Dutch mobile euthanasia units to make house calls

Kate Connolly
1 March 2012

A controversial system of mobile euthanasia units that will travel around the country to respond to the wishes of sick people who wish to end their lives has been launched in the Netherlands.

The scheme, which started on Thursday , will send teams of specially trained doctors and nurses to the homes of people whose own doctors have refused to carry out patients' requests to end their lives.
The launch of the so-called Levenseinde, or "Life End", house-call units – whose services are being offered to Dutch citizens free of charge – coincides with the opening of a clinic of the same name in The Hague, which will take patients with incurable illnesses as well as others who do not want to die at home.

The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation that is the biggest of its kind in the world.

"From Thursday, the Life End clinic will have mobile teams where people who believe they are eligible for euthanasia can register," Walburg de Jong, a NVVE spokesman, said.

"If they do comply, the teams will be able to carry out the euthanasia at patients' homes should their regular doctors be unable or refuse to help them," he added.

The Netherlands was the first country to legalise euthanasia in 2002 and its legislation on the right to die is considered to be the most liberal in the world.

But doctors cannot be forced to comply with the wishes of patients who request the right to die and many do refuse, which was what prompted NVVE to develop a system to fill the gap.

Sick people or their relatives can submit their applications via telephone or email and if the patient's request fulfils a number of strict criteria, the team is then dispatched.

Legal guidelines state that the person must be incurably sick, be suffering unbearable pain and have expressed the wish to die voluntarily, clearly and on several occasions.

According to De Jong, the team will make contact with the doctor who has refused to help the patient to die and ask what his or her reasons were.

More often than not, he said, the motivations are religious or ethical, adding that sometimes doctors were simply not well enough informed about the law.

If the team is satisfied that the patient's motives are genuine, they will contact another doctor with whom they will start the euthanasia process.

"They will first give the patient an injection, which will put them into a deep sleep, then a second injection follows, which will stop their breathing and heart beat," De Jong said.

Every year 2,300 to 3,100 mercy killings are carried out in the Netherlands, although opponents of the practice claim the figure is much higher because many cases are not registered. The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) supports euthanasia in principle if there is no alternative, but has distanced itself from the NVVE initiative, arguing that giving it the name Life End will foster the idea that it is for those who it said are simply "weary of life" rather than those who are sick.

It has also questioned whether Life End doctors will have the chance to forge the necessary relationship with a patient to be able to ascertain whether or not his or her life should be ended.
But Jan Kuyper, of the Life End Clinic Foundation, said: "We're not trying to push any boundaries here." He said it was quite possible that the mobile teams would not end up carrying out a mercy killing, either due to medical questions about the case or if doubt is cast on the patient's motives.
Little is known about the Life End teams. But one of the team leaders is believed to be a 67-year-old retired doctor who carried out 20 mercy killings during his medical career.

The teams would be limited to one house visit a week to minimise the psychological burden on them.
In neighbouring Germany, where mercy killings are strictly illegal, euthanasia opponents were particularly vocal in expressing their outrage at the developments. "This is an inhumane proposal," said the German Hospice Foundation, while the group Life Rights for Everyone called it a "warped understanding of [the meaning of] autonomy".

Breitbart: “Wait ‘Til They See What Happens March 1st”

Breitbart died hours before planned release of damning Obama footage

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 2, 2012

In a stunning coincidence, It appears Andrew Breitbart suffered his untimely death just hours before he was set to release damning video footage that could have sunk Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Around three weeks ago on February 9 during the ‘Blog Bash’ event in Washington DC, Breitbart made a prophetic comment that takes on a somewhat chilling nature given the fact that he died in the early hours of March 1st. Speaking to Lawrence Sinclair of Sinclair News, Breitbart stated, “Wait til they see what happens March 1st.” It’s almost certain that Breitbart was referring to his plan to release damning footage of President Obama that he had been promising to reveal throughout the month of February.

As we reported yesterday, Breitbart spoke of his intention to release the tape during his CPAC speech last month. The footage shows Obama in his college days appearing alongside former Weather Underground terrorists Bill and Bernardine Dohrn. Observers had speculated that the footage could have derailed Obama’s hopes for a second term.

“I’ve got video from his college days that show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008 – the videos are going to come out,” said Breitbart, adding that Obama would be vetted.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to appreciate the downright weirdness of Breitbart predicting a major event to occur on March 1st, only for him to end up dying on that very date. Breitbart was officially pronounced dead at 12:19am.

Although the cause of Breitbart’s death was hastily reported to be of “natural causes,” the Los Angeles County coroner’s office have refused to confirm anything until an autopsy has been performed.

According to marketing executive Arthur Sando, Breitbart spent his final hour in a bar near his home called the Brentwood sipping red wine and talking politics. After leaving the bar at around 11:30pm, Breitbart began to walk home before apparently suffering a fatal heart attack.

Although it is reported that Breitbart was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, when Lawrence Sinclair called the hospital, they denied that anyone by that name had been admitted within the previous 72 hours.

Watch the CPAC video below where Breitbart mentions the Obama footage he had seemingly planned to release just hours before his death.

Sheriff Arpaio: Obama birth certificate a ‘forgery’

By Stephen Dinan

March 1, 2012

PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday he suspects the birth certificate President Obama released last year is a “computer-generated forgery” — and also raised questions about the authenticity of the president’s Selective Service card.

“Based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in paper format as claimed by the White House.”

Questions over Mr. Obama’s birth certificate have been a political sideshow for the last four years, and have persisted despite repeated denials by the White House, and despite the release of evidence he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961. That evidence included both a certificate of live birth released during the 2008 campaign and the long-form certificate last year.

Fact-check organizations have concluded the certificates are authentic, and Mr. Obama has joked about those who questioned his birth. At last year’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner, soon after releasing his long-form certificate, he mocked Donald Trump, who had said his own investigators were looking into the matter.

Now Sheriff Arpaio, who first built his national profile by creating tent cities for jail inmates and later by taking a tough stance on illegal immigration, could reignite questions among those who continue to believe Mr. Obama was born outside the U.S., and therefore is ineligible to be president under the Constitution’s provision that the officeholder be a natural-born citizen.

Sheriff Arpaio said at least two crimes could have been committed in his view through the forgery. He repeatedly said he is not questioning whether Mr. Obama was born in the U.S., but instead is challenging the authenticity of the documents themselves.

He released a 10-page report detailing what his investigators said were “inconsistencies” in the text characters of the birth certificate image the White House released, and also questioned details of the computer file itself.

Some of those claims had earlier been raised on the Internet as well, and both the White House and independent fact-checkers have dismissed those questions, saying the computer file is consistent with the version of events the White House has detailed.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It released the long-form certificate last year after repeated questions were raised by conservative activists and conspiracy-theory websites questioning the authenticity of the short-form certificate Mr. Obama released during the 2008 campaign.

The Justice Department has accused Sheriff Arpaio of civil rights abuses within his department, but he said he began his investigation before that — in August 2011, after tea party members from Surprise, Ariz., a town within Maricopa County, signed a petition challenging the certificate.

Sheriff Arpaio detailed former law enforcement officers who constitute what he called his “cold case posse” to do the investigation. He said no taxpayer dollars were spent.

He was joined in his press conference by Jerome Corsi, an author who has been critical of Mr. Obama. He was also one of those who took a critical look at Sen. John Kerry’s military service during his 2004 presidential bid.

Mr. Corsi made headlines when he traveled to Kenya, saying he wanted to track down where he thought Mr. Obama was really born.

Sheriff Arpaio said he went into the investigation with an open mind, and would have been happy to clear Mr. Obama.