Because I've seen so many surveys skewed by subliminally suggestive phrasing, I tend to be dismissive, particularly when I don't like the results. This is certainly the case with many of the recent surveys on euthanasia, and there is of course the possibility that sour grapes could be causing me to ignore a growing acceptance of euthanasia rather than confronting it. However Wesley J Smith for one has shown how more factually and objectively worded polls can tell a different story.
The mainstream media also tends to ignore polls that show euthanasia as being less popular than supposed, while shouting those that support that view from the rooftops. This latest poll from The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center seems to fall into the latter category. That isn't a slam on the hospital, it seems to have a stellar reputation and what I could see of it's bio-ethical orientation seems to lean toward pro-life. But it immediately spread like a brush fire throughout the MSM.
There is little evidence to support the argument that legalizing physician-assisted death would reduce patients' trust in their doctors, according to a researcher from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues.
More at Marlowe's Shade
Notice how Wesley J Smith the anti-choice facist ignores the poll results showing the most Americans supported Terri Schiavo being removed from life support, and how he has asserted in the past that palliative care can always work (a bald-faced lie - even the palliative care institutes say that about 5% of pain cannot be adequately controlled).
Jen the goal of palliative care is to make pain bearable, not to eliminate it.
I haven't read Wesley's book but I understand that opiates are virtually 100% effective in terminal cases. Palliative care is not the same as chronic pain care. That is harder to manage, but I remember a doctor in the Pain Unit at New England Medical Center saying that much of chronic pain is mental.
Pain is part of life, and I suspect that much of the support for euthanasia is from boomers who have run out of options due to years of self-medication.
Pain relief is not nearly that effective. I don't know where you got those figures from. Euthanasia is needed because not everyone wants a 3-week long death that palliative care often gives, against the patient's will.
Pain is by no means a NECESSARY part of life.
Pain is, was, and always will be part of life.
The right-to-die movement glorifies death as the great painkiller and in that sense it is.
Don't be so quick to trade in those last 3 weeks Jen.
Here's a sad tale of a woman who exchanged her "good death" for someone elses timetable:
http://marlowesshade.blogspot.com/2005/05/euthanasia-hall-of-shame-rev-ralph.html
Why shouldn't I trade in the last few weeks of MY OWN LIFE if I don't want to keep going? If you want to live until the very end, fine. That's your right to choose. Just don't trample on me and dictate how I should live and die.
I'll label my suggestions more clearly here on out so they aren't mistaken for dictates.
:-)