Category Archives: Euthanasia

Wild hippos spend most of the day immersed in water and can be difficult to capture.Credit: Fernando Vergara/AP Photo/Alamy

Colombia has begun a new campaign to sterilize its invasive hippos, showing signs that it is taking the threat the animals pose to the countrys biodiversity and local communities seriously. The plan is to capture, anaesthetize and sterilize an initial 20 hippos by the end of 2023 as part of a three-pronged approach the government is taking to reduce the rapidly expanding population that has established itself along the countrys Magdalena River.

Colombias cocaine hippo population is even bigger than scientists thought

The other prongs involve shipping hippos abroad to sanctuaries and zoos, and more contentiously culling some of the animals. Colombias environment minister, Susana Muhamad, announced the plan at a press conference on 2 November.

Earlier this year, researchers feared that Muhamad would not take the action needed to curb the hippo population after she met with animal-rights groups and created a new division of animal protection within the ministry, and the publication of a government-commissioned study on the hippos was delayed. Although some still have concerns, they are glad the ministry is taking action.

There are questions around how all this will be carried out, particularly the euthanasia, but it seems that the government is generally going in the right direction, says Jorge Moreno-Bernal, a biologist at the University of the North in Barranquilla, Colombia.

We are in a race against time in terms of permanent impacts to the environment and ecosystem, Muhamad said at the press conference.

Colombias hippos considered the largest invasive animals in the world flourished in the countryside after escaping from drug-cartel leader Pablo Escobars estate. Escobar illegally imported four hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) in the 1980s. Left alone after he died in 1993, the male and three females reproduced rapidly thanks to a lack of droughts and predators, factors that normally keep hippo populations in check in their native sub-Saharan Africa.

Pablo Escobars cocaine hippos spark conservation row

A study commissioned by Colombias environment ministry and published in April estimated that there are now 181215 hippos in the country. One model of their population growth estimated that, by 2050, they could number more than 1,000 if measures arent taken to control them1.

Ecologists have been concerned that the highly territorial animals, which can weigh up to 3 tonnes, are altering the composition of Colombias main river with their excrement, and are outcompeting other species, such as the capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), for habitat and resources.

Following the April release of the study, which detailed evidence of the damage being caused by the hippos and recommended solutions, the government decided to take action, Muhamad said.

One of the key conclusions is that there is not a single strategy to control the hippos population and their environmental impact, Muhamad told Nature.

The first step is the sterilization campaign, for which the government has put aside 808 million pesos (US$200,000) this year. Each surgical castration will take a team of eight including veterinarians, technicians and support staff between six and eight hours. So far, three sterilizations have been completed, according to David Echevveri, head of biodiversity management, protected areas and ecosystem services at Cornare, the regional environment authority tasked with the campaign. In the coming years, the goal is to ramp up to sterilizing 40 hippos a year.

Landmark Colombian bird study repeated to right colonial-era wrongs

Researchers have pointed out that this will be a slow and costly endeavour. Sterilization is only a prerequisite for the other strategies. They must execute the three simultaneously, says Rafael Moreno, an ecologist who participated in the ministry-commissioned hippo study while at the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute in Bogot.

Muhamad told Nature that a more effective strategy would be to export the animals. During the press conference, she said that the ministry has had a concrete offer from a buyer in India willing to take 60 of the animals, and that Indias environmental authorities are considering it.

Researchers who spoke to Nature are sceptical about the exportation plan because they think it could be costly and logistically challenging. According to Ernesto Zazueta, the owner of the Ostok Sanctuary in northern Mexico who has expressed interest in taking some of the animals, to export 60 hippos to India and another 10 to Mexico would cost a total of about $3.5 million.

The Colombian government will cover the costs of sterilization, and probably the costs of euthanasia, but exportation would be paid for by the zoos or sanctuaries importing the hippos, Muhamad told Nature.

Although the researchers Nature spoke to are glad the government is moving ahead with its plan to control the hippo population, they are concerned that it will rely too heavily on sterilization, because fewer details have been offered about the other two, more effective strategies. After sterilization, the animals would ideally be confined or exported, Moreno says. Returning them to the countryside to roam would allow them to continue to inflict damage on the environment, he says. In the past, sterilization efforts havent been effective, because the hippos bred faster than they could be caught and operated on.

Moreno is also concerned by the ministrys announcement that it will consult citizen groups about the process of euthanizing the animals. It is a technical matter that should be taken by experienced professionals, he says.

Ecologists say that culling will be necessary. But that part of the initiative will probably be met by legal challenges, says Elliot Doornbos, a senior lecturer in criminology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. A public outcry occurred after a photo of a dead hippo was shared online in 2009 and caused efforts to rein in the population to be halted.

Muhamad told Nature that the environment ministry is working with experts to draw up an ethical euthanasia protocol that will be consulted in different expert committees to ensure its efficiency and rigour.

Depending on how many we export and how many we can sterilize, we will see how many we will have to cull, she added.

Read more here:

Colombia begins sterilizing its invasive hippos: what scientists think - Nature.com

Catholic medical professionals enjoy fellowship at the conference. Photo: Supplied

A national Catholic medical association conference has been a shot in the arm for doctors and other health professionals facing the introduction of voluntary assisted dying in New South Wales this month.

Assisted suicide and euthanasia will be legal in every Australian state from 28 November and the conference run by the Australian Catholic Medical Association helped like-minded delegates feel like they are not alone, in their concerns about the effects on vulnerable patients, the medical profession and the broader community, said organiser Mike McHugh.

It was a real boost to all of us and I think the penny has dropped that we really do need to support each other in building a stronger Catholic medical community, he told The Catholic Weekly.

Our association has been around for a while now but after the weekend there was a real buzz as many more people now know where to find each other for help and resources and just to bounce ideas off each other.

That they may have life was the theme of the inaugural national conference held at St Josephs conference and retreat centre in Baulkham Hills from 10-12 November.

More than 80 healthcare professionals from around the country met for prayer and mutual support with presentations delivered by experts including Australian Catholic University bioethicist Dr Xavier Symonsrecently appointed head of the Plunkett Centre for BioethicsACMA chaplain Fr Pascal Corby, historian Dr Elisabeth Taylor, palliative medicine doctor and Sydney University associate professor Maria Cigolini and Parramatta deacon and retired GP Michael Tan.

The bulk of the proceedings were on Saturday, beginning with Dr Symons, who said clearer protections are needed for conscientious objections.

He offered advice on what to do if a doctor or other health profession has an objection to abortion, euthanasia or other procedure allowed by law that conflicts with their conscience.

Part of the upshot of providing a broader role of conscience in medicine is that its not just about controversial medical proceduresyou are always making conscientious judgements in medicine, he told attendees.

In that way just as any other doctor would want their discretionary space respected with regard to end of life care or the advisability of any treatment measurements, so should you have your rights respected.

I think its important we dont buy into this trap of making conscientious objection somehow a special plead [for Christians] in medicine.

The conference dinner keynote was delivered by pro-life advocate Dr Joanna Howe who spoke powerfully about the tragedy of abortion and urged participants to work together to push for legal protections for unborn children across Australia.

McHugh said all were relieved to receive input and be able to discuss pressing practical and philosophical questions around medical conscientious objection, technology and transhumanism, youth transgenderism, abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide across the weekend.

A highlight was the first White Mass celebrated by Sydney Bishop Richard Umbers and concelebrated by Tasmanian Archbishop Julian Porteous, where all present received a blessing of hands for their ministry to the sick and the dying.

Organiser Dr Deirde Little said the conference was inspired by the need for Catholic doctors and others with ethical concerns about changes to current medical practice to consider ways to remain focussed on the good of individuals in their care.

We needed to come together to discuss how do we properly consider each person we come across rather than aggregating our responsibility to government agencies or legislators who would tell us how to manage a patient, what medicine to use and how to discuss things with a patient, she said.

For example, modern advanced care directives that are government-issued in local health districts encourage a tick-a-box style of medicine where a lay person may tick boxes on a persons future decisions in an unforeseeable context.

Now we who are a bit older can see the pitfalls of that one-size-fits-all kind of medicine which we feel is not necessarily in the best interests of patients and may have an ideological grounding which is not in accord with Christian or Catholic principals.

So we need look together at what kinds of harms it can do and what can we do to prevent them.

The Australian Catholic Medical Association is the national peak body for Catholic healthcare professionals, replacing the former state-based Guild of St Luke, and is approved by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

Read more from the original source:

Conference brings medics together in support of good ethics - The Catholic Weekly

A Wheeling Murderer was sentenced to life in prison and citizens demand answers about the euthanasia of dogs at a local animal shelter: Heres a look back at the weeks top headlines  WTRF

Link:

A Wheeling Murderer was sentenced to life in prison and citizens demand answers about the euthanasia of dogs at a local animal shelter: Heres a look...

DARWIN Bishop Charles Gauci is preparing to publicly champion the value of Christian life after the Northern Territory government this week announced it would set up an advisory panel on euthanasia laws.

On July 22, the NT government announced a panel would carry out community consultation about voluntary assisted dying and provide an independent report to policymakers by July next year.

As the Churchs chief advocate and current president of the Northern Territorys Council of Churches, Bishop Gauci expects to be in the public eye defending the dignity of the human person and pointing out the pitfalls of euthanasia.

I certainly wont be watering anything down, Bishop Guaci said.

I intend to have a respectful but clear and solid conversation about the whole issue and to share information about what the experience has been in other places where euthanasia has been legalised, not just in Australia but in other countries.

In the end we surrender to Gods will. As Christians, we trust in Gods will and in the end God has the final say when its time to go we dont make that decision ourselves.

NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said an advisory panel would examine the structure of how voluntary assisted dying policy could be developed, not whether it should be implemented.

The move follows years of advocacy by families seeking voluntary assisted dying in the Territory.

One of those advocates is Judy Dent whose husband Bob Dent became the first person in the world to die by legal voluntary euthanasia in 1996, under the NTs landmark Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.

Soon after, however, the federal government stripped both the Northern Territory and the ACT of their right to enact euthanasia laws a right that was restored in December last year.

Bishop Gauci, who celebrates 46 years as a priest this year, has written a letter to all NT Catholics explaining his own experience ministering to the elderly and coming to understand the importance of dying.

We as Christians believe that we are on a journey of continuous growth and our destiny is to be in the fullness of life with Christ and the communion of saints. Dying is an important part of living, he said.

It is an important part of letting go of ego and really preparing to embrace fullness of love and fullness of life.

Now I have seen people change through the experience of good pastoral care people who have been angry for years mellowing and making peace.

Bishop Gauci said he would use public discussion about euthanasia to press for improved quality of palliative care offered in the Northern Territory as well as ways to improve pastoral care for people suffering from serious and terminal illnesses.

I have no delusions that it can a very uncomfortable process and sometimes quite painful we dont deny that reality.

Im very sensitive that there are people taking their lives in suicide and how important that we care pastorally for those families who have been involved in that.

However we believe that ultimately death is not something that we can bring about deliberately ourselves.

Life is a gift from God which we cherish. Theres a very clear understanding from the Commandments and the Spirit-led understanding of our tradition that we dont do things deliberately to hasten death.

Having said that, it doesnt mean that we dont help people die with dignity in the natural process, helping them to die comfortably.

Some of the medication may inadvertently (and I repeat inadvertently) hasten the time of death but thats not the intention. The intended reason is to alleviate pain for those people in the last moments of life.

Former NT administrator Vicki OHalloran and senior counsel Duncan McConnel have been appointed as co-chairs of the advisory panel due to report to government by mid 2024.

Other panellists will be appointed based on expertise in end-of-life health care, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural matters, justice, and social welfare policy.

Read the original:

Darwin bishop ready to champion 'value of Christian life' as ... - Catholic Leader

Second of two parts

The current controversy over euthanasia in faith-based hospitals brings back memories from decades ago when I needed jaw surgery. Despite the operation being for a functional, not cosmetic, purpose, it wasnt covered by B.C.s Medical Services Plan.

The other thing I recall is that it took place at the old St. Marys Hospital in New Westminster. The surgery and care were excellent, but I lived nowhere near New Westminster, which meant making transportation arrangements home.

The question of where health-care services are provided is now an issue because a particular service euthanasia is not being provided in a Catholic hospital, St. Pauls in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, countless other unavailable procedures and treatments are ignored, despite the actual health implications.

When Mission Memorial Hospital lost its maternity department more than a decade ago, forcing hundreds of women in labour to go to Abbotsford to have their babies, it wasnt even news outside of those communities.

Today, the widespread unavailability of certain procedures at particular hospitals is not of interest to the media, unless the procedure is euthanasia.

Several doctors have told me theyre similarly perplexed at the current controversy, which exists because family members were upset that a loved one couldnt have her death take place at St. Pauls. All the doctors I contacted said the unavailability of procedures and treatments and the consequent transferring of patients from one hospital to another is a routine part of health care in B.C.

Every facility has its unique set of capabilities in terms of resources, facilities, equipment, staff, specialists, etc., one doctor said.

Cancer patients, for example, are sent from one hospital to another because not all B.C. Cancer Agency sites are equipped to treat all types of cancer.

A doctor told me that at BC Womens Hospital, where high-risk obstetrics are managed, maternal acute life-threatening medical emergencies need to be transferred to St. Pauls which can serve both mother and baby because there is no adult ICU at BC Womens.

Doctors shared stories of patients who could be best cared for at one hospital for one condition, but who ultimately went to a different hospital for a competing issue.

Physicians tell of patients being moved routinely because of the unavailability of everything from vascular surgery to neurosurgery to dialysis. Nursing home patients who have psychiatric conditions that cant be managed are transferred to an acute care hospital or a psychiatric facility. Families and loved ones suffer along with them as seriously ill patients are shuttled from one facility to another.

What a ridiculous waste of energy to quibble about euthanasia when there are real medical problems to deal with, a doctor said. Another said that those pushing the MAiD agenda are threatening an already imperfect system for the satisfaction of a few. We had a preview in Quebec, which allowed euthanasia years before it was legal in Canada. Quebec palliative care facilities that didnt want to provide euthanasia were threatened with loss of funding. Non-compliant doctors were warned they would lose their hospital privileges.

The result was increased stress among hospice workers, vulnerable patients, and family members who watched as euthanasia activists tried to push suicide into every corner of the health-care system, one doctor said.

The limited availability of health-care services is undoubtedly costing lives. Ironically, agitators are pushing for the universal provision of a medical service that does nothing but take more lives.

We welcome letters to the editor about articles in The B.C. Catholic.

Continued here:

Suddenly hospital transfers are an issue? - BC Catholic - Multimedia ... - The B.C. Catholic

Ernst Kuipers, the Dutch health minister, recently announced that regulations were being modified to allow doctors to actively end the lives of children aged one to 12 years who were terminally ill and suffering unbearably.

Previously, assisted dying was an option in the Netherlands in rare cases in younger children (under one year) and in some older teenagers who requested voluntary euthanasia. Until now, Belgium was the only country in the world to allow assisted dying in children under 12.

Under the proposal, it will remain against the law for doctors in the Netherlands to actively end the life of a child under the age of 12. However, a force majeure clause gives prosecutors the discretion not to prosecute in exceptional circumstances.

In 2005, Dutch doctors and legal experts published guidelines (the so-called Groningen protocol) elaborating when these exceptional circumstances would apply for infants under the age of one year. That included certainty about diagnosis and prognosis, hopeless and unbearable suffering, the support of both parents and appropriateness confirmed by an independent doctor.

The new regulations would allow the same principles to apply to children between one and 12 years of age.

In a study commissioned by the Dutch health ministry and released in 2019, researchers investigated the deaths of a large number of children who had died four years earlier. They did not identify any cases where doctors had deliberately hastened death.

However, Dutch paediatricians and parents had reported that in a small number of cases, children and families were experiencing distressing suffering at the end of life despite being provided with palliative care.

That included, for example, children with untreatable brain tumours who developed relentless vomiting, screaming, and seizures in their dying phase. Or children with epilepsy resistant to all treatment with tens to hundreds of seizures a day.

The study recommended improvements in access to palliative care for children, as well as altering regulation to provide the option of assisted dying in these extreme cases.

It has been suggested that five to ten children a year might be eligible for this option in the Netherlands.

The Dutch proposal is different to the law in Belgium. In 2014, Belgium removed a lower age limit for accessing voluntary euthanasia.

This means that, in theory, Belgian children under the age of 12 years can request assisted dying in strictly limited circumstances, including that they have a terminal illness, have severe suffering that cannot be eased, can understand their circumstances, and their parents agree.

This would not apply to the children covered by the Dutch regulation who are too young or too unwell to make decisions for themselves. Since the Belgian law was passed, only four cases of assisted dying in minors (under the age of 18) have been reported.

The expansion of assisted dying to children in the Netherlands will probably be viewed, by those who are opposed to assisted dying, as further evidence of the so-called slippery slope. This is the argument that allowing assisted dying in initially limited cases will lead to progressive liberalisation and to much more problematic cases.

The Groningen protocol for young infants was also claimed to be a clear example of the slippery slope. However, reports from the Netherlands suggest that rather than leading to an increase, there has been a significant reduction over time.

According to the Dutch health minister, only two cases in children under one year have been reported since 2007.

The important ethical question is what our society wants doctors to do when faced with the thankfully rare but heartbreaking situation of a child suffering severely at the end of their life.

Should doctors try sedating the child heavily until they are unconscious and wait for the inevitable end? Should doctors do the best they can, but accept that suffering is not always avoidable? Or should they take steps to hasten the childs death?

In most countries, the last is not a lawful option even if both parents and doctors think that would be kindest for the child. However, in the Netherlands, it appears that this will be available as a last resort, once the new regulations have been approved. Hopefully, it will rarely be needed.

View post:

Dutch government to expand euthanasia law to include children aged one to 12 an ethicist's view - The Conversation

Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNAs Spanish-language news partner, Ivette Laviada, who holds a masters degree in bioethics, said that the death with dignity initiative that is proposed for debate in the Chamber of Deputies is completely contrary to human rights.

In Mexico, euthanasia and assisted suicide are expressly prohibited in Article 166 of the General Health Law and in Article 312 of the Federal Penal Code [CPF], she added.

Laviada also pointed out that the disguise that they want to put on active euthanasia [considered as helping or inducing suicide] as an act of mercy at the request of the patient to avoid suffering from a terminal illness has many angles that must be considered.

It is not the same thing to regulate advance directives in which a terminally ill person can in the exercise of his freedom decide what means, therapies, or procedures he wants to receive or not during the course of his illness, as to request that medical personnel or even a family member procure his death to lighten his pain since as established by the CPF, whoever procures the death of another commits homicide, she stressed.

Laviada also stressed that a dignified death has more to do with accompanying the sick with quality care and attention without artificially prolonging life with disproportionate means and without hastening death.

When a doctor can no longer cure, he can accompany with palliative care, she said. Necessary nutrition, hygiene, and medicines that eliminate or reduce pain should not be withheld and the patient, if he so desires, should receive spiritual accompaniment.

See original here:

Thousands of signatures presented to Mexican Congress urging defeat of euthanasia bill - Catholic News Agency

The most unnerving thing about Plan 75, the debut feature from Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, is that the dystopian future it presents doesnt seem futuristic at all. This is as true for the films mise en scne as it is for its premise.

Theres no comfort to be taken, for instance, in city-states that have been reimagined as gleaming high-tech playlands or blighted urban hell-scapes. We are far removed from either Logans Run or Soylent Green, iconic 1970s movies that Plan 75 brings to mind. What the picture does share with these two schlock masterpieces is summed up in the title: an agenda and time.

In Logans Run, youll recall, an Edenic world is built upon a duplicitous conceit the mandatory murder of its citizens upon their reaching 30 years of age. Utopia, in distinct contrast, is unimaginable in Soylent Green, wherein New York City in the year 2022 yes, that particular sell-by date has passed is lacking in space and food. As a consequence, senior citizens can opt for a trip to the Thanatorium, an assisted suicide clinic run by the government.

The Japan we see in Plan 75 is rather ordinary, if considerably dour: Cinematographer Hideho Urata swathes almost the entirety of the movie in a steely gray. Overpopulation has become so dire that the government has instituted a voluntary program, Plan 75, that allows seniors to end their own lives for the greater good.

Current-day Japan does have one of the oldest populations in the world and the government, with an eye on trimming budgetary fat, has encouraged delayed retirement for its seniors. When Ms. Hayakawa was doing research for her film, she floated its premise to a group of elderly women from various social strata. To a person, each respondent said that if a Plan 75 did exist, they would submit to it in order not to be a burden to their families and to the culture at large.

Another unnerving aspect of Ms. Hayakawas film is the business-as-usual quality of the imagined bureaucracy that deals with government-sanctioned euthanasia. The advertising, the outreach, the incentives, and the amiable young people manning the front desks and working the phone lines the professionalization of death is given a benign face. There is nothing that cant be marketed in a positive light. A dour strain of satire wheedles its way through Plan 75.

At the center of the film is Michi (Chieko Baish), a 78-year-old woman who has lost her job, received notice that her home will soon be undergoing demolition, and whose best friend recently died. Having little in the way of savings and no family, Michi begins to waver on Plan 75, an option she has previously resisted entertaining. Alongside Michis travails, we follow two younger characters: Himoru (Hayato Isomura), a recruiting agent who begins to doubt the moral basis of government-sponsored euthanasia, and Maria (Stephanie Arianne), a young Filipino care-giver eager to make some extra income to take care of her sick daughter.

Over the run of Plan 75, Ms. Hayakawa proves adept at composition and eliciting nuanced performances from her cast, but is somewhat iffier as a storyteller. The shape of the film proves unwieldy, as the three separate plot lines are allowed to meander too long before they begin to hint at a common dramatic purpose. By the time we reach the denouement, the picture has fizzled in momentum.

An editor with a firmer hand mightve righted this ship. In the meantime, Plan 75 touches upon a bevy of home truths with enough deftness to make it worth your while.

Mr. Naves is an artist, teacher and critic based in New York City. His writing has appeared in City Arts, The New Criterion,The New York Observer, Slate, The Spectator World, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Read more from the original source:

Is Government-Sanctioned Euthanasia Really That Far-Fetched? - The New York Sun

Photo: Unsplash

Last week, it was reported that chief executives of community health programs in Victoria were phoned by government bureaucrats to warn them that they should brace for funding cuts of up to 15 per cent.

Violet Platt, the CEO of Palliative Care Victoria, told 7News that in the next ten years, there will be a 50 per cent increase in the need for palliative care and that funds are needed now to grow the specialist workforce that they will need to cater to this need going forward. Instead of more money, they will likely receive less. Platt also said that Palliative Care Victoria has had a shortfall in funding year-on-year for at least the last five years.

Is it a coincidence that the states euthanasia and assisted suicide were passed five years ago? Is it just blind chance that the year-on-year shortfall in palliative care funding coincided with the passage of these deathly laws? Will the parliamentary review of the euthanasia and assisted suicide laws, due to begin in June, give us the answer?

I doubt it will. Instead, we can expect that those who are pushing the euthanasia and assisted suicide bandwagon will advocate for further loosening of the laws to allow even more people access to lethal drugs.

We are already hearing the list of demands from activists.

They want to remove the requirement that a specialist in a patients condition be one of the doctors who signs off on their death. Instead, they want to allow even those with no expertise in a patients illness to be able to give them a terminal diagnosis and prescribe the lethal medication.

They also want to let these doctors be able to do it all by telehealth, so that they dont ever need to meet or physically examine a patient before approving their access to lethal meds. They want doctors to be able to suggest euthanasia to patients, ignoring the power imbalance between doctor and patient, and they want to scrap the idea that a patient should only have 6 months to live before being able to take their own lives, replacing it with any time after they receive a terminal diagnosis (even if they could live for years.)

Any one of these changes would guarantee that more people would be eligible for euthanasia and assisted suicide. All of them together would see the number killed each year expand significantly. The troubling thing is, though, that the program is already expanding at an exponential rate.

More than 600 people died in the first three years of the laws being in operation, which is more than double the number of deaths Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews anticipated would have occurred by now.

The small amount of information available shows the death rates are increasing. There were 131 euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths in the first year the laws came into effect and 269 deaths in its third year, an increase of more than 100 per cent in just three short years.

To put these numbers in perspective, the 269 euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths that occurred in Victoria in the 2021-2022 financial year is higher than the number of deaths that have occurred in any single year in Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1997. Victoria is already on track to double Oregons average annual number of deaths, despite the whole process being relatively new.

Rather than question why the number of deaths is already so high, I am certain that the review will make all the recommendations above and more ensuring that the death rate rises even higher.

It would be wonderful if we could trust that the parliamentary inquiry would take its focus off the activists and instead ask serious questions about palliative care availability and funding, and how a lack in each of these removes end-of-life choice for the terminally ill, but I am not that nave.

The horrible truth is that euthanasia and assisted suicide are budget-saving measures. Health care is expensive and health care at the end of life is the most expensive of all. Expanding the categories of eligibility not only appeases the death on demand activists, it saves money while being couched in language of compassion.

A good test for compassion, though, is whether it costs anything. A person (or a government) that claims to be acting out of compassion while saving themselves time, money and the need to strengthen the medical and palliative care workforce probably has a different motivation.

Compassion costs. Euthanasia doesnt.

Continued here:

Victoria's rising euthanasia rate shows governments won't bear the ... - The Catholic Weekly

Ailing elephant increases her food intake, says zoo officials Four Paws team due to arrive next week

KARACHI: Although ailing elephant Noor Jehan has increased her food intake over the past two days, her worsening health complications have forced experts to look into the option of putting her down, it emerged on Wednesday.

Sources said the 17-year-old African elephant had developed skin lesions, apparently due to the cranes belts and ropes used to change her position twice a day.

The poor animal had been lying on the ground since her collapse in her enclosure after she was lifted out of the pond in which she reportedly fell a week back.

Her skin lesions are being treated while a team is preparing a soft harness best suited to her needs, an official told Dawn.

Noor Jehan, he said, had been showing positive signals over the past two days.

We had lost all hopes but her positive response in the last two days has once again raised our hopes. She has increased her food intake from around 12kg and 15kg to 40 kg in a day and is passing out stool and urine, he said, adding that she also moved her legs when lifted for changing her position.

Noor Jehan underwent complex diagnostic procedure early this month and was found to have a large haematoma in her abdomen and ruptured pelvic membrane. She collapsed days later and has since lain stricken on its side.

Currently, the zoo administration is anxiously waiting for the arrival of Four Paws, the international animal welfare group supervising the elephants treatment process.

The team is due to arrive on Monday morning.

Noor Jehans condition is getting complicated every passing day. The team on site doesnt have the experience and equipment to handle this extraordinary situation, said Dr Amir Khalil representing the animal welfare group.

He regretted that its not possible for the team to reach early as it had prior commitments and was currently engaged, attending to the needs of animals suffering in different parts of the world.

All experts including the on-site team have already given Noor Jehan a chance and her recovery chances were high following diagnosis and treatment a few weeks back. Its sad that she seems to be losing the opportunity after that accident [her fall in the pond].

The sources said the nine-member team recently set up by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation would weigh in all options including that of euthanasia.

We will fight till the end for her recovery, and the rest is in the hands of Allah. We are diligently following Four Paws instructions for treatment. She is still eating despite being on her side, pin-pricked by drips and regularly doused with water to cool her down, Karachi Zoo director Kanwar Ayub said when asked about euthanizing Noor Jehan.

It might be recalled that Noor Jehan had been in pain and misery for over four months and the KMC sought assistance from the NGO after her plight was highlighted in the media.

In August last year, the foreign experts performed major tusk surgeries on Noor Jehan and Madhubala, the other female elephant. This step followed intervention of the Sindh High Court, which was approached by the Pakistan Animal Welfare Society (Paws) and activists worried over animal plight.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2023

See original here:

Experts looking into option of euthanasia for Noor Jehan - DAWN.com