Assisted suicide lobby knows that the lethal drug cocktail causes a painful burning sensation.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In October 2021 I published the article - Assisted Suicide deaths are not what you think they are where I explained the recent research by Dr Joel Zivot proving that assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified and I outlined the research that is being done by the assisted suicide lobby to find a cheap effective way to kill.

Assisted suicide activists have been experimenting with lethal assisted suicide drug cocktails, for years, to find a cheaper way to cause death.

An article published in USA Today in February 2017 reported on the experiments that were done on people to find a cheaper lethal drug cocktail for assisted suicide. The article stated that assisted suicide researchers were experimenting on new generations of lethal drug cocktails. The results of the first two lethal drug cocktails were:

The (first) turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.

Link to video by Dr William Toffler of Oregon on this topic (Link).

An article by Lisa Krieger published by the Medical Xpress on September 8, 2020 also reported on the lethal drug experiments. Krieger wrote:

A little-known secret, not publicized by advocates of aid-in-dying, was that while most deaths were speedy, others were very slow. Some patients lingered for six or nine hours; a few, more than three days. No one knew why, or what needed to change.

"The public thinks that you take a pill and you're done," said Dr. Gary Pasternak, chief medical officer of Mission Hospice in San Mateo. "But it's more complicated than that."

The American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying recognizes that one of the compounds used in the assisted suicide drug cocktail will cause a burning of the throat.

The assisted suicide lobby has advised the following:

The most important factor in working with this is to advise the patient in advance that there may be burning. If the patient is surprised by the burning, it is much more severe and upsetting. As with any medical procedure, detailed information and calm reassurance before, during, and after ingestion are essential. And in this case, also advise the patient that any discomfort is quite brief -- typically only a few minutes before analgesia and unconsciousness. (If a clinician is not present at the bedside, this information should be conveyed by verbal and written instructions before ingestion.)

Calmly instruct the patient that stopping the ingestion mid-way only makes it worse by creating a more prolonged mucosal exposure to the amitriptyline. ...Encourage the patient to continue swallowing and relief is on the way as soon as full ingestion of the medications is completed.

The following comment re-enforces the goal of the assisted suicide lobby:

Yes, I know this all sounds terrible, and makes one wonder why we use the amitriptyline. First, extensive data shows that having amitriptyline as part of the aid-in-dying medications leads to more reliable results, significantly decreasing the risk of prolonged deaths. When patients are offered medications that are less reliable but taste somewhat better and don't burn, they invariably select reliability.

Remember, assisted suicide drug experiments are being done to find a cheaper, effective way to kill and are being done without ethical oversight.

These experiments appear to lack proper consent. When someone consents to die by assisted suicide that does not mean that they are also consenting to be part of a lethal drug experiment.

Before legalizing assisted suicide, legislators and voters need to know how it is done, the negative consequences associated with these drugs and the ethics related to the development and use of these drugs.

Assisted suicide deaths can be slow and painful.