Sheri Fink Quotes

I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today, and that is stop the suffering of the patient.

I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.

I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.

The Karen Ann Quinlan case is where the right to life and the right to die got bound together, and I don't think they've ever gotten untangled.

Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

People make these comments all the time. They talk about this with their loved ones every day. People's feedings - tube feedings - are stopped across this country every day.

We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.

When we, doctors, ask patients what their priorities are if time is short, what we do is we use what is available to us - whether it's geriatric care or palliative care or hospice care - to make sure they're living the kind of life that they want to live.

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what "decreed" means.

Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.

Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.

Death deserves dignity.

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

If we include hedonistic philosophy in hospitals, the lives of patients suffering from cancer would be much, much better.

Present law has a process to ascertain whether or not a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, and it should not matter what politicians think.

Shortly after her feeding tube is removed, Terri Schiavo receives the Catholic ceremony of last rites. Michael Schiavo stays in a room down the hall. He remains at his wife's side throughout the day, except when her immediate family comes to see Terri.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

When death is imminent and dying patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient's wishes.

The situation around Terri Schiavo was a deeply held conflict over what to do if someone isn't going to return to consciousness or competence. Who will decide? Even there, where we had settled legal rules, we still had disagreement. We're torn about these things.

Yes, we need euthanasia, for certain cases where people are in comas or too immobile to even press a button.

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

I believe we should support people to live, and I am therefore in favour of good quality palliative care.

Most of the debate over the cultures of death and life is about process. The debate focuses on the technology available to determine how we prolong life and how and when we end it.

Hospice means end-of-life care. The admission ticket is a diagnosis from a doctor that you have six months or less to live.