Death doctors use Covid-19 crisis to permit "aid-in-dying" via telehealth.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The assisted suicide lobby are actively promoting the approval of assisted suicide and euthanasia via telehealth. The death lobby are using the coronavirus to achieve two main goals, that being, allowing the approval of lethal prescriptions via telemedicine or telehealth and the expansion of assisted suicide to include euthanasia.

If allowed, a person could be prescribed lethal drugs for assisted suicide without ever being examined by a doctor.

According a committee of the newly formed American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, (death doctors) (chaired by Lonny Shavelson, a California doctor who only offers death) the coronavirus crisis requires allowing approvals by telehealth. The committee stated:

In light of the coronavirus crisis, a committee has been convened to establish recommendations pertaining to the use of telemedicine to evaluate patients’ requests to consider medical aid in dying. (See below for members of the policy committee.)

For the purposes of this policy statement, “telemedicine” and/or “telehealth” refers to a visual and verbal patient contact by electronic means, without an in-person visit. 

Long before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, many established aid-in-dying clinicians used telemedicine visits to evaluate select aspects of terminally ill patients’ requests to consider medical aid in dying. Given the need to limit in-person contacts to decrease the speed of contagion of coronavirus, an increased use of telemedicine for select aspects of aid-in-dying evaluations and care is recommended.

The committee of death doctors concluded:

The Committee concludes that there is nothing inherent in an aid-in-dying request that prohibits or discourages the use of telemedicine.

The death doctors are using the coronavirus to achieve their goal and they have no intention of going back to examining patients, once the coronavirus crisis passes. 

It is important to recognize the language used by the death doctors. "Medical Aid in Dying" (MAiD) is a term that is used by the death lobby for euthanasia and assisted suicide. The American death lobby are trying to extend assisted suicide legislation to include euthanasia or lethal injection. Most new assisted suicide bills are not what they appear to be.

Recently I reported that another death lobby group was using the coronavirus to promote assisted suicide via telehealth.

This is not a new plan. The 2019 New Mexico assisted suicide bill included a telehealth provision and a recent bill to expand assisted suicide in Hawaii includes a telehealth provision.State regulators should not take this group seriously. These are death doctors promoting more death. In the case of Shavelson, he does not provide medical treatment only death.