Proclaiming the Gospel by Caring for Our Elderly

As Tertullian wrote roughly 1,800 years ago, “it is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ” What better opportunity to demonstrate how this new life in Christ has transformed us—reorienting our priorities away from self to others—than by how we care for the aging within the community of God’s people? In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he stresses this responsibility toward the elderly and widows in particular. Such care is not merely a nice option if it’s convenient or affordable but a serious and universal command. Center for Christ & Culture

Dying with Dignitas is starting to look grubby

Some called their end romantic, but a nurse from the Swiss “suicide clinic” where Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan ended their lives together with a glass of poison has warned Britons not to be fooled into following their example. “There is nothing dignified or uplifting about it,” says Soraya Wernli, a former employee of Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that assists those who choose to end their lives. The word “clinic,” she says, is an exalted epithet for “just one person who has found a way to make a lot of money out of death and the fear of it.” Times Online

Son faces jail for giving gun to suicidal father

A son who gave his terminally ill father a gun which the elder man used to kill himself while in hospital, is today pleaded guilty to firearms offences today after escaping prosecution for assisted suicide. Guy Button awaits sentencing after terminally ill parent kills himself with handgun and bullets smuggled into hospital. Guardian

Scotland to consider legalising assisted suicide

A bill to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland is expected to be brought before the Scottish parliament this autumn. People with a progressive and irreversible illness, the terminally ill, or those who had an "intolerable" quality of life, could get a doctor's help to kill themselves under the proposed law. Guardian

Withdrawing Nutrition from Children Ethical Within Limits

Nutritional support can ethically be withdrawn or withheld from certain children with terminal illnesses or with severe, irreversible disabilities, the American Academy of Pediatrics has determined. Withdrawing Nutrition from Children Ethical Within Limits

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Landmark ruling in right-to-die case

The Law Lords unanimously backed Debbie Purdy's call for a policy statement from the Director of Public Prosecutions on the circumstances in which a person such as her husband, Cuban violinist Omar Puente, might face prosecution for helping a loved one end their life abroad. Wheelchair-bound Ms Purdy, who left the House of Lords to the cheers of her supporters, said the decision “gives me my life back.” With her husband next to her, she said: “We can now live our lives. We don’t have to plan my death.” Landmark ruling in right-to-die case - Press & Journal

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Diagnosing comas: Unlucky for some

A newly published study suggests that a lot of people who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state are not in one. Diagnosing comas: Unlucky for some The Economist

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Suicide law campaigner Debbie Purdy hopes for crucial law lords ruling

Debbie Purdy is expected to secure the backing of the highest court in the land today with an historic final ruling on her plea for clarity in the law on assisted suicide. Legal experts believe that the law lords will back Ms Purdy, 46, who who has multiple sclerosis, in her request for a declaration by the Director of Public Prosecutions on his policy for bringing prosecutions in such cases. Such a ruling would give hope to thousands of people who, like Ms Purdy, may want to know in what circumstances prosecutions would be brought against those who helped relatives to die. Times Online

Call for pillows

Evan Koons is competing in ArtPrize, the largest art competition in the world—happening in Grand Rapids, MI. Inspired by the story of a hospice volunteer and a woman with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Evan is attempting to create the world’s first—and largest—art installation made completely from donated pillows. To accomplish this feat, he’s hoping to collect at least 7000 pillows by September 22. His goal is to raise awareness for hospice care, Hospice of Michigan, and every individual’s right to live and die with dignity.

If you have one or more pillows for him to pick up, you can email him at to set up a time. You can drop off any type of pillow at one of the following locations:

Hospice of Michigan – Grand Rapids
989 Spaulding SE
Ada, MI 49301

Compass Film Academy
560 5th St. NW, Ste 110
Grand Rapids, MI 49504

National Storage
1236 Ball Ave
Grand Rapids, MI 49505

Evan also encourages anyone donating a pillow to decorate it. Feel free to write, color, or stitch a message, name, or picture onto the pillow in memoriam of your loved one. The possibilities are endless.

To follow Evan’s progress and receive further information, you can visit his website at www.amassingthemountain.com. You can also join the Facebook group “Amassing the Mountain.” As the competition draws near (September 23–October 10), Evan will also need help on-site.

To Those Who Are Hurting and Confused

What is more universal to human experience than suffering? And what is more important than the perspective we bring to it? Eternal Perspectives, page 1

"Dad, I know where I am"

A young girl’s life and death inspire her family to share the hope of Heaven. Eternal Perspectives, (page 5)

Canadian doctors aim to revise law on euthanasia

Canada's continuing debate on the right to die, prodded by court cases and proposed legislation, seems to be heading for a new round this fall according to a report the Quebec College of Physicians may recommend Canada's Criminal Code be revised to permit a form of medical euthanasia in strictly controlled circumstances. A right-to-die private member's bill sponsored by Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde is also due for debate, leaving both sides of the contentious issue gearing for a busy fall. Canada.com

Deadly doctors

The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare. Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power. NY Post

Comatose man's feeding tube won’t be removed

A comatose Chemung County (NY) man at the center of a legal battle over his medical condition will not have his feeding tube removed. A request by the Chemung County Attorney’s Office to remove Gary Harvey’s total-parenteral-nutrition tube was formally dismissed Monday. Online Leader

New ad from FRC Action

Family Research Council unveiled a new TV ad which will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska. The hard hitting ad lays out two key threats should President Obama's plan become reality - rationing and taxpayer funded abortions. Patients, particularly the elderly, will face denial of vital treatments while at the same time be forced to pay for abortions.

Health Care Reform and the Elderly

Besides the many concerns about taxpayer funded abortion, violation of conscience of health care providers and other abortion related issues with the health care reform bills, there are also grave concerns about end of life care.

Under section 1233, pages 425-430 mandate Advanced Care Planning Consultations for senior citizens. The government will instruct and consult regarding advanced directives, living wills and durable powers of attorney and provide a list of end of life resources that will guide you in how to shorten your life. The mandated consultation must take place every five years or sooner if a patient's health changes. So if you are diagnosed with a chronic condition or admitted to a care facility you will have to go through another end of life consultation. Pages 427 and 428, specifies training for care professionals that would be responsible for signing orders for life-sustaining treatments, nutrition and hydration, about the goals and use of those orders. On page 429 the bill states the government will specify which doctors can write an end of life order and will mandate programs for end of life orders. They will have a say in how much care you receive or do not receive.

House Minority Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter state "that section of the bill may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. At a minimum this legislative language deserves a full and open public debate - the sort of debate that is impossible to have under the politically-driven deadlines Democratic leaders have arbitrarily set for enactment of a health care bill."

Please contact your Representative and Senators and let them know how you feel about the health care reform bills!Sources tell us the vote in the House may be as early as next week! We are unsure when the Senate will actually vote. Click here to contact your Representative and here for your Senators. Human Life Alliance

What’s so civilised about a couple killing themselves?

A national hysteria over suicide rates in Wales, dismay in Northern Ireland over suicides among young mothers, and alarm throughout the British Isles over the incidence of young men taking their own lives. That’s the norm. That’s how our society responds to suicide. It’s an emergency. And that’s the way it should be. No one should have to have their bank balance examined, or their IQ measured, before we regard their killing themselves as anything other than a failure of the way our society functions. Belfast Telegraph

Cash for terminally ill 'going elsewhere'

Millions of pounds which the Government allocated for the care of terminally ill patients is not reaching the people it was intended to help, a hospice charity has claimed. Last year, the Government pledged £286 million towards end-of life care. However, Help the Hospices has found a number of primary care trusts still not able to identify their share of the extra money. Western Morning News

Our ageing world isn't a catastrophe. It's a triumph.

The rise in the number of the old is a massive human success story: life expectancy increases because of better education, greater wealth, lower infant mortality, better healthcare, less disease, the reduction of armed conflict, and the development of technology and its application in pursuit of good. It is, frankly, insane to look at an ageing population and not rejoice. Why do we even have a concept of public health, of co-operation, of sharing knowledge, if not to extend life, wherever we find it? The problem, then, is not age as such but the proportion of the aged. Guardian

World's elderly to overtake number of infants

With every passing month, another 870,000 people turn 65 and the world's cohort of pensioners becomes larger still. Thanks to rising life expectancy, their ranks will soon be growing by almost two million a month and, by 2040, their numbers will have doubled to 1.3 billion. This will reduce the size of the working population and impose huge new pension costs, threatening to reduce the overall growth of the world economy. The US Census Bureau predicts pensioners will soon overtake the number of infants under the age of five because old people are now increasing faster than the very youngest human beings. Telegraph

Doctors told not to discuss assisted suicide with patients

The Medical Defence Union, which represents half of UK doctors, reminded members that assisting a suicide is illegal in England and Wales and that they should not give advice to patients to help them travel abroad to take their own lives. Telegraph

Disabled people alarmed at nurses organisation new stance on assisted suicide

No Less Human, a disability rights group, has expressed great alarm at yesterday's news that the Royal College of Nursing has moved from opposing assisted suicide to taking a neutral stance on the issue. SPUC

New Facebook page

Check out the new Facebook page, using the link at right. I posted a few photos from the LIFT training that is going on now in our office.

How long until we abort the old too?

We are asked to admire the rather creepy suicide pact of Sir Edward and Lady Downes, as if it is some sort of act of heroism rather than a sad and squalid snuffing out of life in a Swiss back street. These hard cases and emotional scenes are the equivalent of the old argument for abortion, that if you didn’t fully legalise it people would go to dangerous amateurs and die horribly. And as soon as it was replaced by a more liberal law, the present annual massacre began, and continued to grow. The same will happen to the old and unwanted. It will start with a few dozen annual trips to Zurich, urged on by ‘compassionate’ relatives and complaisant doctors. It will end with our hospitals switching on the morphine pump earlier and earlier. Daily Mail

Why I took my wife to die at Dignitas

Before her illness, when she was the devoted mother and bubbly, creative presence who lit up his own more procedural approach to life, he had been, he says, “one of those people who considered Dignitas part of a slippery slope” in an inevitable cheapening of life. “I was just horrified by the whole thing,” he says, sitting looking out over the garden in his Kent home that Elaine planned and laid out. “And Elaine was absolutely in love with life. She never would have contemplated this route in normal circumstances.” But circumstances were anything but normal a few months after her diagnosis. Telegraph

'My father-in-law died at Dignitas without telling us'

We were completely stunned, shattered, and totally confused. It felt like a hole in my heart when I thought of the things he'd said on that final day together. Then I got angry. Wasn't it incredibly selfish of Henry to do what he did to people he loved? When I had recovered enough to drive, I went to the local police station and demanded that they launch an investigation. To this day, the details of my father-in-law's death are still unclear. Telegraph

LIFT Summit line-up

The 2nd annual LIFT Caregiver Summit line-up is shaping up with these scheduled workshop and plenary speakers:

• Christiana Getz, from the Alzheimer’s Association, speaking on “Meaningful Activities for Persons with Dementia”
• Anne Ellermets, from the Area Agency on Aging, on “Caregiver Resources”
• Sharon Van Dyke on “Making the Most of Chronic Illness"
• Rev. Ray Paget on “Grief Recovery and Mourning”

The Summit will be Saturday, October 24, 2009, at Grandville Bible Church in Grandville, MI. For more information, email or phone 1-800-968-6086, (616) 257-6800.

What and when is death

The President’s Council on Bioethics has taken up this question in a recently published report entitled Controversies in the Determination of Death. At stake in the report is the moral status of those human beings who are “suspended at the threshold.” These are human beings who have suffered the worst sort of injury to the brain, but who, with technological support, retain ambiguous signs of life. The brain injury leaves them in a state of incapacitation significantly more profound than that associated with the “persistent vegetative state,” the condition associated with the cases of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terri Schiavo. The name given to their injury is “brain death,” or sometimes “whole brain death.” The President’s Council suggests a more neutral term: “total brain failure.” Calling the condition by this name does not pre-judge the question of whether the patient so diagnosed is alive or dead. The New Atlantis

Top conductor and wife latest to die at Dignitas

Sir Edward Downes CBE was conductor emeritus of the BBC Philharmonic orchestra and Lady Joan Downes was a former ballet dancer and choreographer. News of their deaths last Friday became public when their children released a statement yesterday. Sir Edward, 85, had been losing his sight and hearing, while his 74-year-old wife had been suffering from terminal cancer. Christian Institute

Son confesses: I killed my mum

Sean Davison published a book last month about his 85-year-old mother's final days, without disclosing the role he played after his mother summoned him home to Dunedin to help her die. However, a copy of his original manuscript, supplied anonymously to the Herald on Sunday this week, contains the incriminating details that were deleted from the book. Davison, 47, this week verified the manuscript's authenticity, and said he did not fear police charges. New Zealand Herald

5 people die under new Washington physician-assisted suicide law

Fourteen patients in that state requested doctors' aid in dying. Meanwhile, more patients than ever made use of Oregon's death-with-dignity law in 2008. Am Med News

Media Utter Inability to Report Assisted Suicide Stories Accurately

The media everywhere can’t–or won’t–report assisted suicide-related stories accurately. Example: Most stories still report that Jack Kevorkian assisted the suicides of the terminally ill when 70 percent or so of his victims were not terminally ill and five had no illnesses upon their autopsies. Secondhand Smoke

Assisted suicide group signs deal with Swiss authorities

Exit, a Swiss association for assisted suicide, has signed a deal with the authorities regulating its activities, in the first move of its kind. Exit said the paperwork does not change how it operates, only formalizes its activities, and that it signed the agreement voluntarily. It believes the document ensures the "right to a dignified death" and "self-determination," two principles key to the idea behind assisted suicide. Top News

Can brains be saved?

You may think you don’t know anyone with a brain injury, but they’re all around you. One could be the person you see lose his temper with the store clerk because sports-induced concussions left him short-fused. Another could be your neighbor who keeps locking her keys in the car or the man who looks healthy but needs a few tries to push a revolving door. Despite its prevalence, brain injury bears a stigma. To many of the uninitiated, a person with Traumatic Brain Injury equals “slow” or “retarded.” Parade

In the Hands of Strangers: The Fight for Gary Harvey

This is a case where a 55 year old man had a heart attack, fell down the basement stairs, and ended up severely brain damaged. It is a case where still another so-called ethics committee felt it had some sort of god-like wisdom and right to determine life or death for a stranger. It is a case where a so-called ethics committee decided, behind closed doors, that it was perfectly okay to starve and dehydrate this man — Gary Harvey — to death by termination of his Total Parenteral Nutrition feeding tube. Dakota Voice

Assisted Suicide Advocate Slanders Physicians as Torturers

The vast majority of people in this country do not die in ICU units. Hospitals aren’t prisons. Doctors aren’t torturing people, they are trying to treat them, which can be painful to be sure, but much effort is made to control painful and uncomfortable symptoms. Nobody ties people down and forces them to have chemotherapy, surgery, kidney dialysis, etc. Most people are desperate for these interventions–even when the doctor advises against because they are unlikely to do much good. Secondhand Smoke

Faith leaders join forces against assisted suicide

Three of Britain’s most senior religious leaders have come together to express their concern about ‘back door’ attempts to legalise euthanasia. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; and Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, have signed a joint letter to The Daily Telegraph. Christian Institute

Quebec Physicians Propose Legalized Euthanasia

In what one prominent euthanasia opponent has called "a straw man argument," the Quebec College of Physicians is proposing that euthanasia be legalized "as part of the appropriate care in certain particular circumstances." After having examined the issue for three years, the College's task force on ethics concluded that Quebec society has grown to the point where it can now tolerate euthanasia. LifeSiteNews

Belgian Euthanasia Law - Critical Analysis

The essay opens with some background information about the context of euthanasia in Belgium. It proceeds by discussing the Belgian law on euthanasia and concerns about the law. Finally, suggestions as to how to improve the Belgian law and practice of euthanasia are made, urging the Belgian legislators and medical establishment to reflect and ponder so as to prevent potential abuse. Social Science Research Network

Protecting Yourself and Your Family, part 3

Rita Marker, Executive Director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia, tells us in the final of her three part series that more than ten years ago, Hemlock Society's co-founder Derek Humphry wrote, "One must look at the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society because, in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice." Rita says, "Unless concerted, effective efforts are made now to oppose the spread of assisted suicide, Humphry's words could become tragically prophetic." Human Life Alliance

Vulnerable protected as assisted suicide bid fails

A bid to weaken the law on assisted suicide was voted down in the House of Lords last night. Peers voted 194 to 141 against the plan to make it legal to help someone travel overseas to commit suicide. A disabled Peer, Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, made a moving speech appealing to peers to reject the amendment. Christian Institute

Primary care urged to implement new end-of-life guidelines

Primary care services will face an ‘avalanche of need’ among dying patients if they do not act now to improve end-of-life care, a leading expert in end-of-life care has warned. Nursing Times

Ethics on Value of Life the Dilemma for Health Care Reform

Oncologists often face the questions about life and death often because they deal with a disease, cancer, that kills many people. Some therapies promise only to give a few extra months of life. Some of those therapies are painful, invasive, or debilitating. The ethical concerns about cost of a procedure vs. the length of time it can prolong a person’s life is an issue many physicians face with their patients. So how does a doctor make those choices? Digital Journal