Religious activists have too much say over our right to die

[xchrom]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/06/religious-activists-have-too-much-say-over-our-right-to-die/


The question of assisted dying needs to be discussed rationally and not held to ransom by minority zealots

Following successful complaints, we should soon be hearing much less – on the BBC at least – from the climate change hobbyist Lord Lawson. An edition of the Today programme that treated the former chancellor’s outlandish hunches to the same sober consideration as the evidence-based conclusions of Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, of Imperial College London, has led to an apology – and a further reconsideration of editorial balance. Having assessed the Lawson v the Academic Mainstream dialogue, in which the former remarked that 2013 had been “unusually quiet” for tropical storms, the head of the BBC’s Complaints Unit said: “Minority opinions and sceptical views should not be treated as if it were on an equal footing with the scientific consensus.”

But proponents of the slippery slope argument must be asking: where will it all end? Is irrationality itself at risk? If a man of Lord Lawson’s stature can be marginalised simply for promulgating obviously fanatical rubbish supported only by anecdote and untested assertions, what could this mean for, say, religious authorities who are deferred to far more regularly than he ever was? Must they, too, be denied their traditional platform, condemning the fashionable consensus on anything from gay marriage and abortion to Sunday trading and the right to die, for no better reason than these activities contravene some personal take on holy writ?

It does seem a little unfair, for example, that while Lawson is discouraged from airing opinions that occasionally had to do with actual weather conditions, a religious campaigner such as Andrea Williams, a member of the General Synod and chief spokesperson for her own pressure group, Christian Concern, should continue to be accepted as a respectable pundit, specialism: 21st-century challenges to Old Testament regulations. Ms Williams’s name will already be familiar to many gay rights campaigners courtesy of a memorable speech on same-sex relationships, in which she applauded Jamaica’s criminalisation of what her sect considers a curable aberration, a diagnosis she did not hesitate to apply to Tom Daly.

Today, Williams is one of many religious activists fighting the option of assisted dying for the terminally ill, a measure gleefully extinguished by the bishop-infested House of Lords in 2006, now revived in Lord Falconer’s bill , and supported by 82% of the population.

[ColesCountyDem]

1. My father was a physician who died from cancer, and his instructions were simple:

When discussing his end-of-life care with the hospice physician, my father told him, "Keep me warm, clean, hydrated and pain-free". The hospice physician said that in order to keep Dad pain-free at the end would likely require massive doses of narcotics, possibly amounts that could endanger or even end his life. Dad said, "I know that-- I'm a physician, too. If they (the drugs) cause respiratory or cardiac arrest, so be it. I will only agree to your services if you agree to my conditions".

They did, and Dad passed peacefully and pain-free in his own bed.

[Segami]

2. They have to much say PERIOD!

[marmar]

3. K/R

[pocoloco]

4. Nearly two-thirds of the total firearm deaths in the U.S. are suicides?