Peter Singer – SMH 3

Peter Singer – SMH 3

1. Cabinet stands firm on assisted suicide – Swissinfo.org 2. Profile: Peter Singer – SMH 3. Sleeping Pill May Reverse Comatose Patients, Study Says - CNSNews 4. Australia's Most Trusted - Readers Digest 1. Cabinet stands firm on assisted suicide Swissinfo.org May 31, 2006 Laws governing assisted suicide in Switzerland are sufficient, according to the cabinet, which said on Wednesday it had no plans to tighten the rules. Pressure has been mounting for the practice to be more tightly controlled, partly because Switzerland has gained a reputation for "death tourism". Announcing the decision on Wednesday, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher said "the cabinet had come to the conclusion that [new legislation] was not necessary". Parliament had called on the government to examine the law which forbids euthanasia, but tolerates assisted suicide, for example by allowing patients to be deprived of life-saving medicine or sustenance, or to be given medicine that shortens their life. Several organisations in Switzerland exist to advise on and facilitate assisted suicide, and this has led to increasing numbers of foreigners coming to the country specifically to die. The decision sparked criticism from three of four political parties in government, which accused the cabinet of ignoring the will of parliament. Guidelines enough The cabinet decision was based on a report by the justice ministry, which concluded that overarching rules relating to assisted suicide were not practical since each case was different. It said the guidelines of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences were more suited to dealing with the practice. The cabinet also balked at outlawing assisted suicide in which it is legal to help someone to die provided the person providing assistance has no direct interest. "All experts were unanimous on this question," Blocher told a news conference. "The law is sufficient here, too." The cabinet also has no plans to rein in organisations which arrange assisted suicide, including Exit and Dignitas. The cabinet said monitoring their activities would lead to too much bureaucracy and would have the effect of legitimising such groups. Drugs The only measure the cabinet said it would consider was whether to make it more difficult to obtain drugs used in assisted suicide. It will consider whether to revise the law in this regard by the end of the year. The centre-right Radical Party said it intends to file a parliamentary initiative in this month's summer session to force the issue to be revisited. Blocher's rightwing People's Party is the only one in favour of leaving the legislation untouched on the law books. It opposes assisted suicide and says it doesn't want certain forms to be permitted by law. CONTEXT: Swiss law tolerates assisted suicide where the act is committed by the patient and the helper has no direct interest. There are several organisations in Switzerland, such as Exit and Dignitas, which help terminally ill patients choose how to die. Euthanasia, illegal in Switzerland, is defined as administering a lethal drug to a person by a doctor or medical staff. The Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences issued guidelines to doctors in 2004 laying down for the first time conditions under which they could help terminally ill patients die. In Europe, only the Netherlands and Belgium permit taking the life of a person who wishes to die. swissinfo with agencies ****** 2. Profile: Peter Singer Sydney Morning Herald By Lucinda Schmidt May 31, 2006 Photo: Erin Slattery The furore over Peter Singer's appointment as professor of bioethics at Princeton University has died down, but even now, seven years later, he gets the occasional threatening email. "My views are still quite controversial," the Melbourne-born philosopher and ethicist says with some satisfaction. Best known for kick-starting the animal rights movement with his first book, Animal Liberation, published in 1975, Singer has since expounded views supporting abortion, euthanasia, infanticide for severely disabled babies and stem cell research using material from embryos. He's been accused of playing God, attacked by disability rights groups and compared to the Third Reich - despite having three grandparents killed by the Nazis. The career academic, who lectured in philosophy at LaTrobe and Monash Universities before taking up the Princeton appointment, agrees that questioning the absolute sanctity of all human life gets him into more trouble in the neo-conservative US heartland than it does here, although he notes that he lives in New York, where only one in five people voted for President George W. Bush. "The one thing you do notice is the place is a lot more religious," says Singer, 59. "You notice the influence of fairly conservative Christianity, even at Princeton. Things you can say here [in Australia] quite easily are seen as offensively hostile [in the US]." He's now back in Australia for part of each year, lecturing in philosophy at Melbourne University. The second half of the year he will return with his wife, Renata, to New York and Princeton. Singer's latest book, The Ethics of What We Eat, returns to his original concerns about animal rights, updating the approach of his 1980 book Animal Factories. He says there has been a big increase in awareness of food ethics over the past 30 years. "In 1975, people didn't even know what vegan meant. And there was only one brand of soy milk in the UK [where he lived at the time]." Still, he says, we have a long way to go. Part of the problem, he believes, is that most animal factory farms are highly secretive and do not allow visitors or video cameras. The Ethics of What We Eat looks at a typical meal eaten by three families and traces the meals' ingredients back through the production process, examining the ethics of our everyday food choices, including animal suffering, child labour and environmental degradation. One family favours meat, potatoes and fast food; another describes itself as "caring carnivores", eating meat only from animals that have been treated humanely; and the third is vegan, eating nothing that comes from animals. Singer says that the first family was "a little disturbed" by what the book uncovered, while the family that took great care to check the treatment of animals was still making some "bad seafood choices" and not aware of some of the environmental issues. "If you are going to eat seafood and meat, you need to be quite informed," says Singer, who describes himself as vegan when he has complete control over what he eats, although his frequent travelling means that he occasionally eats free-range eggs and is not really strict about avoiding all dairy products. THE BIG QUESTIONS Biggest break: Going to Oxford University as a 24-year-old, and coming across the issue of the ethics of how we treat animals. Biggest achievement: Writing Animal Liberation [his first book, published in 1975, now translated into 18 languages]. There was not much around then and it brought me international prominence. Biggest regret: I don't have any huge regrets. Both in my professional and my family life, I've been very fortunate. Some people think it's a pity I got into euthanasia - in terms of the effectiveness of my work in animal rights - and that's probably true, but I don't regret it. That's a debate we had to have. Personal philosophy: Trying to live an ethical life is something I find really satisfying. Thinking about ethics and putting it into practice - that has been central to my life since I was an undergraduate. Attitude to money: It's important to try and do things that will make a difference rather than buy more luxuries. [Singer donates 20 per cent of his income to charity]. Best investment: Education. ****** 3. Sleeping Pill May Reverse Comatose Patients, Study Says CNSNews.com Dawn Rizzoni Correspondent (CNSNews.com) - Scientific researchers have revealed in the medical journal NeuroRehabilitation that a commonly-used sleeping pill, zolpidem (brand name Ambien), can be used to temporarily awaken patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), coma, or other brain-injured state. The discovery has attracted the interest of The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation for Health Care Ethics. The Foundation was named in memory of the brain-damaged Florida woman who died in March 2005 after her husband Michael Schiavo won a long legal battle to cut off her off from all nutrition. In light of the medical breakthrough, The Schindler-Schiavo Foundation has called for a moratorium of "ordinary care removal for persons diagnosed in a PVS condition." Terri's parents and siblings do not believe Michael Schiavo would have allowed her to be administered the Ambien even if it had been suggested. "Sadly, we will never know if any of these drugs or treatments that were available would have improved Terri's condition," the Schindler family stated in their press release. "Terri's family pleaded for years with Terri's guardian, Michael Schiavo, and the courts to try and use different treatments of medicine that could possibly help improve Terri's condition, but were denied." Doctors R.P. Clauss and W.H. Nel reported that the stimulation effects of zolpidem reverse the damaging effects in brain injured patients, to the point that they are able to wake up and interact with their environment. The benefits were maintained as long as the drug stayed in a patient's system, according to Clauss and Nel. The drug was given daily to patients in the study which lasted six years. Each patient had been in a PVS for at least three years. The discovery that zolpidem had such promising effects came about when Dr.

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