It’s euthanasia
It’s a sad day in our state now that the physician-assisted suicide bill was passed and undoubtedly will be signed by the governor.
Even our Big Island senator-physician, Josh Green, did not oppose the assisted suicide bill.
As a practicing physician, I find it appalling that colleagues would abdicate their roles as healers and advocates for life to be involved in ending the lives of their patients.
This issue likely will not end with having the choice of physician-assisted suicide but will become an obligation of patients to choose it. The Canadians performed a study at the University of Calgary in which they calculated that the savings to the province would be $139 million annually if patients chose physician-assisted suicide over traditional care.
The inference is that now it becomes not just a choice but an obligation based on saving money.
C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, predicted this trend in the late 1970s. How discerning he was to predict that the cheapening of life would lead to euthanasia and more.
Call it physician-assisted suicide if you like, but this is euthanasia. Is infanticide next? How about the disabled or those without an advocate or voice?
Our legislators don’t need to worry about this. They have status and power, but what about the poor and disenfranchised in our community?
This will never happen? Time will tell, but history doesn’t predict a good outcome.
We used to be known as the “health state.” This legislation makes that moniker a lie.
Timothy Jahraus
Hilo
Lots of trucks
So while a 21st century entrepreneur proposes growing hibiscus on Molokai to be used for biofuel, (Tribune-Herald, March 29), we on the Hamakua Coast — thanks to Hu Honua, HELCO and many lawmakers — soon will be faced with traffic from hundreds of logging trucks weekly, hauling thousands of tons to a supposedly refurbished ($250 million) Pepeekeo power plant to be burned as biofuel for power, a la 18th century technology.
Mind-boggling, in this day of huge solar power installations on Oahu and Kauai.
Hu Honua will produce, according to HELCO, unnecessary power by burning wood, using millions of gallons of water weekly for cooling that will be pumped out and then dumped back into the aquifer, possibly contaminated. Noise and air quality … promises, promises.
You might not be impacted by the plant because of its location, but if you use the island’s roads, you’ll deal with the logging trucks at least five days a week on our already-crowded and well-worn roads.
Where is Hawaii Island’s 21st century mindset?
Bob Smith
Pepeekeo
Hu Honua is the same company that tried to get completely out of paying any General Excise Tax.
A Planning Commission Hearing regarding Hu Honua takes place tomorrow, Thursday. This Hearing deals with noise problems and Injection Well issues at Hu Honua. Even the EPA said it is very unlikely that Hu Honua can do what it claims. Our Public Utilities Commission ignored and granted the contract although it is currently being challenged at Supreme Court.
It’s sad pepeekeo coast has been sold out. It was so nice with just the peaceful remnits of the old sugar mill industry. I didn’t even think about all the tree hauling trucks that would be going there. Super lame.
Remind me to never consider Dr. Jahraus!
Timothy Jahraus,
Stop watching Fox News and InfoWars, it will turn you into a nut.
I love the amount of fighting that these conservative Christian republicans love to inject about abortion and now end of life decisions.
But try to inject common sense gun control measures and you get met with a brick wall.
I would think that a person who claims their belief in right to life would be more open to life itself instead of only being for the protection of a fetus and telling terminally ill grandma to “suck it up”
YAHWEH’S MINISTRY, LINCOLN PARK, HILO, HAWAII
The State of Hawaii will now have both ends of the human life cycle covered in the murdering of human beings.
Preborn babies can be murdered in the womb and elderly people can be murdered when someone decides their lives are no longer valid.
Satan is having a good laugh of humanity’s suicidal governmental policies.
In between of these two legal genocides https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/385e1e77b2eeef7225a988af85827d0ae9f348e1a67ef81609f1922a397a9f04.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a9048e77e1f3efe0e3a0d4576d0c5591374411a87ccc04373d84cab3a7b7e6e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fab8e5887ff82c6ada1ccb383ab2e06ccdc1796e3302126bffad964bd5d4814.jpg , students are being murdered in schools because they lack armed security protection from the same people who support abortion and “physician-assisted suicide” (which is really another state law legitimizing murder).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59c7ddbb3185813f83455bc428e88e68ad68a2d40121453c2f75d44b179bb5e4.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6b79cb321d6a5aaf58b7fe2d3d228082d197a6b0b0a2e9232e74722578b4221.jpg
Join the side you are on.
Hawaii assisted suicide bill misleads
In response to the report about Hawaii (“Doctor-assisted suicide close to becoming law in Hawaii,” March 29).
Sadly, House Bill 2739 is going to the Hawaii governor. This bill misleads and uses doublespeak throughout. Countering the first statement, it should say that over 20 states have rejected this in 2017-’18.
Allowing an heir to be one of the witnesses in the sign-up process eviscerates flaunted safeguards. These “rigorous safeguards” are unenforceable.
The lie of “self administered,” mentioned 11 times, is used to deflect normal scrutiny while the provision to have an ordinary witness to the administration is missing.
Specifically, active euthanasia is allowed (page 30, line 16, and page 33, lines 8 and 9), which makes this the most unsafe and subject to abuse of all the states, counter to the author’s claim.
Again, like previous offerings, this process can start and end in death in 16 days, all before the rest of the family learns. Immunity for predatory corporations, heirs, strangers, guardians, care-givers is immediate and records are prohibited to be used in investigations.
Political doublespeak mis-leading the public should be held to the same standard as false advertising.
The Governor will veto if there is an uprising. Now is the time to join the side you are on.
Bradley Williams, President, Montanans Against Assisted Suicide, Hamilton MT
You completely leave out the part that requires the patient to be medically judged “of sound mind”
But then, with that clause, your argument is baseless.
Carry on defending the indefensible
Good call.
The omission of a witness at the time of “self-administration” to honor our choice eviscerates flaunted “safe guards”.
“The bill is sold as assuring patient choice and control. But when you look at what the bill actually says and does, the bill is a recipe for elder abuse.” Dore explained, “The patient’s heir, who will financially benefit from the patient’s death, is allowed to actively participate in signing the patient up for the lethal dose. After that, no doctor, not even a witness, is required to be present at the death. If the patient objected or even struggled, who would know? The bill will create the perfect crime.”
Nope, wrong, again.
Jack you have to read the bill to see that it can easily be wrongly administered by predatory corporations and others.
I’ve read it.
Safeguards aplenty
It’s now law.
The Governor will veto. Haven’t you heard.
Will not veto. Will sign.
Again more untruths falsehoods lies deceit and subterfuge
“I think the most important message in our victory is the reality that PAS would have become a cheap medical procedure that would have steered the vulnerable toward suicide and favored the white, wealthy, and well insured,” Rollo said. “The poor, people of color, and people with disabilities would have received the all too familiar denial of care letters from insurance companies and from Medicaid, refusing to cover expensive care but offering to pay for suicide pills. We the people say no thanks.” Same bill defeated in CT
This is not CT
KEEP TRYING TO DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE
Two of the most liberal states in the country killed off legislation that would have legalized assisted suicide.
Lawmakers in Massachusetts and Connecticut have shelved bills that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients with terminal diagnoses. Activists, who prefer the term medical aid in dying, were hopeful that heavily Democratic majorities in both states would pass the bill, and Massachusetts, in particular, seemed receptive to assisted suicide after the state’s top medical association withdrew its opposition to the practice and pledged neutrality on the bill.
The Massachusetts Medical Society’s stance, however, inspired backlash from doctors across the state. Former society president Dr. Tom Sullivan joined physicians across the state in February to lobby lawmakers against legalization. He told the Washington Free Beacon he was “overjoyed” when he learned that lawmakers would table the bill.
“The legislature agreed that it doesn’t make sense to reverse a practice that’s at least 2,500 years old,” he said referring to the Hippocratic Oath. “I think the testimony of other doctors made them recognize that many physicians are opposed [to assisted suicide] … it’s a call for us to do more and educate not only the public and legislators but our own physicians to take care of dying patients.”
Mark Rollo, a primary care doctor and Air Force veteran, said doctors needed to step up to personally lobby lawmakers after the medical society’s “gutless” neutrality stance. He said legislators were persuaded about the unintended consequences of legalization would have on insurance companies incentives to withhold more expensive life-extending treatments in favor of pushing suicide.
“I think the most important message in our victory is the reality that PAS would have become a cheap medical procedure that would have steered the vulnerable toward suicide and favored the white, wealthy, and well insured,” Rollo said. “The poor, people of color, and people with disabilities would have received the all too familiar denial of care letters from insurance companies and from Medicaid, refusing to cover expensive care but offering to pay for suicide pills. We the people say no thanks.”
Wrong. Again.
Keep at it!
No one is an island to them selves even in Hawaii.
You keep referring to every state EXCEPT Hawaii.
As for liberal states, I think California would rank the most liberal and yet it just announced that its right to die law is working perfectly.
Again as for any other state it’s irrelevant to Hawaii.
For example, I can go to Colorado and smoke pot till I can’t breathe any more. And yet at the Utah State line I will be greeted by troopers who would arrest me if they see one puff of smoke in my car
So what goes on in one state is totally irrelevant to the other state.
The double speak is a rope a dope. Read it again.
No double speak.
In the bill that is.
From you lots of double speak, untruths and falsehoods.
I document page and line number what I say while you just wave your arms and look the other way.
Nope. I read it. Comprehend it. Agree with it.
Keep trying to defend the indefensible!
Adults should be able to choose for themselves. It’s entirely rational to choose to end suffering rather than prolong a pointless & painful existence at an exorbitant cost. In all likelihood, it will still end up an expensive option because the healthcare industry doesn’t miss an opportunity to gouge you on your deathbed.