As we continue to look at the topic of Euthanasia and Physician-assisted Suicide, I would like to remind you that the quotes come from F. Michael Gloth, III M.D. and his article "Physician Assisted Suicide: The Wrong Approach to End of Life Care." They are in bold and my commentary is in regular font.

Paradoxically, some physicians and even some health-related organizations opposed the legislation, despite its specific language protecting providers who prescribe medications for pain relief. The strategy for convincing legislators that a bill promoting pain relief would actually do the opposite and impede pain relief is laid out in some detail in a book entitled Handbook of Pain Relief in Older Adults, to be released by Humana Press later this year. Advocates of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia knew that support for their agenda was thin, both in the medical community and in the general public. Seniors, a rapidly growing political force, are particularly leery of measures that may appear to be incremental steps toward arbitrarily limiting life. There is, of course, overwhelming support for providing pain relief for those who are suffering. Therefore opposition to the legislation, could not be based on opposition to pain control or support for assisted suicide, instead, doubts had to be raised about the effectiveness of the bill in advancing pain control.

St. Thomas Aquinas stated that everyone always chooses to do what he or she thinks is the good. The problem is that they do not always perceive what the good is. For example both the Nazis under Hitler and the Communist under Stalin, thought that they were putting people out of their misery and out of their suffering. Cardinal Von Galen, who was Archbishop of Muenster, Germany during World War II was one of the first to stand up to Hitler because he noticed those people who were mentally challenged were disappearing from the streets of Germany. Hitler was ?putting them out of their misery.? Von Galen stood up, as Catholics due today and state that all people have an innate dignity that should be protected and not killed. If the United States were to embrace physician assisted suicide on the basis of ?putting someone out of their misery,? who would get to decide what "their misery" really was and was it great enough that the person should be put out of it. I don?t think the government is the answer to that question.

There were times when I were at my grandmother's bedside when she was dying in which she said that she wished that God would just take her and there were other moments where she was grateful to still be alive. Who gets to decide when she is in her right mine? When she is calling for God to take her or when she is feeling blessed to still be living?

The role of physicians The nation's largest medical specialty organization and second-largest physician group, the American College of Physicians, has officially announced its opposition to physician-assisted suicide as a matter of principle. It has also expressed concerns about effectively regulating the practice and protecting vulnerable populations, as well as the potential for abuse. The College continues to be concerned about research showing that physicians and other clinicians are often not well trained in end of life care. If physician-assisted suicide were to be accepted as standard practice, the College believes it would undermine the physician-patient relationship as well as improvements in end of life care.

The nation's largest medical group, the American Medical Association (AMA), has taken a similar stance, stating that allowing physicians to participate in assisted suicide would cause more harm than good. The AMA maintains that physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. The American Medical Association's 156-year-old Code of Medical Ethics prohibits physician-assisted suicide in the same strong language it uses to prohibit physician involvement in euthanasia.

The AMA at this time opposes physician assisted suicide as "fundamentally incompatible" with the physician?s role as healer. This tells you how bad physician assisted suicide must be for an organization that allows abortions to be so totally against it.