British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

PRI Weekly Briefing, 6 October 2006, Vol. 8, No. 39

Read the original article here.

Official federal spending on overseas 'population assistance,' which means population control, has a slim chance of dropping significantly in fiscal year 2007. The Bush Administration proposed only $357 million for suchfamily planning programs early this year, a significant reduction from the $425 million it typically proposed in previous years. Of course, the usual suspects, unimpressed with the conclusive evidence from secular scientists that birthrates are in free fall in most of the world,immediately geared up to increase the amount in Congress. Since Congress failed to finish work on spending bills before adjourning for the fall campaign season, the matter is still up in the air until a post-election November session. But it doesn't look good.

Conference on the Bill for Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill

All Souls College, Oxford, 26th September 2006

A conference was recently held at All Souls College, Oxford, concerning Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill. The areas of discussion are listed below, along with the protagonists in the debate (anti-Bill individuals are in italics).

LifeNews.com Editor

Copyright 2006 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

Daily Mail (London)

THE ghastly prospect that, as a result of catastrophic illness, doctors might write you off as dead even though you are well aware of what is going on, but can't communicate that you are still alive, is the stuff of nightmares.

Such concern is often expressed about patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), but until now has been pooh-poohed by doctors as fanciful and alarmist.

Copyright 2006 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

Daily Mail (London)

Breakthrough intensifies ethical dilemma over switching off life support

A BRITISH woman left in a vegetative state after a road accident has astonished doctors by responding to their voices even though she appears unconscious.

Using brain scans, experts discovered the 23-year-old can imagine playing tennis when she is asked because the part of the brain linked to upper body movement goes into action.

Copyright The Weekly Standard 2006.

Original article is available here.

More hype from stem cell entrepeneurs

"NEW STEM CELL METHOD avoids destroying embryos," the New York Times headline blared. "Stem cell breakthrough may end political logjam," chimed in the Los Angeles Times. "Embryos spared in stem cell creation," affirmed USA Today. Reporting the same supposed scientific achievement by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), the Washington Post quoted the company's bioethics adviser Ronald Green: "You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed."

Unfortunately, you can't "honestly" say that. The above headlines - like Green's statement and innumerable similar press accounts around the world - are just plain wrong. While ACT did indeed issue a press release heralding its embryonic stem cell experiment as having "successfully generated human embryonic stem cells using an approach that does not harm embryos," the actual report of the research led by ACT chief scientist Robert Lanza, published in Nature, tells a very different story. In fact, Lanza destroyed all 16 of the embryos he used, just as in conventional embryonic stem cell research.

J Med Ethics 2005; 35: 406-409

The "standard position" on organ donation is that the donor must be dead in order for vital organs to be removed, a position with which we agree. Recently, Robert Truog and Walter Robinson have argued that (1) brain death is not death, and (2) even though "brain dead" patients are not dead, it is morally acceptable to remove vital organs from those patients. We accept and defend their claim that brain death is not death, and we argue against both the US "whole brain" criterion and the UK "brain stem" criterion. Then we answer their arguments in favour of removing vital organs from "brain dead" and other classes of comatose patients. We dispute their claim that the removal of vital organs is morally equivalent to "letting nature take its course", arguing that, unlike "allowing to die", it is the removal of vital organs that kills the patient, not his or her disease or injury. Then, we argue that removing vital organs from living patients is immoral and contrary to the nature of medical practice. Finally, we offer practical suggestions for changing public policy on organ transplantation.

Copyright 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Original article available here.

A hospital doctor who admitted suffocating a severely disabled baby 34 years ago is being investigated by murder squad detectives.

The junior doctor wrote a magazine article in which she claimed to have placed a pillow over a newborn girl for 20 minutes at a hospital in north London.

The then senior house officer in paediatrics said that she had killed the baby, which was born without a brain, to spare the parents the trauma of having to watch the child die.

(NEW YORK -- C-FAM) The just-concluded UN meeting on the rights of persons with disabilities was on balance a success for pro-lifers. Negotiations came down to the wire on the last day of the proceedings, after delegates hammered out the issue of "reproductive health" round the clock for the last two days. The ad hoc committee adopted the full treaty late on Friday night, completing four years of negotiations.

Pro-life nations managed to keep some of the worst language out of the treaty, despite enormous pressure from liberal governments. Any new right for persons to "experience their sexuality" and "have sexual and other intimate relationships" was completely rejected. Also, delegates largely replaced the ambiguous word “gender” with the word "sex". While UN documents have never defined the term as meaning anything other than "male" and "female," Muslim countries urged the change to avoid misinterpretation of the word "gender" to advance the growing homosexual agenda at the UN.

Copyright © 2006 Focus on the Family.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Published research shines light on a common pro-abortion lie.

Pregnant teens who carry their babies to term do better psychologically than those who choose abortions, according to a study by Bowling Green State University.

That finding flies in the face of contentions by pro-abortion advocates that teenagers are better off if they choose abortion. One fourth of U.S. abortions each year are done on teenagers.

Copyright 2006 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
All Rights Reserved
DAILY MAIL (London)

NEW courts with the power to decide whether a hospital patient lives or dies will be allowed to sit in secret.

The decision by ministers means the first legal tribunal for more than 40 years with the right to take a life will hear cases behind closed doors if a judge thinks the proceedings should not be made public.

The rules apply to the Court of Protection, which will police the workings of 'living wills' and ' powers of attorney' introduced under Labour's controversial Mental Capacity Act.

LONDON (Reuters) - A terminally-ill patient has lost the last stage of a legal challenge for the right to receive nutrition and drink when he is close to death, his lawyers said on Tuesday.

Leslie Burke, 46, who has a degenerative brain condition, fears artificial nutrition could be stopped against his wishes when he cannot talk anymore.

A CORONER investigating the death of a woman allegedly starved and deprived of fluids in hospital has been asked to hold an inquest into the death of a patient on the same ward.

Relatives of Harold Speed believe that he died of dehydration, not pneumonia as his death certificate says. The 84-year-old former music teacher had been examined by the same doctor who treated Olive Nockels, who died after her drips were removed.

"The whole of my husband's stay in hospital was a nightmare," Kate Speed said.

Herald Sun, 3rd August 2006

One justification for Premier Bracks’ $250,000 expenditure on his luxury world tour earlier this year was that he had “secured a historic stem-cell agreement in the US....” (Herald-Sun 16/7/06). Taxpayers are entitled to details of this agreement because of Bracks’ well publicized ambition that Victoria break the states’ agreement with the Federal 2002 legislation banning human cloning. Bracks and Premier Beattie of Queensland, who harbours similar ambitions, are out of step with other state premiers and with Labor Party policy which bans cloning.

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- Two leading British scientists say that any potential cures from embryonic stem cell research are many years away, if they ever occur. They said that some of the hoopla created by the media and lawmakers who want to fund the controversial research has distorted the public view of it.

Professor Colin McGuckin, a specialist in regenerative medicine at the UK's Newcastle University, says the potential for embryonic stem cell research to cure diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease had been exaggerated.

(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com.

WARSAW, Poland, July 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Polish parliament has issued a resolution against research using human embryos, in response to the European Union’s recent vote to provide funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Sejm, the lower chamber of the Polish parliament, issued the resolution, which passed with a strong majority of 341 votes in favour and only 47 against. 20 votes were withheld.

Original article available here.

JEFFERSON CITY - Feminists and Southern Baptists may seem like any unlikely alliance to some, but a growing number from both groups are joining forces in an effort to defeat a proposed amendment to the Missouri constitution that they see as a means of exploiting women.

Missourians Against Human Cloning (MAHC) is spearheading the battle against the "Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative" on which Missourians will vote Nov. 7. Passage of the initiative would allow taxpayer funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research.

BMJ Rapid Response

By Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury,
Chair, CHOOSE LIFE
18 Chelsea Square, London SW3 6LF

One of the best-kept secrets of the past thirty-five years is that many women having abortions would actually prefer to give birth.

The recent survey of opinion carried out at the request of CHOOSE LIFE by Communication Research illustrated the part played by others in the decision to terminate a pregnancy, which is supposed to be the woman’s own choice.

An accepted belief, backed by successive Governments, has been that opting for abortion in difficult circumstances is the “responsible” decision. It is an unpleasant fact that most counsellors involved in the abortion business do not encourage the woman to keep her baby or offer help.

This attitude probably dates back to the Overpopulation scare of the 1960’s, and it is time for a change.

Eighty-five per cent of women want to see more help given to women who want to keep their baby, rather than further moves to make abortion easier. Eighty –seven percent think public funds should go to charities offering alternatives. Seventy-eight percent would like to see a compulsory cooling-off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and a termination, which is in direct opposition to the apparent official policy of “abort early and often,” with backing for RU 486 abortions at home.

Ninety-six percent of women want a right to be fully informed of the health risks involved in abortion. Eighty-four percent believe parents of girls under 16 should have the right to know if their daughter has been referred for a termination.

Present Government policy is inhumane, and is disliked by a large majority of women.

Baroness Williams of Crosby said in the House of Lords on 12 May 2006:

“… I have a letter from a distinguished nurse … saying that already under the terms of the Mental Capacity Act there has been a notable slip towards bringing the lives of some patients to an end. She writes from the hospital where she has worked for many years. ‘All of a sudden we nurses aren’t allowed to pass NG tubes unless the Consultant has approved it. This is just a new protocol since the Mental Capacity Act’. She goes on to say that she has been forbidden by consultants from sustaining life on the part of patients who have not asked to die. This is the slippery slope in practice, and is something we have to consider extremely seriously.”

SCHINDLER PRIZE

Robert and Mary Schindler, the parents of Terri Schiavo, fought for her life because they believed passionately in its infinite value. They stirred our memories of “Schindler’s List” in their unshakable respect for human life.

FIRST DO NO HARM, a doctors’ group who prefer care to killing, is offering an annual £500 prize to honour their name. It will be awarded to a doctor who provides the best account of any battle to save a life that has been dismissed as valueless.

Tell us about a patient who was unable to speak for himself or herself, a patient whose food and fluids were withdrawn, or who was suffering from dangerous neglect, and whose life someone tried to save. It does not matter whether the attempt was a success, provided that it was sustained and made in the belief in human value.

Of course the account would be anonymised before publication.

First Do No Harm, P.O. Box 17317, London SW3 4WJ.
Tel: 020 7730 3059
Fax: 020 7730 0818
e-mail This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Sir, It is not the right to die that is at issue (letter, June 29) as assisted suicide is illegal. What is disputed is whether anybody has the right to ask another person to kill them or assist in their suicide, and in particular whether the medical profession should be the agent of such deaths.

Reservations about the legalisation of euthanasia have some grounding in that there have been more than 200 cases of non-voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands where there was no prior request. To put it in lay terms, people were killed without any request or consent either at the time or prior to the event, something which might be characterised as murder.

To suggest that those who cannot “do the things that make life enjoyable” should have a right to ask the medical profession to kill them or procure their deaths seems to me to be an unwarranted extension of respect for autonomy. In any event, why is it always assumed that euthanasia or assisted dying must be in the remit of the medical profession?

DR ANDREW LAWSON
Honorary Senior Lecturer, Medical Ethics
Imperial College