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After reading that four in ten doctors believe euthenasia is appropriate in certain circumstances, I wonder what actually happens in hospitals secretly.

If a doctor sees that a patient has no chance for survival, and is suffering great pain, then??

It happens. An overdose of morphine is an easy way to bring peace.

Hi Ken.
Firstly, I think it’s worth pointing out that still well over half of doctors don’t support euthanasia.

I wonder what actually happens in hospitals secretly.

Well, it’s far from secret. Ever prescription is documented. Also, all “scheduled” drugs like narcotics are stored in locked cupboards and dispensing is carefully documented and requires 2 signatures. While it’s theoretically possible for someone to ‘secretly’ inject something lethal, the risks of getting caught are huge and all staff understand that this is tantamount to murder.

What does happen is that when patients are expected to die shortly, it’s considered very appropriate to prescribe and administer medications to ease any suffering. If a side-effect of that is it hastens dieing then that is an accepted consequence.

It’s not perfect but it’s far better than legalising euthanasia which would inevitably result in pressure on those nearing the end of life to “get on with it” and “do the right thing for the family”.

I agree with Angus. This may have been what happened on this very day last year, when my 90 year old mother died, after having been given extra medication for pain relief, after coughing up blood and suffering pain for some time.

It is quite different from organised legislated euthanasia, I think.

When is a dose an overdose?  My understanding from friends who are doctors is that as time passes a person becomes more and more tolerant of morphine, and needs larger and larger doses to get any effect.  What of the situation where the sufficient level of morphine to quell or just relieve to some extent severe pain also happens to cause death?  I don’t see that as euthenasia, merely a side effect of a medicine prescription required to treat pain. Albeit a fairly permanent side effect.  There are a number of treatments where death is a very real side effect, eg immunosuppressent drugs, yet would any of those treatments be labelled euthenasia in the event death in fact occurred as a direct result of the treatment being rendered?  Brain surgery in the case of strokes has death as a very real side effect, yet again, it is not seen as euthenasia in circumstances where it occurs.  So why should a treatment regime, such as morphine, suddenly be seen as euthenasia merely because it could/[] in some regrettable circumstances be such an act masquerading as treatment?

Kathryn Roach - 06 February 2009 03:30 PM

When is a dose an overdose?

There’s a gray area between what’s a normal escalation in dosage requirement (due to worsening pain or increasing tolerance to a medication or both) and an excessive escalation in dosage where relief of pain is not the primary motive. When a patient is dieing, those caring for that patient are generally happy to be generous with pain relief, usually hoping that they’ll be accorded a similar kindness when their time comes. However, it’d be fairly obvious if a prescribed dosage was excess to the point that relief of pain wasn’t the primary concern. If that happens questions would be asked.

I know of several times where the med staff upped the dosage knowing it would cause the patient’s death. But given that the patient was certainly going to die within less than a day I cannot see that this is anything other than mercy.

These news links come and go, and it seems useful to collate a record of them, and this thread seemed like the best place.
   
a leather chair a laptop of death a vexed decision
     
 
Gabriella Coslovich
January 18, 2011
 

A photograph of My Beautiful Chair hangs from The Republic Tower in Melbourne. Photo: Craig Abraham

IF YOU were faced with the prospect of enduring a painful and protracted death in the grip of a terminal disease, would you want the legally sanctioned option of taking your own life? It is a vexed question that has polarised Australian society. But for artist Greg Taylor the answer is clear.

’‘Whether I would do it, I don’t know, but I would at least want to have the choice. We don’t tell people what God they have to worship, that’s a choice that they have, so why should they be foisting their choice of death onto us?’’ he said.

’‘Why should we have to suffer as a sacrifice to their God? That’s bizarre, especially if you are an atheist. Hey, people, live and let live.’‘

As you may have guessed, Taylor is an atheist and euthanasia is the focus of his latest artwork, My Beautiful Chair. Some people might not consider it art - but what the work will do, literally, is put people in the hot seat, allowing them to experience what it might be like to choose to die.

Essentially, the work is a cosy domestic setting, the kind that Taylor would want to die in, surrounded by loved ones. There’s a plush leather armchair, an elegant floor lamp and an antique Persian rug. On the top of a sleek glass coffee table is a seemingly innocuous laptop and a briefcase.
   
In fact, the laptop and briefcase are fully functioning replicas of the machine created by Australian doctor and ardent pro-euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke to help people end their life.

Euphemistically called the ‘‘Deliverance Machine’‘, it has also been dubbed ‘‘the laptop of death’’ by opponents. When euthanasia was legal for a short time in the Northern Territory in the 1990s, four terminally ill people used the ‘‘Deliverance Machine’’ to end their lives.

On Saturday, the public will be able to passively experience what those four people went through, when Taylor’s work goes on show in Hobart.

My Beautiful Chair is part of the opening exhibition of what promises to be one of Australia’s most controversial private galleries, the Museum of Old and New Art, owned by art collector and professional gambler David Walsh, who knows about the suffering endured by the terminally ill.

Mr Walsh’s brother, Tim, died of cancer 19 years ago, aged 33. As his disease progressed, ‘‘he became more humiliated, less my brother’‘, Mr Walsh says.

Yesterday, a poster of My Beautiful Chair was erected on the Republic Tower billboard, on the corner of La Trobe and Queen streets, which has been the site of some traffic-stopping art, although the significance of Taylor’s work may have been lost on passers-by. Its meaning is not immediately apparent.

When Taylor contacted Dr Nitschke to enlist his technical help in the creation of My Beautiful Chair, the doctor was intrigued. Taylor’s unusual request came at an opportune time. Dr Nitschke and his organisation, Exit International, had been looking for ways to broaden the debate.