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New assisted suicide guidelines may lead to fewer suicide tourists (Switzerland)

The Swiss Medical Association agreed to a new set of guidelines for assisted suicide that state:

  • The physician must conduct at least two detailed discussions with the patient separated by an interval of at least two weeks.
  • The symptoms of the illness and/or functional impairment must be unbearable, the severity of which is to be substantiated by a legitimate diagnosis and prognosis.
  • Assisted suicide for healthy persons is not medically or ethically justifiable.

Previous guidelines did not require a two week interval and they permitted assisted suicide for otherwise healthy people. Lifecircle already offers the first meeting online. Swiss assisted suicide groups, as Dignitas, EXIT or The Swiss Medical Association are concerned that “stricter” rules will discourage suicide tourism.

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When access to medical treatment is more difficult then access to MAID (Canada)

Canadians are seeking death by euthanasia (MAiD) because they are not able to access medical treatment, or they are living with a disability, or a mental illness and/or poverty. Canada’s medical system makes it difficult for Gwen to receive treatment but easy for her to receive MAiD (euthanasia). The Canadian government is currently debating further expansions to the euthanasia law. Canada needs to recognize how its euthanasia law threatens the lives of people with disabilities and other chronic conditions and reverse its killing direction.

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Canadian Virtual Hospice promotes euthanasia book for children (Canada)

The Canadian Virtual Hospice is a “platform [that] could address some of the national gaps in palliative care,” The Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book is available. The branding between the “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity book” and the “Me and My Illness” activity books is similar. If the message being sent with this colourful and engaging activity book is that euthanasia is a normal, innocuous act that “doesn’t hurt” and is appropriate for anyone who is in pain, how can a sick and/or suffering child escape the conclusion that it may be an appropriate solution for them – especially once MAiD is extended to mature minors?

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OnlyFans, giving more visibility to a certain type of Prostitution (South Africa)

The platform is full of people of all persuasions trying to make a buck in adult entertainment by satisfying watchers’ needs, ranging from those who have foot fetishes to those who are willing to pay women to wear the outfit they choose for them for the day. The line is very grey as to whether OnlyFans constitutes prostitution which in South Africa is still illegal, despite moves by NGOs such as Sonke Gender Justice and Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) to change that with slogans such as ‘sex work is work’. Phelelani Dladla, a candidate attorney from Ryan D Lewis Inc Attorneys, says, according to the Sexual Offences Act 23 of 1957 as well as the Criminal Law (sexual offences and related matters) Amendment Act 2007, prostitution and related activities are prohibited by law. Dladla adds that Section 20 of the Sexual Offences Act states that any person who lives wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution shall be guilty of an offence. He cited the case of Jordan v the State in 2002 (6), where it was argued that the state should not control or tell citizens what to do with their bodies, whether public or private. The adult content initially received mainstream attention after prostitutes began using the site during the Covid-19 hard lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, when they could not earn cash the usual way.

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A possible way out of porn addiction (USA)

A new study done by psychologist Stephen Sammut and published in Frontiers in Psychology,  highlights the dangers of pornography addiction and offers a way out of it. According to Sammut a focus on higher-level cognitive faculties can override the cravings from our lower brain which ultimately spur porn consumption. It is crucial to focus recovery efforts on the areas of our upper brain that are responsible for logic and rational thinking. Porn, on the other hand, is connected to our lower brain areas which are responsible for producing pleasure and emotions. As humans, we tend to be guided more by our pleasure centres than by logic and reason. Sammut suggests that if we begin to use our upper brain’s logical thinking to satisfy our lower brain’s pleasure cravings, we will begin to behave in more acceptable ways. Faith and morals have the potential to contribute to appropriate brain functioning – that is assisting in the prioritization of the upper brain over the lower. So, it makes sense that they could be especially helpful in regards to assisting people in reducing their pornography use. In fact, the results from over a thousand university students found faith, morals, and personal motivation to be the primary variables reported to help reduce pornography use.

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Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;’ Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’ (USA)

The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh (psychiatrist), that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery…and so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,” said Dr. McHugh. Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous – even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.” Such action comes “close to child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80% of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated ….”

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Child porn on the rise (South Africa)

Lieutenant, Colonel Heila Niemand revealed that child pornography is becoming increasingly common in South Africa.  Approximately 150 000 images of explicit child content were seized from people who also intended to create and distribute more child porn. In her testimony, Niemand said police had received countless leads daily of South Africans possessing, distributing or creating child pornography. According to Niemand there is a close link between human trafficking and child pornography. We had a suspect in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, where the perpetrator went out to identify children online to recruit them and involve them in sexually explicit content and sexual exploitation.

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Young Adults Misunderstand Porn as a Help Manual to Have Sex (India)

According to a study by Emily Rothman a professor at Boston University, published in the journal ‘Archives of Sexual Behaviour’, young adults prefer pornography as their most helpful source of information on how to have sex. The bad news is that young adults are misunderstanding the purpose of porn. Most free, online pornography is there for entertainment and to make money for the creators. The research team analysed responses from 357 young adults (18-24 years old) and 324 adolescents (14-17 years old). From a public health perspective, Rothman says it is worrisome that a sizable percentage of young adults consider porn a helpful source of information about how to have sex.

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“Medical aid in dying”: debate in the British Parliament (England)

Following a petition signed by “more than 155,000 people” calling for the legalization of “assisted death” for “mentally competent and terminally ill adults”, British MPs debated this subject on Monday July 4. Proposals are “in progress” in Scotland. Tonia Antoniazzi, Labor MP for Gower, who for her part underlines the “underfunding” of palliative care. As for the Ministry of Justice, it refers the decision to modify the law to Parliament. This is “a matter of conscience for individual parliamentarians rather than a matter of government policy,” he said. The government, then, “will make every effort” to apply the law.

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MAID Primarily for Well-educated and White Patients Diagnosed with Cancer (USA)

Researchers at Rutgers School of Public Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey analyzed data from each of the 5,329 patients across the U.S. who died from medical aid in the 23 years after Oregon became the first state to legalize it and found one demographic dominates the group: well-educated, white patients with cancer. More than 72% of patients who died with medical aid had at least some college education, more than 95% were non-Hispanic whites, and nearly 75% had cancer. Nearly 60% of the people who died with medical aid were between ages 65 and 84. Another 16% were 85 years old or older, while 8% were 54 years old or younger.

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