Ezekiel Emanuel White House Health Care Policy Advisor

Obama! Kill Me Now!

Is dying a right, or a preference over the miserable state of life?

I have wondered when physician assisted suicide will begin to play a major role as the world goes down the dung hole. Here it is, in no time at all, the role of physician assisted suicide has come to the foreground with the appointment of Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother, as “White House Health Care Policy Advisor.”

How far from "I'm depressed, I don't want to live" is

"I'm poor, I can't afford to live"?


From Wikipedia:

Dr. Ezekiel "Zeke" J. Emanuel (1957-) is a NIH bioethicist, a leading opponent of state-assisted suicide, and a proponent of a Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan (GHAP).

Ezekiel is the son of Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel, a former member of the Zionist militant organization Irgun, and a Chicago pediatrician.

His brothers are White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a former Democratic US Representative and Hollywood-based superagent Ari Emanuel.[1] He has an adopted sister, Shoshanna.


From

Whose Right to Die? By EMANUEL EZEKIEL

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/euthanasia/eu0007.html


The empirical studies of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands (where the practices have long been accepted), the United States, and elsewhere indicate that pain plays a minor role in motivating requests for the procedures. A 1996 update of the comprehensive and rigorous 1991 Remmelink Report on euthanasia practices in the Netherlands revealed that in only 32 percent of all cases did pain play any role in requests for euthanasia; indeed, pain was the sole reason for requesting euthanasia in no cases. A study of patients in nursing homes in the Netherlands revealed that pain was among the reasons for requesting physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia in only 29 percent of cases and was the main reason in only 11 percent. A study of physicians in Washington State who admitted to having received requests for physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia revealed that severe pain played a role in only about a third of the requests.

A study of HIV-infected patients in New York found that interest in physician-assisted suicide was not associated with patients' experiencing pain or with pain-related limitations on function. My own recent study of cancer patients, conducted in Boston, reveals that those with pain are more likely than others to oppose physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. These patients are also more likely to say that they would ask to change doctors if their attending physician indicated that he or she had performed physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia. No study has ever shown that pain plays a major role in motivating patient requests for physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

What does motivate requests? According to studies, depression and general psychological distress. The Remmelink Report found that among Dutch patients the leading reason for requesting euthanasia was a perceived loss of dignity. The study of Washington State physicians found that the leading factors driving requests were fear of a loss of control or of dignity, of being a burden, and of being dependent. Among the New York HIV-infected patients the leading factors were depression, hopelessness, and having few — and poor-quality — social supports. In my own study, patients who were depressed were most likely to discuss euthanasia seriously, to hoard drugs for suicide, and to have read Final Exit, the Hemlock Society suicide manual.


Send your euthanasia request to the White House at obama.barack@fcboe.org:

Dear Barack,

I see that you have hired good ole Rahmmie's brother as your Health Care Policy Advisor.

I am poor. I can't afford to live.

OBAMA, Please KILL ME NOW!

Please write on the subject line:

OBAMA! KILL ME NOW!