Doctor Death Strikes Again

by vickylass in Issues, March 20, 2012

We read about such issues so often, that I’m starting to think that it would be more sensible if governments decided on legalising euthanasia as in not doing so, it takes hospital staff to take on the liberty to do it under the risk of being branded as criminals. The opposite is just pure hipocrisy.

Long time ago I read about a so called Doctor Death who in fact was a nurse who killed several patients because she couldn’t stand to see them suffering anymore. Now the news has happened in a hospital in Montevideo in Uruguay.

Two male nurses in their late 30’s and early 40’s respectively are accused of having killed two hundred elderly patients, because and as they claimed they couldn’t stand their suffering.

Staff in the hospital were suspicious of so many sudden deaths, but they kept silent and it was a telephone text that averted to the police. "The patient in bed 5 sent to travelling", it read.

From time to time I read on such disgraced news. Doctors or nurses, who using their skills and their authority in the hospitals they work, take on the their liberties to kill terminal patients without even their consent or their families.

It happens so often that takes me to think if it weren’t more sensible that governments everywhere decided on legalising euthanasia once and for all. If one of my relatives was seriously ill in hospital, I wouldn’t like the staff to take on such a liberty to decide on whether my relative was to continue living or not. This is a very serious and personal issue.

The legalisation of euthanasia would require a big national debate where doctors and jurisprudence should be included as well as people to legislate a law which allowed a seriously ill or terminal patient to end its life or not. Or it should be its close relatives to decide if this person couldn’t do so.

But on one hand, this issue isn’t tackled. It remains taboo and those who decide on ending a person’s life condemned as criminals.

Those who aren’t practising Catholics claim that death has to occur in a natural way. Some doctors will exclaim that they are to save lives and not to kill. Practising Catholics will say that it corresponds to God to take this person. But meanwhile bedridden patients without a chance to enjoy life again are waiting in suffering for either natural death or God.

This is pure hypocrisy and double standards, because these patients aren’t living. They are just breathing, because their hearts haven’t stopped yet.

I have worked as a home help and I have seen loads of distressing cases. Bed ridden people who were alone at home waiting for a home help to do the basic things for them, including to give them their meals.

Many families take their elderly mother or father to hospital on accounts of being seriously ill and they leave them on a hospital bed, so they can go on holidays.

At home, there is never a place for a mother or a father who grows old. So, a nursing home which are usually disgraceful businesses seems to be a right place for them to stay till the end of their days.

I have even read about an old man who was left in a petrol station when his family was going on holidays. They had stopped to refill and they seemed to have forgotten about their grand. He looked both ways searching for the car, but it had vanished.

On one hand, we necglet our elders, but on the other, we outcry when issues like these come on the headlines. Or there are people who find it a burden to have to look after their relatives, but they wouldn’t hear a word on euthanasia.

I think it is about time that this was legalised to allow a terminal patient to put an end to its suffering when there’s no chance of real life for him.