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Mission Statement for VAEHThe purpose of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare is to promote the provision of excellent health care at the end of life in an ethical manner and to oppose efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia in Vermont. For 2500 years the medical profession has forbidden doctors from giving patients lethal drugs. Society has relied on this prohibition and has trusted physicians to be healers when that is possible, and to provide comfort when healing is no longer possible. In the last 30 years, hospice and palliative care organizations within medicine and in the community have sought and promoted greater control over the physical, psychological, social and spiritual distresses that so often affect individuals approaching death and their families. The common goal is life with dignity until natural death occurs. Ironically, in recent years the prohibition against euthanasia and assisted suicide has weakened in some regions, notably in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and the states of Oregon and Washington. The political forces that are pushing for so called “Death With Dignity” have now targeted Vermont as the next state to allow physician assisted suicide. The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healtcare is an organization of healthcare professionals and friends who gathered together in February 2003 in an effort to support the expansion and improvement in end-of-life care and to oppose the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Vermont. View a list of Vermont and national organizations that oppose legalization of physician-assisted suicide on our links page. View our new video advertisements on our site or on our YouTube channel. |
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