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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (10798)	4/25/2002 6:22:39 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Perhaps you need to read this, then: worldrtd.org Mr. Ashcroft authorized the Drug Enforcement Administration to take punitive action against physicians who prescribe lethal drugs for terminally ill patients; the doctors' licenses would be suspended. ................................................................................................................................................ Nothing could be further from the truth than Mr. Ashcroft's statement that a federal drug agency could readily discern the "important medical, ethical and legal distinctions between intentionally causing a patient's death and providing sufficient dosages of pain medication necessary to eliminate or alleviate pain." In fact, it is medically impossible to dissociate intentionally ameliorating a dying patient's agony from intentionally shortening the time left to live. In the case of the young woman with leukemia and pulmonary hemorrhage, the doses of morphine needed to ease her suffering also depressed her breathing. And death is rarely a gentle process of simply closing one's eyes. Rather, there are potent physiological reflexes, graphically termed "agonal." Narcotics like morphine are essential in dampening these death throes, and in doing so, they facilitate death. I thought these were the Feds who couldn't tell their buttholes from a hole in the ground, Neo. How is it they're suddenly qualified to practice medicine? ................................................................................................................................................ If the Justice Department's action is a political bone thrown to religious conservatives, it shamefully miscasts health professionals as disciples of the devil rather than angels of mercy. If it represents an earnest attempt to protect the dying, it in fact makes them more vulnerable. Death will ultimately come, but without the skilled hands of physicians and nurses to ease the release of the soul.