When the Doctor Kills the Patients
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H I P P O C R A T E S, who separated the curing and killing functions of physicians during the ancient times, guided the medical profession into the succeeding millenia. Henceforth, a physician would only cure. Down through the centuries the Hippocratic oath has brought us the phrase, primum non nocere, "First do no harm."
With abortion and euthanasia, the oath of Hippocrates is no longer sworn by the graduating medical students among Western countries. Physicians now once again assume the ancient dual role to cure and to harm.
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Why is this happening? Proponents of euthanasia are accusing doctors of not letting a patient die in peace. The typical example is drawn to an old man strapped in bed, in constant pain, clearly dying. He has tubes in every natural body orifice and in several artificial ones. The doctor is keeping him alive, perhaps to obtain a larger fee, perhaps the doctor does not want to admit that he has lost the battle for this man's life.
A common observation and comment is, "I don't want to be kept alive with all those tubes and painful and expensive treatments."
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Years ago, truly lifesaving treatments were limited. Only too often, the physicians role was to comfort and eliminate pain as the patient progressed to an inevitable death. Then, with the advent of antibiotics, better surgery, intensive and coronary care units and new drugs, it became possible to prevent death from occurring.
For physicians, there was a learning process, from excesses in keeping dying people alive "too long" to learning how to "let go" and allowing natural death to occur. Today, almost all doctors handle patients well. Except in rare cases, the example of the old man dying above is no longer valid.
People who are dying, do go on to die. While the proponents of euthanasia constantly speak of such cases, these are not the litargef anymore. They are those, who somebody thinks ought to die, but who won't...the biologically tenacious. Commonly such people are not on life support systems, but are, by some judgments, a burden to society These are the people with strokes, multiple sclerosis, head injuries, quadriplegia, etc.
Pro-euthanasia literature constantly emphasize pain -- uncontrollable pain, constant, intractable pain, unrelieved, agonizing pain. Physical pain,with rare exceptions, can be controlled. Most often, when confronted with a patient being in constant pain, he will get another doctor who can control such pain.
The main reason why people ask to be killed is the emotional pain. Their loneliness, despair, hopelessness, being unloved, anguish, isolation, loss of dignity, meaninglessness and weanness with life cause them great pain. This is the time when doctors, play a major role in providing moral support, not only to the patient but to the family as well.
Suicide among those with serious handicaps is almost nonexistent. It is the "normals" around them who judge their quality to be unacceptable and who want them dead. With rare exceptions, those who commit suicide are clinically depressed. Clinical depression is usually a biochemical dysfunction that can be helped with drug therapy.
Who really needs euthanasia? Not the patient. Dr. John Wilke said: "Once a patient feels welcome, and not a burden to others; once his pain is controlled, and other symptoms have at least been reduced to manageable proportions, then their cry for death disappears." (Source: Brochure; Euthanasia... when the doctor kills the patient by JC Wilke, M.D., Hayes Publishing Co., Inc. 1995)
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