Found this story on euthanasia a bit unsettling for some reason

[Monkeytrousers]

here

I am broadly in favour of euthanasia and assisted suicide when it will ease an otherwise terrible death - and though this woman fitted that bill, I got the feeling reading it that she wanted her family to fight for her - to argue with her - to at least try to talk her out of it, hence her barely hidden rage (I thought).

Would be interesting to hear others opinions of it.

No, it doesn't, and I'd be interested to see up to date information on the level of palliative care currently provided.

Lisalisa said, "So she doesn't seem to have been in any great pain."

Not physically at least. You can't, and shouldn't, disguard emotional pain. It is just as relevant

also here a snip of the article:

We are just about to have lunch when Mum, who has been complaining about headaches this morning, gets up from the table. Tearfully, she shuffles to the kitchen sink. "I am so sick of it," she says, "so sick." She begins to make retching noises.

It is after this episode she decides...
I am sure that things have moved on from when I worked in Oncology (not palliative care really, mostly therapy), and I remember one of my patients still very clearly....she had a melanoma under her small toe nail and as that went undetected (for obvious reasons, I suppose)she develloped Metastasis on the brain...and i know that she had to be very heavily medicated and even that didn't touch the pain that well...because of the kind of pain...!
sadly she suffered till the end...and it was very difficult to watch.
Like I said, painrelieve is probably used much better now and more effective, etc...this was many years ago....but, the pain was real....so, to say she wan't really in pain
Also, there is a big possibility that this women was also very aware that she might loose every essence of herself...because her brain was effected...?!?!

Ruby, I suppose when doing Physician assisted suicide than the Doctor sets willingly out to kill his patient, whereas that might be not as easy to assume if the Doctor ups the ainrelief to a level that than kills the patient, and I suppose it's a matter of risk assesment...i.e. if it can be justyfied to up the medication to which ever level...etc...

I should have copied and pasted more from that article...but she was really bad at that moment...

Message withdrawn

i haven't seen it...could you link to it at all?

looked on timesonline, but can't find anything...

RubyRioja - there is a huge difference. The difference is the reason you are giving the drug/s.

Something known as 'double effect' is when you give a drug to relieve symtoms but know that it could have adverse side effects. For instance, Morphine is given for pain relief but can also depress a persons breathing. However, you would not withhold this drug because of it's side effects. You are giving it to relieve pain. Morphine is often a controversial drug because people see Dr's continually increasing the dose. However, this is because a persons body adjusts and becomes 'used to'the drug and therefore, it's effect is diminished. In order to have a therapeutic effect, the dose must be increased in line with the persons level of pain. Do you see the diference? i'm not very good at explaining....

RR, from a legal perspective I'd say the key difference is one of intent. From that stance there'd be a clear difference between a situation in which a doctor administers medication with the intention of relieving pain or other symptoms but accepts that there is a risk that the side effects may be severe with one in which a doctor administers medication with the intention of killing the person. Certainly in law, this would be the difference between manslaughter/ accidental death and murder.

RR - The line is never blurred (not for me, anyway). Cestlavie explains the legal point very well and when you are administering drugs to a terminally ill patient, you must be very clear about the reasons you are giving them. I have refused to administer drugs if I've ever felt that the line was blurred but am happy to give if the intention is to alleviate symptoms.

RR: I can see what you mean and although I've never been in a comparable situation, as CJM says I imagine that the doctor can be clear in their own mind about what their intention is. If they believe the patient is suffering they may give an exceptionally strong dose of pain relief which they know may cause death but their intention would be to relieve pain not to kill - they'd weigh up the benefits of relieving severe pain versus the risk of death and decide that it was a risk worth taking. That's a clearly different mind-set to administering drugs with the sole purpose of killing the patient. (Although I have no experience of this, my father was a consultant geriatrician so I did talk with him about this on various occasions).

You wouldn't refuse to give someone morphine if they were in pain, knowing that it may bring about their death....because your intention is to relieve pain, not to kill them. You would have obviously (I hope) had conversations with the family/patient about the side effects of morphine and other medications but you would never deny anyone in pain, the pain relief they need. As CestLavie says, it's about risk assessment and the risk of not giving it is that someone dies in pain as opposed to being pain free.

Having said that, someone patients will refuse certain pain relief and as long as their decision is informed then you need to work with them and the family using other methods i.e. distraction, herbal, homeopathy etc

Actually, just as an aside, I'm not against euthanasia. I think in certain specific situations it's entirely acceptable and the Dutch model of conditions precedent to euthanasia, for example, shows some guidelines as to how it could work, however, the difficulty is in ensuring that the guidelines and requirements are sufficiently robust yet workable.

here's an interesting article