Thursday, February 24, 2005

    A Right To Choose

    The US Supreme Court will take up the case of Oregon's Death with Dignity law. This case is really a choice of State law vs. Federal law and goes back to when then Attorney General Ashcroft tried to stop the will of Oregon voters. His interference was overturned and, on his last day of work, filed an appeal to that overturn. An attempt for the federal government to control even when you are allowed to die - they will insist you or your loved one will suffer a slow and agonizing death, crapping and pissing all over themselves because they are too weak to do anything about it. Even if they are wearing some diaper-type aid it sits there until someone gets around to checking (often not even bothering to change to a clean one), eating away at their flesh, a race with the bed sores which can decay the body on a collision course with death.

    This is the last choice a person can make, a choice to end their terminal death sentence sooner than later. This law allows an individual to cut short the suffering and the humiliation of not being able to care for themselves due to some extreme physical condition. We treat sick animals better than people in this country, and just because some bureaucrat feels guilty in some way should not stop a suffering person from making this final life-choice.

    There are people against this choice, people that really have no idea of what they are talking about. Some don't agree with this choice because of superstitious religious reasons. Some doctors don't agree with this choice because they claim it violates their oath - yet in reality, it directly affects their pocketbook. There is big money in chronically ill patients, big bucks. If that life is terminated 8 weeks or even 1 week we are talking about thousands of dollars of missed revenue for that doctor and associated medical staff and suppliers - yeah, even drug companies. Follow the money trail.

    1 comment:

    M.T. Daffenberg said...

    Great point about the money trail--appreciate people willing to point out these skewed priorities.