped to arrange as an "exit guide" for the right-to-die group Final Exit Network.
Egbert and several colleagues were arrested in 2009 amid an undercover investigation in Georgia, but he has avoided any punishment there or in another case in Arizona. He awaits trial for allegedly assisting in a suicide in Minnesota.
The Maryland Board of Physicians, which conducted a two-year review of his actions in the state, said they were unethical and illegal and revoked his license.
Egbert, 87, said he plans to appeal. Board officials would not say whether they referred Egbert's case to law enforcement, and no law enforcement official reached by The Baltimore Sun would confirm an investigation.
The board's decision brings the national debate over assisted suicide to Maryland. Three states have passed laws legalizing it, and some here, including former gubernatorial candidate Del. Heather Mizeur, would have Maryland join them. Lawmakers say the issue has never been the topic of serious discussion in Annapolis, but suspect it could become so.
The debate received national attention before and after a 29-year-old woman with brain cancer committed suicide Nov. 1. Brittany Maynard had moved to Oregon to take advantage of that state's "death with dignity" law.
Opponents of such measures celebrated Egbert's punishment.
"Revocation of his medical license is a good thing and long overdue," said Stephen Drake, a research analyst with Not Dead Yet, a Rochester, N.Y., group that advocates for people with disabilities and the elderly.
But those who support the legalization of assisted suicide said they would continue undaunted by the Maryland board's action against Egbert.
"He has long been a pioneer for so many things," said Frank Kavanaugh, a board member of the Final Exit Network, which is based in Tallahassee, Fla.
"He's an important part of our history. He's been before various legal proceedings before and survived them all."
Egbert, who no longer works with the network, said he stands by his actions.
"This is something that's legitimate," the Hampden man said. "It's in the Bible as legitimate."
The Maryland board, tipped by a Baltimore Sun article in which he said he had assisted in a handful of suicides in Maryland as medical director of the Final Exit Network, charged Egbert in 2012 with unprofessional conduct.
By then, Newsweek had already dubbed Egbert the "New Doctor Death" — the heir to Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan pathologist who said he assisted in more than 130 suicides before he was convicted of second-degree murder in one death and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.
In its order to revoke Egbert's license, the Maryland Board of Physicians said the Final Exit Network gives patients a book detailing how to commit suicide by placing a hood or bag over the head and filling it with helium.
Egbert said the group does not send patients the book but recommends that they read it.
If patients want to go forward with suicide, the board said, they are given an "exit guide" who rehearses the suicide and then holds the person's hand — both for comfort and to prevent the person "from involuntarily displacing the bag during suicide," the board said.
After the person's death, the board said, the exit guide removes the "suicide paraphernalia … to prevent the cause of death from being determined … and to hinder police investigations into the circumstances of the death."
Egbert acknowledged removing items after some of the deaths he assisted. He said the point is not to hide evidence but to protect the privacy of the patient and the patient's family.
He said in some cases, family members are the ones to remove the hood and helium tanks. In other cases, he said, they are not removed.
The board cited Egbert in six suicides in Maryland from 2004 to 2008. He told The Baltimore Sun Tuesday that he has assisted in 15 in Maryland.
In each case, the board said, the patients were not terminally ill — that is, they were not expected to die within six months. Their ages ranged from 68 to 87, the board said, and they suffered from illnesses including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and in one case, depression.
In one case, the board said, Egbert helped an 85-year-old woman with a history of diabetes, coronary artery disease and depression kill herself to leave money for a trust for a son who had Asperger syndrome. Her death certificate said she died of heart failure, the board said.
In another case, the board said, Egbert assisted in the suicide of an 87-year-old woman with worsening depression, but her death certificate said she died of cardiovascular disease.
The board found that the actions violated the ethics of the American Medical Association and Maryland law, which prohibits providing a physical means to commit suicide or participating in another's suicide.
It's not clear if Egbert is or has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation in Maryland. He said he was not aware of any investigation.
Spokesmen for Baltimore and Baltimore County police said they could not confirm any investigations. Officials with the Baltimore state's attorney's office and the state attorney general's office said they were not immediately able to provide information on any investigation. Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger said he was not aware of any investigation.
Egbert is awaiting trial in Minnesota in May for allegedly assisting in a suicide and interfering with a dead body there.
Authorities in Minnesota dropped charges related to a law against "advising and encouraging" suicide in June after a state court found the law unconstitutional.
An Arizona jury acquitted Egbert in the death of an Arizona woman in 2011. Charges against him in Georgia were dropped after the state's Supreme Court overturned a law limiting assisted suicide in 2012.
Several states have considered legalizing assisted suicide in recent years.
Washington state voters approved a death-with-dignity law in 2008, 14 years after Oregonians approved a similar measure. A 2009 court case in Montana essentially made assisted suicide legal there by allowing doctors to use consent as a defense. Vermont's state legislature approved an assisted-suicide law in 2013.
Massachusetts voters narrowly defeated an assisted-suicide referendum in 2012. The New Jersey General Assembly — the lower house of that state's legislature — approved assisted-suicide legislation last month. A similar bill is pending in the state Senate.
In Maryland, Mizeur made assisted suicide a campaign issue in her run for the Democratic nomination for governor. She lost in the Democratic primary to Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who lost the general election to Republican Larry Hogan, the governor-elect.
Del. Kathleen Dumais, vice chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, said she hasn't seen an assisted-suicide bill in her dozen years in the legislature, but she expects to have to grapple with the issue in the near future.
The Montgomery County Democrat said she has heard lawmakers discussing it, but does not see a groundswell of support for such a bill.
"We're going to see it in several legislatures across the country," Dumais said. "It's an ethical issue that people are thinking about deeply right now."
The assisted-suicide advocacy group Compassion & Choices is planning a push for legislation in Maryland and more than a dozen other states in 2015, spokeswoman Gwen Fitzgerald said.
The Denver-based group's efforts here started with a rally in Annapolis Nov. 19, on what would have been Maynard's 30th birthday.
Egbert said he doesn't plan to be active in that push, but he is "ready to talk to anybody who wants to" about assisted suicide.
He still gives talks on the issue, including a recent sermon at a Unitarian church in Virginia.
"I have a right to talk," Egbert said.
________________________________________
We want to end this week's discussion on HEALTH CARE PUBLIC POLICY looking at IMPLANTS and DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING tied to my case of NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG. The last BODY TARGET for being SICKO------has to do with PAIN-------creating PAIN to create a PIPELINE to IMPLANTING-----to SICK ROOMS ------to EUTHANASIA.
Just one example here in Baltimore. A man is released from a local hospital with a NECK INJURY. This man may have had a real neck injury with PAIN or he could have been faking it to GET PAIN medicine because of so much OPIATE/PAIN medicine addiction. At the bus stop he was asking HOW TO GET TO LEXINGTON MARKET. Now, here in Baltimore LEXINGTON MARKET is a known PHARMA--DRUG dealing area. It is also tied to being a source of FRESH FOOD for our FOOD STAMP people.
NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG illegal surveillance hacking into PUBLIC SURVEILLANCE can easily follow those people released from ER-----with PAIN and target them with FENTANYL/any pain PHARMA which is most ADDICTIVE.
Arguments Against Euthanasia
Euthanasia would not only be for people who are "terminally ill"
Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment
Euthanasia will become non-voluntary
Legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide leads to suicide contagion.
Euthanasia is a rejection of the importance and value of human life
So, is that man heading for LEXINGTON MARKET because someone on THE NETWORK told him he could get PAIN MEDS there-----is that man being TARGETED as 'THEM' not 'US'? We cannot define 'US'---it is dynamic.
The #1 target for pipeline to EUTHANASIA these few decades is ADDICTIVE PERSONALITIES---from alcohol to PHARMA. It only takes ONE INJURY or it only takes NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG using illegal surveillance and 24/7 VIDEO PORN with LASERS and imaging devices to PUSH PEOPLE INTO THESE PAIN CYCLES.
'Dutch court clears doctor in landmark euthanasia trial
| WTOP
wtop.com/national/2019/09/dutch-court-clears...
Sep 11, 2019 · THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch doctor was acquitted Wednesday in a landmark trial that prosecutors and physicians hope will help clarify how the country’s 2002 euthanasia law can be ...'
HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS tried hard to cause LOTS OF PAIN for me these several years of BODY/BRAIN IMPLANTS. I never took anything other than ADVIL OR TYLENOL-----many people go for stronger PAIN medicine and are HIT and forced into IMPLANT STUDIES.
The briefing
Euthanasia and assisted dying rates are soaring. But where are they legal?
Guardian design Illustration: Guardian Design
It is available in a growing number of countries and jurisdictions – but not the UK, where it remains outlawed
by Nicola Davis
Mon 15 Jul 2019 01.00 EDT
What’s the difference between euthanasia, assisted dying and assisted suicide? “The main difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide is who performs the final, fatal act,” said Richard Huxtable, professor of medical ethics and law at the University of Bristol.
Euthanasia refers to active steps taken to end someone’s life to stop their suffering and the “final deed” is undertaken by someone other than the individual, for example a doctor. If the person concerned has requested this, it falls under the term “voluntary euthanasia”.
Assisted suicide is about helping someone to take their own life at their request – in other words the final deed is undertaken by the person themselves. Assisted dying can be used to mean both euthanasia, generally voluntary, and assisted suicide; however, some campaign groups use it to refer only to assisted suicide of terminally ill people.
“One of the dilemmas we have in these ongoing debates is how people use the various phrases,” says Huxtable. Most, but not all, jurisdictions that allow some form of euthanasia or assisted suicide require the involvement of medical professionals.
Palliative sedation, in which people can request to be kept under deep sedation until they die, is allowed in many countries, including the Netherlands and France – is not euthanasia.
Which countries permit any of these variants?
The Netherlands and Switzerland are the most well known, and Belgium considered perhaps the most liberal, but several other jurisdictions allow some form of euthanasia or assisted suicide. That said, permitted circumstances differ considerably.
In the Netherlands both euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal if the patient is enduring unbearable suffering and there is no prospect of improvement. Anyone from the age of 12 can request this, but parental consent is required if a child is under 16. There are a number of checks and balances, including that doctors must consult with at least one other, independent doctor on whether patient meets the necessary criteria.
Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada and Colombia also allow both euthanasia and assisted suicide, although there are differences – for example only terminal patients can request it in Colombia, while Belgium has no age restriction for children (although they must have a terminal illness).
Assisted suicide is more widely available than euthanasia. Among the places where people can choose to end their life this way are Switzerland and a number of US states including California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington state, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Laws permitting assisted suicide came into force in the Australian state of Victoria last month.
Again, the exact circumstances in which assisted suicide is allowed vary, with some jurisdictions – Oregon and Vermont – only allowing it in the case of terminal illness. For some places it is permitted not because laws have been passed, but because laws do not prohibit it. For example in Switzerland it is an offence to assist a suicide if it is done with selfish motives. “The result of that is there is this growth of not-for-profit organisations,” says Prof Penney Lewis, an expert on the law around end-of-life care at King’s College London.
Other countries, including New Zealand, are considering legalising some form of euthanasia.
What’s the situation in the UK?
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. Euthanasia can lead to a murder charge and assisted suicide could result in a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
That said, anonymous surveys suggest euthanasia does occur in the UK – but it is very rare. A study published in 2009 using responses from more than 3,700 medical professionals suggested 0.2% of deaths involve voluntary euthanasia and 0.3% involved euthanasia without explicit patient request – no assisted suicide was recorded.
It is not normally illegal for a patient to be given treatment to relieve distress that could indirectly shorten life – but this is not euthanasia. It is already legal in the UK for patients to refuse treatment, even if that could shorten their life, and for medical care to be withdrawn by doctors in certain cases, for example where a patient is in a vegetative state and will not recover (sometimes controversially called passive euthanasia).
How many people undergo euthanasia or assisted suicide?
Total figures from around the world are hard to collate. Figures from Switzerland show that the numbers of those living in the country who underwent assisted suicide rose from 187 in 2003 to 965 in 2015.
According to the 2017 Regional Euthanasia Review Committees (RTE), in the Netherlands there were 6,585 cases of voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide – 4.4% of the total number of deaths.
About 96% of cases involved euthanasia, with less than 4% assisted suicide, and the largest proportion of cases involved people with cancer.
Agnes van der Heide, professor of decision-making and care at the end of life at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, says the reason euthanasia is more common than assisted suicide in the Netherlands is multifaceted. Doctors may feel that by performing the deed themselves they can have more control over dosages and the time the procedure takes.
“Patients are often in a very advanced stage of their disease where it is practically difficult if not impossible to drink the lethal drink they have to take when they chose for assistance in suicide,” she adds. “It is a very bitter-tasting drink and it is quite an effort to drink it until the end,” she added. There might also be an element of viewing the act as a medical procedure and hence preferring a physician to do the job.
Lewis says the vast majority of people do not end their lives by euthanasia even if they can. “There is far more withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, even in jurisdictions that permit euthanasia,” she says.
What happened in the case of the Dutch teenager Noa Pothoven?
Noa Pothoven, who was 17, died last month – she had anorexia and severe depression. At first media reports suggested she had been “legally euthanised”, but later reports said it was unclear how she died, with her friends releasing a comment saying that she died after she stopped eating and drinking.
Van der Heide said that while she could not comment on Pothoven’s case, it is possible for minors over the age of 12 to seek euthanasia or assisted suicide in the Netherlands, under certain conditions.
In some places, yes. According to van der Heide, while suicide tourism is not formally forbidden in the Netherlands, physicians must work with the patient to establish that they meet certain criteria. “I think if a physician would provide euthanasia to a patient he doesn’t know then it is very likely that the regional committee would have a problem with that,” she says.
However, people do travel to Switzerland for assisted suicide. According to statistics from Dignitas, 221 people travelled to the country for this purpose in 2018, 87 of whom were from Germany, 31 from France and 24 from the UK.
What does the public think about euthanasia and assisted suicide?
It depends a bit on the question you ask. A recent poll conducted by the National Centre for Social Research for MDMD found that 93% of people in the UK approved of, or wouldn’t rule out, doctor-assisted suicide if the person is terminally ill.
PLEASE WATCH OUT FOR THESE GLOBAL BANKING 1% FAKE POLLS SAYING EUTHANASIA IS 99% POPULIST!
The British Social Attitudes survey, published in 2017, sheds light on views about voluntary euthanasia, showing that people generally support the idea of doctors ending the life of a terminally ill person who requests it (78%), but that there is less support for a close relative doing the job (39%). It also shows that fervent support for voluntary euthanasia was lower if the person in question has a non-terminal illness or is dependent on relatives for all their needs but not terminal or in pain.
What do doctors think?
Euthanasia and assisted suicide have proved contentious among doctors. Some argue that support for such ideas goes against the commitment to “do no harm”. Others say some people might choose not to end their life if they are made aware that they could be made comfortable with good end of life care.
“Some health professionals are familiar with the care of dying patients and with what palliative care can do – so they may have a feeling that assisted dying isn’t always necessary ,” says Dominic Wilkinson, professor of medical ethics at the University of Oxford.
But some doctors are supportive – at least for particular circumstances such as terminal illness – saying it can be a humane act, and that individuals should be allowed autonomy in when to die. After many years of opposing assisted dying, this year the Royal College of Physicians shifted its stance to become neutral on the subject following a poll of 7,000 UK hospital doctors in which 43.4% opposed allowing assisted dying and 31.6% supported it. The Royal College of GPs has recently announced it is going to start a consultation with members for their views.
In the Netherlands, a survey of almost 1,500 physicians published in 2015 found more than 90% of GPs and 87% of elderly care physicians supported the liberal Dutch approach to euthanasia and assisted suicide. That might be because the development of the laws was carried out with input from the medical profession.
“All the criteria and also the practice of euthanasia is mainly shaped by how physicians feel it should be,” says van der Heide. “I think for the typical patient with end-stage cancer and severe unbearable suffering, there is hardly any physician in the Netherlands who thinks that the issue of harming patients is at stake there.”
Have the laws been a success?
That depends how you look at it. Support for the Dutch laws clearly remains high, but some say there are signs of a “slippery slope”, with the practice being applied too widely.
As van der Heide points out, the Dutch laws were designed with cases like terminal cancer in mind – but while cancer patients still make up the majority of requests, the proportion of requests related to other conditions is growing. “Gradually of course [it] became more known to both physicians and patients what the requirements were and that they could also apply to other categories,” she says.
That has led to controversy. The 2017 RTE report recorded concerns by Dutch psychiatrists and doctors about the use of euthanasia for people with psychiatric disorders and patients in a very advanced stage of dementia. The 2015 survey found of the almost 1,500 responses that 31% of GPs and 25% of elderly care physicians would grant assisted dying for patients with advanced dementia, with the figures at 37% and 43% respectively for those with psychiatric problems.
However as Huxtable points out, other jurisdictions including Oregon show that broadening of use is not inevitable. “The fact there has been some slide in the Netherlands should give everyone reason to pause,” he says. “We should think right form the outset what do we think in principle is defensible and are we going to – and we should – police the boundaries.”
There have also been allegations of malpractice. In 2018 both the Netherlands and Belgium reported their first cases in which doctors were investigated for possibly breaching the laws, with three more investigations under way in the Netherlands involving the euthanasia of psychiatric patients.
“Nowadays there are more controversial cases, so the likelihood that there now will be cases that do not fulfil the criteria to the extent that the public prosecutor thinks it is necessary to install a criminal procedure is more likely than it used to be,” says van der Heide.
Are there other concerns?
There have been concerns by disabilities groups that as euthanasia and assisted suicide become more common, it could put a pressure on those living with non-terminal conditions to end their lives. But van der Heide says doctors in the Netherlands take great care when dealing with requests to make sure patients meet strict requirements, and turn down those who do not.
She adds that the development of laws to allow euthanasia or assisted dying must be handled carefully. “I indeed acknowledge that having a system in which euthanasia is an option should be really carefully monitored and researched because it in principle involves the risk of life of vulnerable people being regarded as less worthy or more prone to doctors’ assistance in dying,” she says.
____________________________________________
The second example of people having been made ADDICTED TO PAIN RELIEF was a woman looking HAGGARD from all kinds of BODY IMPLANT----COCHLEAR MESSAGING degradation of her normal body functioning. This women looked to have BRAIN IMPLANTS as well as KNEE/LEG IMPLANTS and her eyes were ROLLING IN HER HEAD so only the white of eyes was seen.
SHE MAY HAVE HAD AN INJURY TO HER LEG----OR SHE MAY HAVE BEEN 'HIT' WITH ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE AND 24/7 LASER/DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING DEVICES.
These IMPLANTS/IMAGING DEVICES have made our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE ---SICKOS-----and MOVING FORWARD TELEMEDICINE FOR ALL ------makes sure ALL 99% of WE THE PEOPLE are VICTIMS.
The kinds of PAIN I experienced these several years from what I KNOW are BODY/BRAIN IMPLANTS and diagnostic imaging devices:
My GUMS AND TEETH were targeted through my lower jaw causing great inflammation----great infection ----my WISDOM TOOTH and some molars became VERY LOOSE---which looked like GINGIVITIS making me think I needed a ROOT CANAL. I ignored it------treated with ordinary MOUTHWASH AND ADVIL and VOILA ----my teeth and gums are healthy and normal.
LOTS OF PAIN WITH THESE ATTACKS ON ORAL CAVITY.
We discussed the PAIN under my arm and along my SHOULDER /scapular nerve I KNOW was a result of BRAIN IMPLANTS and diagnostic devices. That PAIN was excruciating and lasted for 12 weeks and I NEVER took any PAIN medicine other than ADVIL AND TYLENOL
I had MUSCLE CONTRACTIONS in my legs cramping so hard it brought tears----my toes would cramp for no reason-----and these pains would last for 15-30 minutes almost every night. I bought muscle relief------never any PAIN MEDICINE.
LOTS OF PAIN WITH THESE ATTACKS ON MY MUSCLES AND JOINTS.
The most current PAIN being applied by NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG was to my LOWER BACK ----SACRAL NERVE which was numbing my LEGS and PELVIS. Had I not stopped that MICROWAVE WIFI-------these devices would have given me EXTREME BACK PAIN-------I would have thought I needed to see a BACK DOCTOR.
LOTS OF PAIN WOULD HAVE BEEN IN MY FUTURE WITH THESE ATTACKS ON MY SACRAL LOWER BACK.
This is how these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA used our once strong PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM OF HOSPITALS AND CLINICS -----to make everyone SICKOS
The 10 Most Addictive Pain Killers
By Elizabeth Hartney, PhD
Updated October 29, 2019
Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD on July 24, 2019
One of the most common reasons Americans visit their doctors is to get help with the relief of pain. The pain can be debilitating and cause great comfort or distress. Quite often, doctors prescribe opioid pain relievers to help their patients. However, a number of these medications also have the potential to become misused or addictive.
Addictive Pain Relievers
There are a number of different drugs that can ease chronic and short-term pain. Many of these fall into the opioid category, also known as narcotic pain relievers. These drugs include morphine and codeine, as well as many synthetic modifications of these drugs.
It is important to be cautious when taking pain relief medications. The treatment may be more dangerous than the underlying cause of the pain. You are less likely to become addicted to pain-relieving drugs when taking them as prescribed for their intended purpose. Yet, many of these medications also produce a "high" that can become addicting to some patients.
It is this feeling of euphoria that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) says that some people become dependent on. It is most likely to happen when someone takes a higher dose than they were prescribed or if they are improperly prescribed the medication.
Pain medication over-use (sometimes called medication abuse or narcotic abuse) has become one of the most prevalent forms of drug abuse in the United States.1 One of the reasons is that these medications are sometimes over-prescribed. In some cases, someone may not really need such strong pain relief and, in other cases, it's prescribed for longer than it's truly needed.
The Opioid Crisis
Prescription opioid addictions have risen substantially. What begins as a dependency may lead to finding the medication on the black market or seeking out illegal opiates such as heroin. The NIDA notes that it began in the late 1990s when "pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates."
As of 2018, the NIDA estimates that between 8 percent and 12 percent of patients in the U.S. who are prescribed opioids develop a use disorder.
Of those patients that develop a use disorder, 4 percent to 6 percent eventually turn to heroin and, on average, 115 people die every day in the U.S. from an opioid overdose. Between July 2016 and September 2017, there was a 30 percent to 70 percent increase in overdoses in various parts of the country. It is an epidemic that has hit rural America as hard as the cities.
This has led to initiatives by multiple government agencies to curb the epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the first line of defense is reducing the number of opioids prescribed. This involves working with physicians and pharmacies to only use such powerful painkillers when absolutely needed.
Signs and Symptoms of Opioid Abuse
Unfortunately, it is part of the nature of painkillers that they become less effective over time. This is partly because your body will adjust to the medication and develop a tolerance, which means your body will require higher doses of the drug to get the same effect.
There are certain signs that your therapeutic use of opioids has crossed into the territory of addiction. These include:
Knowing that you're using the pain medication in amounts or at times that are not consistent with your doctor's prescription. This is especially true if you are misleading your doctor or pharmacist to do so.
Using the medication to get high or relieve anxiety rather than to relieve pain.
Requiring higher doses of the medication in order to feel the same effects you used to notice at lower dosages. In worst case scenarios, turning to snorting or injecting the drug to feel its effects.
Exhibiting compulsive behaviors to get the drug and continue to use it in the face of negative consequences.
It's important to seek help in these situations and work with a healthcare professional to resolve them.
Opioid Addiction Discussion Guide
Get our printable guide to help you ask the right questions at your next doctor's appointment.
Mind Doc Guide
Download PDF
Treatment for Opioid Addiction
Most Addictive Painkillers
The following is a list of the 10 most addictive prescription opiates available on the market today according to the NIDA. Most are usually prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain, though some are intended for short-term use. It is not a complete list, and many more addictive painkillers and other prescription medications are available.
1 Fentanyl
Man looking at tablets
Image Source/Stockbyte/Getty Images
More potent than morphine, fentanyl (brand names include Actiq, Duragesic, and Sublimaze) is used most often to treat patients with severe or post-surgical pain.3 It is also used for those who have become physically tolerant of opiates. It's available as a lozenge, injectable solution, or skin patch.
Street names for fentanyl include Apache, China Girl, China White, Dance Fever, Friend, Goodfella, Jackpot, Murder 8, Tango and Cash, and TNT. It has also become common for fentanyl to be used in counterfeit drugs and to be cut into illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine. This adds to the dangers of these drugs because users are often unaware of the fentanyl.4
2 OxyContin
OxyContin is a brand name for extended release oxycodone. It is used as an around-the-clock treatment for patients with moderate to severe pain expected to last for an extended period of time.5 It's available as a tablet.
On the street, OxyContin may be called O.C., Oxycet, Oxycotton, Oxy, or Hillbilly Heroin.
3 Demerol
Demerol is a brand name for meperidine. This pain medication is often used in anesthesia. It is also used to treat moderate to severe pain, such as that experienced after childbirth.6 Demerol is available as an oral solution, injectable solution, and oral tablet.
Street names for Demerol include Demmies and Pain Killer.
4 Hydrocodone
Hydrocodone (brand names include Vicodin, Norco, and Zohydro, among others) is used to treat moderate to severe pain resulting from a chronic condition, injury, or surgical procedure.7 It's available as an oral syrup and oral tablet.
When sold on the black market, it may be called Vike or Watson-387.
5 Morphine
Morphine is a natural opiate that is sold under the brand names Duramorph and MS Contin. It is prescribed to help treat severe ongoing pain such as that related to cancer or cancer treatment.8 This painkiller is available as an injectable solution, capsule, tablet, and suppository.
You may hear morphine simply called M on the street, though it's also known as Miss Emma, Monkey, and White Stuff.
6 Percocet
Percocet is similar to OxyContin. It contains a combination of acetaminophen and oxycodone and is available as a capsule, tablet, and oral solution.9
On the street, it may also be called Hillbilly Heroin or simply as Percs.
7 Codeine
Codeine is a natural opiate that is a commonly prescribed pain reliever. The effects only last for a few hours, so it is often prescribed along with acetaminophen or aspirin.10 Codeine is available as a tablet, capsule, or liquid.
Many brand names are sold and codeine has many street names, including Captain Cody, Cody, Lean, Schoolboy, Sizzurp, and Purple Drank.
8 Methadone
Methadone is most often associated with people who are trying to safely quit a heroin addiction. It is, however, used as an opiate pain reliever and it can be misused as well.11 Brand names include Dolophine and Methadose and it comes in tablet and liquid forms.
Street names include Amidone and Fizzies. When it is used with MDMA, it is known as Chocolate Chip Cookies.
9 Dilaudid
Dilaudid is a brand name for hydromorphone. It is mostly used in a hospital setting and administered through an IV following surgery.12
Dilaudid is intended for short-term pain relief and is also available as an oral solution, tablet, and suppository.
In illicit uses, Dilaudid may simply be called D or known by the names Dillies, Footballs, Juice, and Smack.
10 Oxymorphone
Oxymorphone is sold under the brand names Opana, Numorphan, and Numorphone. It is prescribed to treat moderate to severe pain and is available in both immediate- and extended-release tablets.13
This opiate is blue and has an octagon shape, so it's street names reflect this: Biscuits, Blue Heaven, Blues, Mrs. O, O Bomb, Octagons, and Stop Signs.
A Word From Verywell
Even though they are prescribed medications for legitimate reasons, it is important to be aware of the addictive potential of these pain relievers. If you have a concern about any medication you're prescribed, talk to your physician or pharmacist.
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Here are those BRAIN IMPLANT DEVICES literally making us feel the SYMPTOMS and the COCHLEAR DEVICES with subliminal messaging helping to make for BAD DECISIONS.
Why People With Brain Implants Are Afraid to Go Through Automatic Doors
Kristen V. Brown
7/03/17 9:00AM
•
Filed to:Science
In 2009, Gary Olhoeft walked into a Best Buy to buy some DVDs. He walked out with his whole body twitching and convulsing. Olhoeft has a brain implant, tiny bits of microelectronic circuitry that deliver electrical impulses to his motor cortex in order to control the debilitating tremors he suffers as a symptom of Parkinson’s disease.
It had been working fine. So, what happened when he passed through those double wide doors into consumer electronics paradise? He thinks the theft-prevention system interfered with his implant and turned it off.
We live in a world of many, many signals. The more signals there are, the more opportunity for them to cross—and for people with implanted devices, the effect can be disastrous.
Olhoeft’s experience isn’t unique. According to the Food and Drug Administration’s MAUDE database of medical device reports, over the past five years there have been at least 374 cases where electromagnetic interference was reportedly a factor in an injury involving medical devices including neural implants, pacemakers and insulin pumps. In those reports, people detailed experiencing problems with their devices when going through airport security, using massagers or simply being near electrical sources like microwaves, cordless drills or “church sound boards.”
While not every one of those reports has been verified, both the FDA and scientists have expressed concerns about scenarios where ambient electromagnetic fields disrupt medical devices that operate in the same frequency spectrum.
“The consequence of EMI [or electromagnetic interference] with medical devices may be only a transient ‘blip’ on a monitor, or it could be as serious as preventing an alarm from sounding or inappropriate device movement leading to patient injury or death,” the FDA wrote in a report all the way back in 2000. “With the increasing use of sensitive electronics in devices, and the proliferation of sources of EM energy, there is heightened concern about EMI in many devices.”
Scientific study has been devoted to the impacts of this kind of interference on brain implants, cardiac implants and insulin pumps.
The conclusion: As more devices both in our bodies and the built world operate on a frequency, the problem is likely to grow in scope and scale unless we plan carefully.
Olhoeft, who had just recently gotten his implant, at first had no idea why his trip to the store had triggered his tremors. “Without the implant, the tremors were so bad that I couldn’t walk or talk,” he told Gizmodo. “After they installed it, I had no symptoms until I walked into that Best Buy. Then within four seconds I started to shake again.”
Later, at his doctor’s office, Olhoeft found out that the device had somehow been switched off, right around the time he’d gone to Best Buy. Olhoeft is a retired professor of geophysics in Colorado who taught courses on electromagnetism, so with those two details, it wasn’t hard for him to figure out what had probably gone wrong. His implant, he says, operated at the same electromagnetic frequency as Best Buy’s theft detection system, and the two signals interfered with each other.
“When you get an implant, they warn you about interference with devices like MRI machines. But they don’t warn you about Best Buy or Walmart,” he said. “I go to a support group for people with deep brain stimulation implants and I gave a talk about interference. I asked how many people had an experience like mine at Best Buy and all 50 people put their hands up.”
“When you get an implant, they warn you about interference with devices like MRI machines. But they don’t warn you about Best Buy or Walmart.”Like Olhoeft said, it’s not that no one had warned him. In its manuals, Medtronic, the maker of the device, clearly advises patients that things like hairdryers, cell phones, power tools, and yes, in-store security systems may impact devices. The patient manual for Medtronic’s deep brain stimulation devices has an entire appendix to potential sources of EMI, and the consequences for not heeding these warnings that it lists are dire: system changes, changes to stimulation, injury or even death.
The trouble is, as medical implants become not only more ubiquitous, but more connected, so does the rest of the world. And device makers have to not only plan for devices that work in today’s environment, but hopefully also a decade down the road, when patients still have the same implant but the world of signals around them may be substantially different.
“The internet of things, wireless power transfer, electronics in cars, cellular smart meters, nonlethal crowd control, there’s an endless list of new rapidly emerging electromagnetic technologies that have to be tested” for possible interference, Olhoeft told Gizmodo.
“You can think to some degree about changes that may come down the road, but typically those changes you anticipate are only extensions of what you already know,” said Frank Fischer, the CEO of NeuroPace, which makes brain implants that target epilepsy.
How, for instance, will a world with autonomous vehicles, with features like wireless charging and radar sensors, impact patients with brain implants or pacemakers? Or, in the more distant future, what if we’re all walking around with implants that make us smarter, and treat our depression? How will this complex world of signals interplay then?
“I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to foresee the future,” said Fischer. “In reality, what you want to do is make sure that when things do go wrong, a device goes into some kind of safe mode and then allows a patient to reset it.”
Medtronic, which makes Olhoeft’s device, echoed this sentiment in a statement to Gizmodo. “While our product testing is extensive, we cannot account for all possible scenarios,” the company said. Though “most electrical devices and magnets encountered throughout the course of a patient’s typical day,” are unlikely to have any impact, there’s really no guarantee.
“In reality, what you want to do is make sure that when things do go wrong, a device goes into some kind of safe mode and then allows a patient to reset it.”
Every day since that one at Best Buy, Olhoeft has navigated the terrain of that ambiguity. He’s discovered that the airport security checkpoints, his local hall of justice, and sports arenas all operate near the frequency of his device and could potentially interfere with it . To test such situations, he uses a detector that tells him the frequency of things like security systems to make sure they’re operating on a different frequency than his device. If the frequency is a match, he asks to go around. When he goes to his university library, he has to ask them to turn off the inventory control system so that he can enter, and at the hospital he steers clear of walking too close to the MRI machine. In his own home, he and his wife took out the dimmer switches on all the lights, which have their own small electrical field. So does the AC unit and the fridge. Since having his implant installed, he’s discovered that the world is a minefield of potential interference that in an instant could potentially send his body into debilitating shaking.
It’s all precautionary, in hopes that he can avoid those worst-case scenarios listed in his patient manual.
Olhoeft has heard from other patients like him that have had trouble with their implants and interference. One woman who had a DBS implant like his found that when her Prius was in charging mode, it turned her device off. Another man had a DBS, cochlear implant and cardiac pacemaker that all operated near the same frequency and interfered with the operation of the devices.
The medical device industry shares Olhoeft’s concerns. In collaborations with makers of things like RFID chips that emit potentially interfering signals, medical device makers have been working out how to minimize exposure of patients like Olhoeft to harmful interference, and educate patients to be cautious.
“It’s something we have to design for and in my lab we have to think about it a lot,” said Alik Widge, a biomedical engineer at Harvard who works on DBS implants for mental illness. “It’s a huge potential problem.”
Thankfully, there are potential solutions. Increased security and encryption, for one, could help make it so that devices couldn’t be impacted by errant signals. So could improving the safe modes of devices, as Fischer mentioned. While Olhoeft’s device does have a safe mode, it has to be manually set and is intended for situations when he knows he’s going to come into contact with interference, like during operations or an MRI.
“It would be better if it were automatic,” he said.
The FDA, too, has worked to create guidelines for device manufacturers so that they can build medical devices more likely to be compatible with their increasingly electronic environments. Recently, it finished creating guidelines that also address wireless compatibility, to look at how medical devices that communicate wirelessly interact with the ever-growing internet of things.
“Things are changing quickly, and medical manufactures are making an effort to try and deal with problems before they become big issues,” said Donald Witters, a biomedical engineer at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “We spend a great deal of time trying to keep abreast of wireless communications and internet of things technology. It’s hard to predict the impact these things will have, but we can try and position ourselves to ask the right questions.”
Joel Moskowitz, the director of the Center for Family and Community Health at Berkeley’s school of public health, told Gizmodo his concern is that as these issues become more prevalent, doctors may not be aware of how to advise their patients.
Olhoeft, whose implant is now six years old, from an era when the iPhone was still a novel technology, wonders how it might restrict his life in the future. He has become something of an advocate for the issue, speaking out about his own experience, sending comments to the FCC and suggesting to the Department of Justice that implants like his should be recognized as a disability, since it requires him to navigate cautiously around a world built for people without bodies that emit electromagnetic signals.
“We’re going to have to consider using the Americans with Disabilities Act for people with implants,” he said. “You know, ‘Warning, people with implants should not enter here.’”
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We showed yesterday a article showing a group of LASER MEDICAL RESEARCH STUDIES filling our FEDERAL NIH/NCI RESEARCH FUNDING grants today. Almost all of them had a small cohort of people who HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS as BARBER SURGEONS ordered up as HITS----
GO 'HIT' 25 PEOPLE FOR THIS STUDY WE WILL IMPLANT/USE THIS DEVICE CREATING FAKE DATA.
'Although the results from large, uncontrolled, open trials of low-energy lasers in inducing wound healing have shown benefit, controlled trials have shown little or no benefit.'
If you place your thumb on a sore muscle or nerve it will give RELIEF. Take that thumb away and the pain comes back. These FAKE RESEARCH STUDIES create a FALSE sense of HELPING----they are simply a temporary PLACEBO.
The act of placing a BODY/BRAIN IMPLANT into a HUMAN not only DEGRADES AND MAKES DYSFUNCTIONAL our nervous system/muscle system/organ system and its natural BODY ELECTRIC ------it creates the conditions for CANCERS----for HACKING AND BRUTAL ABUSE.
All while BASIC SCIENCE says THERE IS NO EVIDENCE BASED SCIENCE to allow these TREATMENTS to advance to a LARGER CLINICAL TRIAL.
'Recent well-designed, controlled studies have found no benefit from low- energy lasers in relieving pain in rheumatoid arthritis or other musculoskeletal conditions'.
U.S. doctors take official stance against euthanasia
Life | The American College of Physicians argues medicine’s goal is not to control the manner and timing of death
by Samantha Gobba
Posted 9/25/17, 03:44 pm
Amid increasing attempts to legalize euthanasia at the state level, the nation’s second-largest network of physicians officially spoke out against it last week.
The American College of Physicians (ACP) wrote in a position statement published last Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine that the organization of 152,000 medical professionals stands against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, “the practice of which raises ethical, clinical, and other concerns.”
“Control over the manner and timing of a person’s death has not been and should not be a goal of medicine,” the group concluded. “However, though high-quality care, effective communication, compassionate support, and the right resources, physicians can help patients control many aspects of how they live out life’s last chapter.”
The position paper came in response to increasing public interest in legalizing euthanasia to promote patient autonomy at the end of life. The ACP said it remained “attentive to all voices” but decided to oppose legalization efforts.
John Di Camillo, a staff ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told me the decision is “wonderful news.”
The ACP statement is “giving voice to the real need of compassionate and supportive care for people who may be considering requests for assisted suicide and protecting the role of physicians as healers, not killers,” he said.
The much larger American Medical Association (AMA) has for years discouraged physicians from being “involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life.”
Alex Schadenberg, director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told me the ACP statement aligning with the AMA should help shatter the pro-euthanasia movement’s illusion of unstoppable momentum.
“The facts show otherwise, that there’s not really a massive turn toward assisted suicide going on,” he said. “Over and over again, almost every state is constantly defeating this. The doctors remain against it. The court decisions in the last couple of years have all gone against it, and yet there’s a perception that the opposite is true.”
Physician statements like the ACP’s carry a lot of weight with legislators “because when you legalize assisted suicide, you’re actually asking physicians to be directly and intentionally involved with giving lethal drugs to their patients,” Schadenberg said.
In Canada, where lawmakers legalized assisted suicide last year, advocates have pushed to expand the Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) law to include children and patients with dementia, Schadenberg noted. Some Canadian doctors have opted out of the law, but last week, the Montreal Gazette cited a recent Quebec study showing 91 percent of caregivers support expanding MAID to patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The pro-euthanasia camp has yet to make such headway in the United States.
Since Oregon passed its Death with Dignity Act in 1994, lawmakers have filed 231 bills seeking to legalize euthanasia in state legislatures across the country, according to the Patients Rights Council. One-fifth—43 bills—appeared this year, and every one of them failed before becoming law.
Some states have defeated dozens of proposals: Hawaii faced 30 previous attempts to legalize euthanasia before this year’s onslaught of five bills, and New York had 12 before this year’s three bills.
Lawmakers in only five states—Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, and Colorado—have legalized assisted suicide. The Council of the District of Columbia approved a law last year, but federal lawmakers could overturn that measure.
Meanwhile, Alabama adopted a ban on any form of aid in dying in June, and New York’s high court refused to legalize physician-assisted suicide earlier this month.
Life Lynn DeKlyen, the baby born at 24 weeks to a mother who refused chemotherapy treatment, died last week at the University of Michigan Hospital. The infant died less than two weeks after the death of her mother, Carrie DeKlyen, who left behind her husband Nick and five other children. The couple cited their Christian faith for refusing treatment for Carrie’s brain cancer during her pregnancy, as it would have threatened their daughter’s life. --S.G.
Denmark funds more abortions Denmark has set aside nearly $50 million for international abortion funding in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s reinstatement of the Reagan-era Mexico City policy that had been rescinded by President Barack Obama in 2009. The policy blocks U.S. funding for any non-governmental organization that provides abortions. After Trump put the policy back in place, other nations jumped to pledge money to international abortion groups like Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. --S.G.
Planned Parenthood wants nurses to do abortions
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maine filed a lawsuit last week against Maine’s 1979 law requiring abortions be performed by physicians. The abortion giant wants the state to grant nurse practitioners and midwives permission to perform them as well. A successful lawsuit could open the door to challenges in 41 other states with similar laws, according to an ACLU spokeswoman. --S.G.
U.K. court OKs dehydration and starvation British doctors and families wanting to withhold food and water from ailing patients no longer need a court order. A judge ruled last week that withdrawing food and water should be in the same category as removing life support or life-saving treatment like dialysis, which don’t need court approval. --S.G.
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Global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS KNIGHTS OF MALTA TRIBE OF JUDAH sent in those 5% freemason/Greek players/pols to REVERSE all those gains in PUBLIC HEALTH allowing for our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE to live LONGER----to be healthier in older age----and attacked literally our public health with SICKO health policy used simply to MOVE MONEY ANYWAY THEY COULD.
We have here in Baltimore two major medical institutions---one is PRIVATE----GLOBAL HEDGE FUND JOHNS HOPKINS and one is PUBLIC----UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE---UMMS. Without coincidence, both now have MEDICAL RESEARCH FACILITIES attached creating A MOUNTAIN OF RESEARCH STUDIES with all that FAKE DATA---all that FAKE SCIENTIFIC METHOD------all that FAKE RESULTS saying THIS IS SOCIAL BENEFIT.
This is how global banking was able to get IMPLANTS INSIDE OUR BODY to undermine our strongly evolved HUMAN BODY SYSTEM.
We shared the GAME OF PAINT BALL TAG-----LASER TAG ---and showed how it went from being a fun game to a military training tactic-----with HITTING sending PLAYERS to a DEAD ROOM.
THIS IS THE GOAL OF AFFORDABLE CARE ACT-----TELEMEDICINE FOR ALL------WHERE 99% OF WE THE HUMANS ARE HIT------REPLACED BY GMO HUMANS/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
BALTIMORE CITY is filled with institutions supposedly against EUTHANASIA----supposedly RIGHT TO LIFE-------and it is ground zero for all these ATTACKS ON OUR HUMAN BODY.
Who was behind HITLER NAZI WAR CRIMES tied to MEDICAL ATROCITIES? GLOBAL 1% OLD WORLD KINGS----KNIGHTS OF MALTA---TRIBE OF JUDAH.
Who is behind MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE TELEMEDICINE----the same people.
So, back in HITLER WW 2-----those MEDICAL ATROCITIES were taken to NUREMBERG where ANGELS OF DEATH-----were called MADMEN AND EVIL----
'Table 1
Non-faith-based arguments against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia
Argument Main points
“It offends me” Life has infinite value, and PAS devalues life
Devaluation of life is offensive
Human beings are relational and share in value of life
PAS is an offense to all human beings
Slippery slope PAS in limited circumstances has led to PAS performed with markedly reduced limits (e.g., children, disabled people)
“Pain can be alleviated” Embracing excellent palliative care is the correct answer
Physician integrity and patient trust PAS undermines the integrity of both physician and patient as it is a contradiction to the patient's seeking to be well; and a violation of the principled duty of the physician to help the patient to become well
Undermined physician integrity is leading to loss of patient trust in physicians'
Global banking 1% say SORRY EVERYONE HATES THIS AND IS AGAINST THIS------CONGRESS PASSED AFFORDABLE CARE ACT WITH ALL THAT FUNDING AND EVIDENCED-BASED SCIENCE forcing people onto these BODY/BRAIN IMPLANTS----so there is NO STOPPING THIS!
OH, REALLY??????????????
It is FAKE 5% freemason/Greek players as RELIGIOUS LEADERS actually pushing this and pretending it is SOCIAL BENEFIT along with those dastardly BARBER SURGEONS.
Linacre Q. 2016 Aug; 83(3): 246–257.
doi: 10.1080/00243639.2016.1201375
PMCID: PMC5102187
PMID: 27833206
Non-faith-based arguments against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia
Daniel P. Sulmasy,1 John M. Travaline,2 Louise A. Mitchell,3 and E. Wesley Ely4,5
Abstract
This article is a complement to
“A Template for Non-Religious-Based Discussions Against Euthanasia” by Melissa Harintho, Nathaniel Bloodworth, and E. Wesley Ely which appeared in the February 2015 Linacre Quarterly. Herein we build upon Daniel Sulmasy's opening and closing arguments from the 2014 Intelligence Squared debate on legalizing assisted suicide, supplemented by other non-faith-based arguments and thoughts, providing four nontheistic arguments against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia: (1) “it offends me”; (2) slippery slope; (3) “pain can be alleviated”; (4) physician integrity and patient trust.
Lay Summary:
Presented here are four non-religious, reasonable arguments against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia: (1) “it offends me,” suicide devalues human life; (2) slippery slope, the limits on euthanasia gradually erode; (3) “pain can be alleviated,” palliative care and modern therapeutics more and more adequately manage pain; (4) physician integrity and patient trust, participating in suicide violates the integrity of the physician and undermines the trust patients place in physicians to heal and not to harm.
Keywords: Euthanasia, Physician-assisted suicide, Physician-assisted death, Debate, Apologetics
Introduction
In its first issue of 2015, The Linacre Quarterly published the text of a secular debate held at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Bloodworth et al. 2015), hoping it would re-kindle interest in formulating arguments and contribute to increasingly common discussions in society about physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia. As that paper was offered to engender dialog, it was hoped that other reflections would follow. As it happened, around the same time that the Bloodworth publication was being prepared, a debate was held by Intelligence Squared U.S. (Intelligence Squared 2014a) on legalizing physician-assisted suicide featuring Professors Peter Singer and Andrew Solomon “for” and Doctors Daniel Sulmasy and Ilora Finlay “against” the legalization of PAS.1 Herein we build upon Doctor Sulmasy's opening and closing arguments from that debate, supplemented by other non-faith-based arguments and thoughts intended to further this conversation, focusing on objections to legalizing these practices. In this manuscript, we will thus review the Bloodworth article, present the Intelligence Squared opening and closing statements “against PAS” and then expound upon four key arguments against PAS: (1) “it offends me”; (2) slippery slope; (3) “pain can be alleviated”; (4) physician integrity and patient trust.
Before getting into Doctor Sulmasy's debate points, it is worthwhile to recount some points raised in the Bloodworth article (Bloodworth et al. 2015).
While the debate points presented at Vanderbilt were well-received, common criticisms to some of the assertions made in that piece are worth consideration. For example, one of the main bases for Doctor Ely's argument against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia involved an appeal to natural law.
Such appeal to natural law does not presuppose belief in God. The knowledge of natural law is discernible by reason and so it is not fundamentally theistic. While it is true that the Catholic Church in particular has made prominent use of natural law in formulating its ethical positions, natural law is not essentially rooted in any faith tradition (see, for example, Anderson 2005; Finnis 2001; Goyette, Latkovic, and Myers 2004; McInerny 1993; Veatch 1971).
Nonetheless, appeal to natural law is commonly mistaken as an appeal to theism, which many in a secular society dismiss out of hand because of this misperception. These critics often forget the use of natural law reasoning by the founding fathers of the United States. The Vanderbilt debate, for instance, referenced the Declaration of Independence, which is a quintessentially natural law-based set of governing principles. Lastly, the references in that debate to C.S. Lewis from The Abolition of Man were placed strategically and without necessary dependence on Lewis's explicit arguments for theism as the ground of the natural law, and hence morality. Lewis's approach leaves natural law vulnerable to the charge of theism by those who do not accept an ultimate or transcendent justice or goodness as the rule and measure of human actions. Lewis's position regarding the theistic basis of natural law is not, however, widely accepted by natural law scholars, the authors of this paper, or the Catholic Church.
The Bloodworth article was, as billed, a mere starting point. Doctors Sulmasy and Finlay developed a sophisticated, philosophical “devil's advocate” approach that was ultimately successful. They discerned optimal premises for making the case against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia to avowed non-theistic practitioners of medicine. It is thus our privilege to publish here Doctor Sulmasy's points to continue building the case towards truth in respecting human life nearing its end in the context of the practice of the vocation of medicine. In the tradition of St. Thomas, we take four strong arguments for PAS that arose during the debate (patient autonomy, no slippery slope, unalleviated pain, physician's duty) and argue against them. We base our arguments in reason, with the conviction that the truth in a principle can be discerned and its implications drawn out to a logical conclusion, and an error can be shown to have a contradiction at its heart.
I am a physician. Part of my job is to help people die in comfort and with dignity. But I do not want to help you, or your daughter, or your uncle commit suicide. You should not want me to. I urge you to oppose physician-assisted suicide: it represents bad ethical reasoning, bad medicine, and bad policy. I am going to concentrate on the first of these lines of argument. Ilora will take up the latter two.
We strongly support the right of patients to refuse treatments and believe physicians have a duty to treat pain and other symptoms, even at the risk of hastening death. But empowering physicians to assist patients with suicide is quite another matter--striking at the heart not just of medical ethics, but at the core of ethics itself. That is because the very idea of interpersonal ethics depends upon our mutual recognition of each other's equal independent worth, the value we have simply because we are human. Some would have you believe that morality depends upon equal interests (usually defined by our preferences) and advance utilitarian arguments based on that assumption.4
But which is morally more important, people or their interests?
As Aristotle observed, small errors at the beginning of an argument lead to large errors at the end.5 If interests take precedence over people, then assisting the suicide of a patient who has lost interest in living certainly is morally praiseworthy. But it also follows that active euthanasia ought to be permitted. It also follows that the severely demented can be euthanized once they no longer have interests. They can also freely be experimented upon as excellent human “models” for research. It also follows that infanticide ought to be permitted for infants with congenital illness.
Many would see these conclusions as frightful, but this is not just a slippery slope. They all follow logically from arguing for assisted suicide on the basis of maximizing personal interests. So if you do not believe in euthanasia for severely disabled children or the demented, you might want to re-think your support for assisted suicide. At least if you want to be consistent.
People often argue that they need assisted suicide to preserve their dignity, but that word has at least two senses. Proponents use the word in an attributed sense to denote the value others confer on them or the value they confer on themselves. But there is a deeper, intrinsic sense of dignity.
Human dignity ultimately rests not on a person's interests, but on the value of the person whose interests they are; and the value of the person is infinite. I do not need to ask you what your preferences are to know that you have incalculable worth, simply because you are human. Martin Luther King said that he learned this from his grandmother who told him, “Martin, don't let anybody ever tell you you're not a Somebody” (Baker-Fletcher 1993, 23). This some-bodiness, this intrinsic worth or dignity, was at the heart of the civil rights movement.
It does not matter what a person looks like, how productive the person might be, how others view that person, or even how that person may have come to view herself. What matters is that everybody, black or white, healthy or sick, is a somebody. Assisted suicide and euthanasia require us to accept that it is morally permissible to act with the specific intention-in-acting of making a somebody into a nobody, i.e., to make them dead.
Intentions, not just outcomes, matter in ethics. Intending that a somebody be turned into a nobody violates the fundamental basis of all of interpersonal ethics—the intrinsic dignity of the human.
FEEDBACK SAYS----SHE IS NOBODY----NOBODY CARES ABOUT HER------
THIS IS WHAT SUBLIMINAL MESSAGING IN COCHLEAR IMPLANTS ARE TELLING OUR US 99% WE THE PEOPLE.
Our society worships independence, youth, and beauty. Yet we know that illness and aging often bring dependence and disfigurement. The terminally ill, especially, need to be reminded of their value, their intrinsic dignity, at a time of fierce doubt. They need to know that their ultimate value does not depend upon their appearance, productivity, or independence.
You see, physician-assisted suicide flips the default switch. The question the terminally ill hear, even if never spoken, is, “You've become a burden to yourself and the rest of us. Why haven't you gotten rid of yourself yet?” A good utilitarian would think this a proper question—even a moral duty.
As a physician who cares for dying patients, however, I am more fearful of the burden this question imposes on the many who might otherwise choose to live, than the modest restriction imposed on a few, when physician-assisted suicide is illegal.
Assisted suicide should not be necessary. Pain and other symptoms can almost always be alleviated. As evidence, consider that pain or other symptoms rarely come up as reasons for assisted suicide. The top reasons are: fear of being a burden and wanting to be in control (Oregon Public Health Division 2015, 5).
You may ask, “Why shouldn't I have this option?” And yet we all realize that society puts many restrictions on individual liberty, and for a variety of reasons: to protect other parties, to promote the common good, and to safeguard the bases of law and morality. For example, we do not permit persons to drive when drunk, or to freely sell themselves into slavery.
Paradoxically, in physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, patients turn the control over to physicians, who assess their eligibility and provide the means. Further, death obliterates all liberty. Therefore, saying that respect for liberty justifies the obliteration of liberty actually undermines the value we place on human freedom.
I have been on talk shows and received call-in questions from patients who ask how I can be opposed to physician-assisted suicide when they are getting sick from chemotherapy, suffering complications from the big IV they have in their neck, have intense pain, and are spending more time in the hospital than outside it. But I ask them, why are you still getting chemotherapy? Why not have the IV removed? Why not ask for hospice or palliative care to control your pain? Why not just stay home? You should have no need for assisted suicide.6 Most supporters of physician-assisted suicide want what opponents want—respect for their dignity and attention to their individual needs.
But we are all human beings—fragile, interdependent, and connected in bonds of mutual respect and support. Suicide is always an act of communication and has profound interpersonal implications. Many persons who raise the question of suicide are really testing the waters, asking us if we care enough to try to stop them. When we do not stop them, or even say, “I'll help you,” we confirm their deepest fears and make it difficult for them to see an alternative. And when the suicide happens, physicians and families must live for the rest of their lives with fact that they did not try to intervene.
We should not construct a society that makes assisted suicide easy or common. We should re-direct our energies towards making sure that all patients get the kind of care we all want—helping us live to the fullest even as we are dying. Vote for that kind of high quality, compassionate care at the end of life, and the sort of moral world that makes it possible, by voting No on physician-assisted suicide.
Doctors Sulmasy and Finlay won the debate according to its rules, by persuading the most members of the live audience to change their minds. While the live audience in New York City began the debate with 65 percent in favor of legalizing assisted suicide, only 10 percent opposed, and 25 percent undecided, after the debate, 67 percent were in favor but 22 percent were opposed to legalization. The unofficial online polling changed from 5 percent opposed to legalization before the debate to 51 percent opposed as of March 21, 2016.
(See the Results tab at Intelligence Squared 2014a)
In the rest of this article we highlight and expound upon some of the arguments against physician-assisted suicide gleaned from the debate and from the audience comments and questions following it: (1) “It offends me”; (2) the slippery slope; (3) “pain can be alleviated”; and (4) physician integrity and patient trust. We take care not to frame them within a faith-based context. While we believe that faith-based arguments are strong, our intention in arguing from reason is that all too many people are quickly dismissive of faith-based arguments. Our aim is to advance the conversation from this perspective. As noted earlier, the hope is to have new and other iterations of the pro-life arguments readily available to reach as broad a swath of people as possible, believers and non-believers alike.
Certainly everyone should strive not to be offensive to others, but whether one is offended or not, partly depends upon the person potentially offended. To offend someone is to attack, violate, or cause resentful displeasure to a person. This presupposes that the one offended recognizes the attack, violation, or resentment, and so the argument vis-à-vis assisted suicide is that when one willfully kills oneself, or requests to be killed, every other human being should rightfully be offended. Why? Because subsumed in the action of one killing oneself (or requesting to be killed) is the implied announcement that one's life (human life) is somehow not as valuable as it otherwise would be if one were not in a position to seek one's death (For to value life contradicts the act of killing, and if one values life, one does not commit suicide or ask to be killed.). To assert that one values human life, and at the same time to commit suicide is contradictory and illogical. So, to kill oneself (willfully, i.e., to distinguish this form of suicide from suicide in association with mental illness or other clinical pathology) necessarily devalues human life. And, because we are all human beings, therefore, every human being is (or should be) resentful of his or her life being devalued.
Now some may grant that killing oneself is an expression of devaluing life, but only that individual person's life, and no one else's, arguing therefore, that there is no basis for one's willful suicide (or its request) to be offensive to anyone else. The fundamental problem, however, with this reasoning is that human beings are relational (natural law). It is part of the essence of being human to exist in a relationship to another. According to Thomas Aquinas, the third precept of the natural law is “an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason … thus man has a natural inclination … to live in society” (Aquinas 1948, I–II, q. 94, a. 2). And Aristotle viewed a particular relationship, that of friendship, to be a virtue and “most indispensable for life” (Aristotle 1962/1980, bk. 8, ch. 1). Indeed the very origin of an individual necessitates the relationship of two other human beings—a mother and a father—and a human being exists in relationships with others by his or her very nature. Human beings then are always, and essentially a part of a community of persons, and as such because of this connection with others (as part of humanity), when another person kills him- or herself or allows him- or herself to be killed, life for every other human being is cheapened (devalued). Such an action says to some degree, that life is not worth it; and although the effect on others may be seemingly miniscule, the more it happens the greater the effect on others (like compounding interest on money). Moral actions very much and very often have consequences for others, even when there appears to be no connection.7
One of the issues brought up in the debate over physician-assisted suicide is the slippery slope argument: If physician-assisted suicide is made legal, then other things will follow, with the final end being the legalizing of euthanasia for anyone for any reason or no reason. The experience of other countries shows that this is not theoretical. The Netherlands is an example of the slippery slope on which legalizing physician-assisted suicide puts us. In the 1980s the Dutch government stopped prosecuting physicians who committed voluntary euthanasia on their patients (Jackson 2013, 931–932; Patel and Rushefsky 2015, 32–33). By the 1990s over 50 percent of acts of euthanasia were no longer voluntary. This is according to the 1991 Remmelink Report, a study on euthanasia requested by the Dutch government and conducted by the Dutch Committee to Study the Medical Practice Concerning Euthanasia (Euthanasia.com 2014; Patients Rights Council 2013a; Van Der Maas et al. 1991). In 2001 euthanasia was made legal. And in 2004 it was decided that children also could be euthanized. According to Wesley Smith, in a Weekly Standard article in 2004, “In the Netherlands, Groningen University Hospital has decided its doctors will euthanize children under the age of 12, if doctors believe their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness.” The hospital then developed the Groningen Protocol to decide who should die. Smith comments,
It took the Dutch almost 30 years for their medical practices to fall to the point that Dutch doctors are able to engage in the kind of euthanasia activities that got some German doctors hanged after Nuremberg. For those who object to this assertion by claiming that German doctors killed disabled babies during World War II without consent of parents, so too do many Dutch doctors: Approximately 21% of the infant euthanasia deaths occurred without request or consent of parents. (Smith 2004)
Euthanasia in the Netherlands went from illegal but not prosecuted, to legal, to including children.
And it is not stopping there (Schadenberg 2013). Now, in 2011, Radio Netherlands reported that “the Dutch Physicians Association (KNMG) says unbearable and lasting suffering should not be the only criteria physicians consider when a patient requests euthanasia.” The association published a new set of guidelines, “which says a combination of social factors and diseases and ailments that are not terminal may also qualify as unbearable and lasting suffering under the Euthanasia Act.” These social factors include “decline in other areas of life such as financial resources, social network, and social skills” (RNW 2011). So a person with non-life threatening health problems but who is poor or lonely can request to be euthanized.
In another example of the slippery slope to which physician-assisted suicide leads, in 2002 Belgium “legaliz[ed] euthanasia for competent adults and emancipated minors.” In February of 2014, Belgium took the next step:
Belgium legalized euthanasia by lethal injection for children…. Young children will be allowed to end their lives with the help of a doctor in the world's most radical extension of a euthanasia law. Under the law there is no age limit to minors who can seek a lethal injection. Parents must agree with the decision, however, there are serious questions about how much pressure will be placed on parents and/or their children. (Patients Rights Council 2013b)
Some say that the US state laws concerning physician-assisted suicide are very restrictive and so there is no chance of erosion such as has happened in the Netherlands or Belgium (Intelligence Squared 2014b, 34). Yet, if there is no moral or philosophical basis for PAS laws in the common good, then there is no telling how far changes to PAS laws will go in the future, and no stopping the changes.
In medicine, we talk much these days about a “good death,” not necessarily one that is completely free of suffering, but a dying process in which we are attendant to pain and symptom management, optimize clear decision making, and affirm the whole person in as dignified a manner as possible. Importantly, this can often be effectively accomplished through incorporation of palliative care services. Palliative care is a healing act adjusted to the good possible even in the face of the realities of an incurable illness. Cure may be futile but care is never futile (Pellegrino 2001). With appropriate utilization of palliative care, far fewer patients would be driven by fear to request that physicians actively end their lives via PAS/E.
Proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia posit the scenario of uncontrollable pain as a straw man for advancing their cause. Such proponents apparently view death as the ultimate analgesic. In fact, in medical practice today, pain relief is almost always possible given modern therapeutics in analgesia and the medical specialty of pain management. Since pain can be alleviated, there is no basis to assert a need for PAS because of intractable pain. This may explain in part why many requests for PAS are no longer related to or initiated because of intolerable pain, but because of fear of such intolerable pain. Further, closely related to a patient's fear of intolerable pain, and sometimes associated with a patient's fear of being abandoned (Coyle 2004), is a patient's request for PAS because of not wanting to burden others.
This too poses a curious contradiction, for on the one hand there is not wanting to be a burden on a loved one, and on the other hand a fear of being alone and abandoned. Such a contradiction, once considered and coupled with the fact that pain can be addressed successfully through optimal palliative care implementation, enhances the power of this argument against PAS/E.
The Oregon law was enacted on the basis of intolerable pain — no one should be forced to endure pain that is uncontrollable and unendurable. Most of us can sympathize with that, but the law is not restricted to pain, and it is not pain that is the top reason people choose physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. The state's “Death with Dignity Act Annual Report” for 2014 shows that the top reason is “losing autonomy” (Oregon Public Health Division 2015, 5). Concern about pain was not even the second or third reason: “Less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” and “Loss of dignity.” It was ranked sixth out of seven, above only financial concerns, and included not only “inadequate pain control,” but also “concern about it.” These patients were not necessarily in uncontrollable pain themselves, however they were concerned about it (as are we all). But even that concern did not rank high on their list of reasons that they wanted to commit suicide.
Even if the line drawn is unbearable pain, how can that be restricted to only physical pain? Who can judge that mental anguish is not unbearable pain? Or that economic distress (or anything else that causes anguish) is not unbearable pain?
When a patient asks a physician to assist in killing him- or herself, not only is there disrespect shown to the physician's integrity, but a contradiction is created. Asking a physician to participate in PAS undermines the principled ethic and integrity of the physician whose noble profession is defined as one of compassionate service of the patient who is vulnerable, wounded, sick, alone, alienated, afraid; and undermines the integrity or wholesomeness of the patient, who him- or herself is in desperate need of trying to achieve. To ask and expect a physician to participate in the destructive act of suicide violates both personal and professional integrity of the physician, and leaves both the patient and the physician at risk for moral confusion about what is good, true, and beautiful about the human person.
The threat of euthanasia posed by legalizing PAS also undermines trust between physician and patient.
Both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide would undermine the medical profession by eroding the trust of patients in their physicians as caregivers. If doctors were permitted to engage in practices that harm their patients, then patients would never know if their doctors were truly acting in their best interests. (Austriaco 2011, 148)
Will your doctor kill you if he or she thinks you are too ill or in too much pain or unconscious? The Oath of Hippocrates has guided physicians for twenty-four hundred years. The Oath states,
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice…
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. (Tyson 2001)
Even with all the advances in medicine over the last one to two hundred years, the public perception is still that the Hippocratic Oath is an important indicator that the patient in his or her vulnerability can put trust in the physician (Lederer 1999, 102). Euthanasia by health-care professionals undermines that trust.
Lack of trust is not just something that may or may not happen if euthanasia is legalized. It is happening in countries that have legalized euthanasia. Austriaco points out that “many Dutch patients, before they will check themselves into hospitals, insist on writing contracts assuring that they will not be killed without their explicit consent” (Austriaco 2011, 148). As stated earlier, in the 1980s the Dutch government stopped prosecuting physicians who committed voluntary euthanasia on their patients. By the 1990s over 50 percent of acts of euthanasia were no longer voluntary. This has had a deleterious effect on the relationship of patients to health-care professionals. An article in 2011 in the Telegraph, a newspaper in the UK, stated that “Elderly people in the Netherlands are so fearful of being killed by doctors that they carry cards saying they do not want euthanasia” (Beckford 2011).
The Dutch elderly mistrust their own doctors.
Trust is not the only issue concerning the integrity of medicine: PAS also calls into question the very ends of medicine to cure and to care. Christopher Saliga, a nurse, explains that
One can rightly say that in Oregon, the balance has shifted such that respect for autonomy currently has greater weight among the principles hanging in the balance than it had prior to the legalization of assisted suicide. As a result, the contradictory patient outcomes of life and death via continued care or willful suicide respectively are considered equally valid. (Saliga 2005, 22–23)
Medicine and the medical profession traditionally aimed at curing and healing. Assisting in a suicide is neither cure nor healing. It pits the medical profession against itself: curing and caring versus killing.
Summary
We offer the following table of the salient points comprising the non-faith-based arguments against PAS (Table 1).
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FEEDBACK says SHE IS GOING TO DIE-------SHE IS GOING TO BE KILLED------HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS WILL DECIDE WHO IS HIT OR NOT.
Below we have what could be FALSE FLAG article written to make people SCARED to come out and STOP MOVING FORWARD. Bourque died suddenly. Supposedly, that is what is happening to me-----
EUTHANASIA has been around around since HUMANITY------people can chose to end their lives. This DEATH WITH DIGNITY ----these NETWORKS OF DR DEATH------are NOT social benefit---they were movements to create THE FAD -----that is NOW AFFORDABLE CARE ACT---EUTHANASIA HOSPICE.
BOTH original leaders of this DEATH MOVEMENT-----EGBERT and this doctor in FLORIDA -----are now dead. This doctor CHOSE to KILL HIMSELF and his WIFE.
THIS PIPELINE TO DEATH BEING CREATED AS MOVING FORWARD TELEMEDICINE FOR 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE WILL NOT BE A 'CHOICE' -----IT WILL BE FORCED.
HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS ARE A SATANIC DEATH CULT NETWORK ------HAVING GAINED TOO MUCH CONTROL ------UNITED NATIONS/WORLD HEALTH/WORLD BANK.
'Dr. André Bourque, co-founder and first president of Living with Dignity, died suddenly on December 29, 2012.
He was a man of action, a health professional with great determination, resilient and always striving for social justice. We thank him for defending the inalienable human value that is the dignity of each person.
Dr. Bourque had a varied family medicine practice in Montreal for 40 years. He was experienced in emergency medicine and ambulatory medicine as well as palliative and long-term care. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Family 1947-2012 Medicine at the Université de Montréal and was the
Chief of the Department of General Medicine at the CHUM from 2001 to 2010.
Dr. Bourque was co-author of a brief against euthanasia and assisted suicide that was endorsed by more than 100 doctors in Québec and presented to the Collège des Médecins du Québec on August 31st 2009, and was one of the 24 founding members of the Physicians’ Alliance for Total Refusal of Euthanasia'.
Morning Mix
The apparent murder-suicide of a death-with-dignity advocate and his ailing wife
By
Lindsey Bever
Reporter
April 22, 2016 at 2:02 p.m. EDT
One gunshot.
Then another.
Within minutes, a prominent death-with-dignity advocate was shot dead along with his ailing wife in an assisted living center in Florida.
Eighty-one-year-old Frank Kavanaugh — who served on the national advisory board for the Final Exit Network, an advocacy organization in the right-to-die debate — was discovered dead in the early morning hours Tuesday alongside his wife, 88-year-old Barbara Kavanaugh.
The couple was found at the Solaris HealthCare Charlotte Harbor center in Port Charlotte, Fla. Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Skip Conroy said the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
But those who knew the Kavanaughs said it may have been their only option.
“It was a rational suicide,” Final Exit Network President Janis Landis told The Washington Post. “Both of them made this decision. It was not murder.”
Fellow members of the Final Exit Network said Kavanaugh had recently pulled away from his own life to stay by his wife’s side as she battled a degenerative brain disease.
“He had really disengaged from everything else,” Landis said. “He was at her side every day, all day. He hadn’t spent a night away from home since she got the diagnosis.”
Landis, the group’s president, said several members knew what the Kavanaughs had been going through but none knew how bad it had gotten.
“We’re not surprised that both of them felt strongly about their right to decide the timing and manner of their deaths when the quality of their lives became unacceptable,” she said.
Landis noted that, as far as she knew, no one was aware of the couple’s plan.
According to Florida law, assisted suicide is manslaughter, a second-degree felony.
Authorities have not yet released a possible motive in the Kavanaughs’ case.
How Brittany Maynard may change the right-to-die debate
Just after 1 a.m. Tuesday, authorities were called to the Solaris HealthCare Charlotte Harbor center, where they found the couple. Both had been shot and killed.
“We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family of the husband and wife involved in a tragic event that occurred at our facility last night,” F. Stan Weye, an administrator for Solaris Healthcare, told ABC affiliate WZVN in a statement.
After the couple’s deaths, friends, neighbors and fellow right-to-die advocates started to speak out about the violent and heart-wrenching scene. Final Exit Network, called Frank Kavanaugh “one of the best, most beloved and dedicated” members of the group and wrote on Facebook that “the Sheriff’s Office labeled the deaths of Frank and his wife, Barbara, a ‘murder-suicide,’ but I would call it the tragic consequence of living in a country that prohibits people from exercising any type of informed choices in death.”
People in the pair’s Punta Gorda community depicted a heartbreaking image of an elderly husband who was desperate to help the love of his life.
“He was in good shape, good health; I can’t imagine why this horrible thing happened,” Gale Petrillo told WZVN. “I’m stunned. It’s horrific. Sometimes we could hear him say, ‘Barbara, but I’m only trying to help. I’m only trying to help.’ ”
But another friend, Ted Goodwin, said Kavanaugh had started having health issues, which, Goodwin thought, may have led to a deadly decision.
“They were with each other constantly over a lifetime,” he told the news station. “My guess is they had determined to go together. While my heart is breaking on one hand, I have to honor the fact they went on their terms.”
California adopts ‘right-to-die’ law allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients
Frank Kavanaugh was retired after a long teaching career at the George Washington University School of Medicine, according to his Final Exit Network biography. The school, however, could not immediately verify his employment history.
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THE TRANSHUMANISTS are those behind these HITLER MEDICAL ATROCITIES. The TRANSHUMANISTS are those .00014% of global rich who have had TOO MUCH power for TOO long. We are watching as 5% freemason/Greek players are BOUGHT----WHO DON'T CARE advance very dangerous and brutal medical policies.
To do so requires a GREAT DEAL OF FEAR----making people SCARED-----using medicine to IMMOBILIZE people. That is what I see here Baltimore.
'Question for students: When, if ever, is human experimentation acceptable'?
'Major Dan
Major Dan is a retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served during the Cold War and has traveled to many countries around the world. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Following his military service, he worked as a police officer eventually earning the rank of captain prior to his retirement'.
Back in WW 2 the victims of these OLD WORLD KINGS KNIGHTS OF MALTA TRIBE OF JUDAH BARBER SURGEONS were JEWISH citizens taken to concentration camps---BUT also our soldiers whether fighting for/against HITLER/STALIN. Everyone was a LOSER. It advanced to NUREMBERG because at that time we had LEADERS WHO were still tied to AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT---I AM MAN-----MORALS AND ETHICS PHILOSOPHY.
Today, we have CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ----tied to far-right extreme wealth DARK AGES LAISSEZ FAIRE-----who are working FOR----DOCTOR NO/DOCTOR DEATH.
Our MILITARY LEADERS were front and center in these INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE TRIALS and were responsible for the GENEVA CONVENTION protections against all this INHUMANITY.
FAST FORWARD to today, it is BUSH/CHENEY and GLOBAL PRIVATE MILITARY CORPORATIONS having killed GENEVA CONVENTION ----giving us ABU GHRAIB----AND death rooms in each community in all US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
No rocket scientist is needed to see what MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD TELEMEDICINE FOR ALL will look like------ask MENGELES ------this is the work of MADMEN.
December 9, 1946: Nuremberg Nazi “Doctors” Trials
By Major Dan December 9, 2013
A Brief HistoryOn this date, December 9, 1946, the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” began with the “Doctors’ Trial”, prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
Digging Deeper
As if shooting and blowing people up is not bad enough, the Nazis of Germany’s World War II regime took the horror of war a step further! Digging deeper, we find on this date in 1946 the start of 23 trials at Nuremberg of 20 doctors and 3 Nazi officials for war crimes concerning the cruel use of “medical research.”
The bizarre excuse for what passed for research included experiments with various poisons to be used in extermination camps or as weapons, starvation, how long it takes people to die from hypothermia in various conditions, the progression of disease intentionally given to people, organ and limb transplant surgery, reactions to torture, and methods of sterilization of people the Nazis considered subhuman. Aside from Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and mentally or physically handicapped people, more or less anyone who was opposed to the Nazi state was considered fair game as a human guinea pig! These subjects were usually left dead and discarded, or at the least were maimed for life.
Perhaps the most famous of these evil doctors actually escaped trial with the others by slipping off to South America at the end of the war.
Joseph Mengele (played by Gregory Peck in the film Boys From Brazil) was an SS doctor at the Auschwitz death camp and evaded capture until his death in 1979 in Brazil. He is considered the most evil doctor in history.
Of the 23 men tried, 7 were acquitted, 7 were sentenced to death by hanging, and the remainder received prison sentences for as little as 10 years or as much as life.
The condemned men were hanged in June of 1948. Thus closed one of the truly sad chapters in the history of man’s cruelty to other men.
Question for students: When, if ever, is human experimentation acceptable?
A cold water immersion experiment at Dachau concentration camp presided over by Ernst Holzlöhner (left) and Sigmund Rascher (right). The subject is wearing an experimental Luftwaffe garment. Taken from: Hanauske-Abel, Hartmut M. “Not a Slippery Slope or Sudden Subversion: German Medicine and National Socialism in 1933.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 313(7070): 1453-1463. 7 December 1996. The photograph was published in “Human laboratory animals”. Life magazine, 22(8), 24 February 1947, pp. 81–84.
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Historical Evidence
For more information on this infamous trial, see…
Annas, George J. and Michael A. Grodin. The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Oxford University Press, 1995.
[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”0195101065″]
Schmidt, U. Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial (St Antony’s Series). Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”033392147X”]
The featured image in this article, a photograph showing when a sentence of death by hanging is pronounced by a US War Crimes Tribunal upon Adolf Hitler’s personal doctor, 43-year-old Karl Brandt, is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.
Brandt, who was also Reich Commissar for Health and Sanitation, was indicted by the U.S. prosecution with 22 other Nazi doctors and SS officers on war crimes charges in the first case of alleged criminals tried after the judgment in the International Military Tribunal. The Tribunal found him guilty on all four counts charging him with conspiracy in aggressive wars, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in the criminal SS organization. Among those criminal acts was his participating in and consenting to using concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs in horrible medical experiments, supposedly for the benefit of the armed forces.
Brandt, who was executioner of thousands of political, racial, and religious persecutees, was hanged on June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison after the U.S. Military Commander Gen. Lucius D. Clay and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the Nuremberg Tribunal. In a long-winded speech that was finally muffled when the black hood was thrown over his head, Brandt shouted arrogantly, “It is no shame to stand on this scaffold; I have served my country as have others before me.”
Hitler was also once imprisoned here in 1923, following his unsuccessful Munich putsch. He wrote Mein Kampf during his confinement. [Original Descriptive Caption].
Date: 20 August 1947 Provenance: From Public Relations Photo Section, Office Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Germany, APO 696-A, US Army. Photo No. OMT-I-D-144. Citation: Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University Law School, New York, N.Y. : TTP-CLS: 15-1-1-76.
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MY CASE of NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG with HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS began in JAN 2019 with me seeing an illegal streaming 24/7 video PORN network with PSYCHO-SEXUAL TORTURE and all kinds of FEEDBACK making these gang members look just like this DARK SEX TRADE SEX SLAVE CULT. That is indeed who is on THE NETWORK as one of several groups hacked into these ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE inside our LIVING SPACES.
HOSTING SERVER NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG are indeed PORN MULES----PORN AND SEX ADDICTS------trying to control people THEY HIT.
Here in Baltimore this CULT OF DEATH has taken hold of our MAINSTREAM governing and institutional leadership-----our PUBLIC SURVEILLANCE structure is controlled by HOMELAND SECURITY having many layers of POLICING AND SECURITY agencies ----
WE NEED THOSE AGENCIES TO STAND UP---SHAKE THOSE TAIL FEATHERS BECAUSE THIS NOSY NEIGHBORS AND THE GANG IS A THREAT TO OUR US NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL SOVEREIGNTY.
The dark cult with billionaires, stars, and allegations of sex slavery
By Ruth Brown
March 27, 2018 | 11:29pm
Nxivm had all the hallmarks of a money-scamming cult — but the truth was far, far worse.
Devotees of the upstate self-help organization pay thousands of dollars for seminars, wear colored sashes denoting their “rank,” spout Scientology-like jargon, and literally bow before leader Keith Raniere — whom they call “The Vanguard.”
Nxivm (pronounced “Nexium”) has deep pockets, outposts around the world, and draws celebrity attendees, including actresses Allison Mack, Kristin Kreuk and Nicki Clyne, and even hosted the Dalai Lama at an event in 2009.
But behind the scenes, Raniere has been blackmailing his female followers into becoming sex slaves branded with his initials, while other women in the group were made to wear fake cow udders on their bare breasts in acts of ritual humiliation, federal prosecutors allege.
On Monday, Raniere’s secret world came crashing down when authorities tracked him down in Mexico after a months-long manhunt and arrested him for sex trafficking and forced labor.
He was arraigned in Texas on Tuesday and will now be brought to Brooklyn to face justice after what prosecutors say has been a lifetime of scamming and abusing women.
Born in Brooklyn in 1960 to an advertising executive dad and former dance teacher mom, who raised him in the suburbs, Raniere claims to have been a child prodigy who achieved the 1989 Guinness World Record for “Highest IQ” and boasts of obtaining three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.
In reality, investigators say, Raniere struggled to complete his courses and graduated with a 2.26 GPA — “having failed or barely passed many of the upper-level math and science classes he bragged about taking,” Brooklyn US Attorney Richard Donoghue wrote in court documents.
Whatever the truth, those who know Raniere frequently describe him as a deeply charismatic man who easily convinces others of his own brilliance.
As early as 1984, at age 24, he manipulated a 15-year-old girl into a four-month sexual relationship, the woman, Gina Melita, told the Albany Times Union.
He took her to video game arcades, where he was partial to an Atari shooter called “Vanguard” — the title he would later adopt as leader of Nxivm.
After working various gigs, including as an Amway salesman, Raniere made his first foray into multilevel marketing in 1990, with a buyers’ club called Consumers’ Buyline that soon boasted 200,000 members nationwide.
That year, he also allegedly molested the 12-year-old daughter of a Consumers’ Buyline employee, after grooming her as her tutor, according to the victim.
“I was perfect picking — insecure at the time,” the victim, who later reported Raniere to local police, told the Times Union. “To have someone that mature and that well thought of to be interested in me, it was flattering. I was young, inexperienced, overwhelmed, out of my league.”
The girl’s case was never prosecuted, but Consumers’ Buyline quickly attracted the attention of authorities as a suspected pyramid scheme, and in 1996, Raniere settled a lawsuit with the New York state attorney general, agreeing to shutter the company and pay a $40,000 fine.
A year later, the smooth-talking salesman met a nurse named Nancy Salzman — a practitioner of hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming — rebranded himself as a self-help guru for business bigwigs, and together they formed a training center called Executive Success Programs, just outside Albany.
It was a hit.
Within five years, thousands of people had bought into Raniere’s hype and taken his seminars at satellite centers across the countries, including high-profile figures like Black Entertainment Television co-founder Sheila Johnson, former US Surgeon General Antonia Novello and Emiliano Salinas, the son of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
Sisters Clare and Sara Bronfman, heiresses to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, became devotees of the group, renamed Nxivm, in 2002 — bringing their large pocketbooks with them.
But the next year, people started asking questions when Forbes published a bombshell report revealing not only Raniere’s past with Consumers’ Buyline, but also the group’s eyebrow-raising practices.
“I think it’s a cult,” Edgar Bronfman Sr. bluntly told the magazine, explaining that his daughters had donated millions and hadn’t spoken to him in months.
Upon the article’s release, actress Goldie Hawn pulled out of a scheduled speaking engagement at an Nxivm event.
But stunningly, the sashes, the bowing, the hero worship and the bizarre monikers masked far more disturbing things going on behind the scenes.
From the earliest days, Raniere parlayed his female followers’ devotion into sexual relationships — keeping “a rotating group of 15 to 20 women with whom he maintains sexual relationships,” prosecutors wrote in their criminal complaint.
Many lived with him at his Clifton Park, NY, townhouse, while other followers moved nearby.
“I found it fascinating that these beautiful, smart women knew about each other and didn’t seem upset to share Keith,” said Christine Marie, who was hired by the company in 1998 and soon began a sexual relationship with Raniere.
“Still, it seemed like secret polygamy to me,” she said.
Raniere’s twisted sexual beliefs made their way into the Nxivm curriculum, too, with “disturbing hypotheticals” that challenged “whether incest and rape are actually wrong,” prosecutors charge.
Raniere “physically assaulted at least two intimate partners” and punished one 20-something Nxivm member who developed romantic feelings for someone else by keeping her confined for 18 months, according to court documents. And he created a spin-off “men’s movement” where women were humiliated for their inherent “weakness” by being “forced to wear fake cow udders over their breasts while people called them derogatory names,” prosecutors allege.
Some of Raniere’s sexual history, including with underage girls, was exposed in a 2012 series of articles in the Times Union.
Yet Nxivm continued to operate and prosper, thanks in part to the Bronfman sisters’ ability to bankroll lawsuits against a growing number of critics, according to a 2010 Vanity Fair profile of what it called a “multi-million-dollar, multi-front legal war.”
In 2015, things got even more disturbing.
That’s the year Raniere formed a secret society within his secret society called “The Vow” — where “women were recruited to be slaves under the false pretense of joining a women-only mentorship group.”
Female Nxivm members were told they “had an opportunity to join an organization that would change [their] life,” but had to provide “collateral” — like sexually explicit photos, or videos accusing friends and family of horrendous acts — to get in.
Among those who signed up were Canadian actress Sarah Edmondson and India Oxenberg, the daughter of “Dynasty” star Catherine Oxenberg.
Only once the women had handed over the collateral that were they told they were now a “slave,” subservient to another slave who was now their “master,” prosecutors say.
Many of the women say they were branded near their groins with Raniere’s initials in a filmed “ceremony,” as other slaves held them down.
“It was like a bad horror movie. We even had these surgical masks on because the smell of flesh was so strong. I felt petrified. I felt — every part of my body was like: Get out of here. Run,” Edmondson wrote in Vice.
The women were also ordered by their masters to have sex with Raniere, and endure torture, including sleep deprivation, ice-cold showers and extreme low-calorie diets, prosecutors say.
When the secret slave society was revealed in an October 2017 article in The New York Times, the FBI began probing Raniere and Nxivm — and he fled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with the help of Clare Bronfman’s cash, according to court documents.
He attempted to go off the grid, using a bank account in “one of his dead lover’s names” that was stocked with $8 million, as law enforcement closed in.
But even as Raniere was hauled away from the luxury villa where he was hiding out, his pull on female followers remained strong — they jumped in a car and tried to chase him down in a high-speed pursuit, according to Donoghue.
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