The euthanasia lobby developed killing method using nitrogen gas.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Alex Schadenberg
The New York Times published a news article on Thursday, June 11, 2026 reporting that the US Supreme Court decided that execution by nitrogen gas was likely unconstitutional based on it being "cruel and unusual punishment.'
The news article by Rick Rojas and Abbie Van Sickle, for the New York Times reported that:
The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned and included no reasoning, which is typical in such emergency rulings. Dissent came from three of the court’s conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.
The Supreme Court decision blocked the execution by nitrogen gas of Jeffery Lee (49) who will remain on death row.
The Supreme Court decision was at the last minute as the execution of Lee by nitrogen hypoxia was scheduled to take place at 6 pm that day. Lee would have been the 8th person in Alabama to be executed by nitrogen gas and the 9th in America.
Lee, who originally opted for execution by nitrogen gas, changed his mind and requested death by firing squad after witnesses from previous deaths by nitrogen hypoxia reported:
“prisoners convulsing, shaking vigorously, and gasping for breaths.”
Why is this important to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition?
On September 23, 2024 an American woman (64) died inside a Sarco capsule set up near a cabin in Merishausen, Switzerland. The Sarco pod was invented by Philip Nitschke and promoted by The Last Resort assisted suicide group.
The Sarco pod works by strapping a person into the pod, closing the pod and then filling it with nitrogen gas.
Based on those who witnessed nitrogen gas capital punishment deaths, it shouldn't surprise people that the American woman was found dead in the Sarco pod with strangulation marks on her neck as she would have been convulsing, shaking vigorously and gasping for air as she died.
method that constitutes torture, violating international human rights treaties ratified by the U.S.
The ACLU also stated that:
Veterinary scientists, who have carried out laboratory studies on animals, have largely ruled nitrogen gas out as a euthanasia method due to ethical concerns. Authorities in the U.S. and Europe have issued guidelines discouraging its use for most mammals, citing potential distress, panic, and seizure-like behavior.
Death by Nitrogen gas is not acceptable for animals and is defined as a method that constitutes torture and yet Nitschke described the death as looking exactly as expected.
The US Supreme Court will likely determine that death by nitrogen hypoxia is cruel and unusual punishment. At the same time, death lobby activists are promoting the development of killing techniques that include death by nitrogen gas.
The Sarco death pod was invented by Philip Nitschke, who lost his medical license in Australia. The 64-year-old American woman who died in the Sarco pod, with the death being organized by The Last Resort Swiss assisted suicide group that was led by Florian Willett, a former spokesperson for the euthanasia group Dignitas and Fiona Stewart, the wife of Philip Nitschke.
So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The Bridge City News did an interview with Dr Joel Zivot, who is a Candian anesthesiologist and adjunct professor at Emory University in the United States. Zivot spoke to the Bridge City News about how euthanasia drugs cause death. I have edited the comments by Zivot for length. Zivot stated:
I'm an anesthesiologist and I also do intensive care medicine. I'm from Canada originally and I've been in the US for a number of years, and I'm always interested with what's happening in Canada. I have practised in Canada and I trained in Canada.
Zivot comments on the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision that led to the legalization of euthanasia, which is known as MAiD in Canada. Zivot continued:
I was concerned that such an action would imperil medical professionalism in Canada because it seemed to be advocating a wholesale ethical change as to what physicians are supposed to be doing. Medicine is interested in saving life, not taking it.
...In my intensive care capacity I encounter a lot of patients who die and that's normal and natural but the idea that medicine could be transformed into a practice that I could actually kill someone and call it treatment. Now treatment can be killing. That, of course, to me is an anathema to the ethical practice of medicine.
In the US I am also involved with the area of the death penalty. The reason I got involved in the death penalty is the use of science and medicine as a method of punishing people. The most common method of execution in the US is lethal injection which takes certain types of chemicals that in my hands are medicine and in the state's hands are poison and repurposes them to kill prisoners.
Zivot comments on his beliefs related to the death penalty and then says:
It's not the job of the doctor to kill prisoners and it is not the job of the tools of medicine. So my protest is that if the state wants to executive people, it has to use a technique that isn't an impersonation of medicine.
Zivot then comments on Canada's euthanasia program:
Assistance in Dying in Canada is strikingly similar to the way that prisoners are executed in the United States. When I realized that was going on that caught my attention.
I have reviewed hundreds of autopsies of prisoners executed using lethal injection and found a strikingly common finding of bloody froth in their lungs. So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.
You may have no sympathy for convicted murderers but the US Constitution makes it very clear that when a prisoner is punished that the punishment can't be cruel. I believe that the punishment of lethal injection creates a cruel death.
I brought those same concerns to Canada. My concern in the Canadian assisted dying system is that there's been a persistent dishonesty in exactly what is happening when people are being killed by MAiD.
Dr Zivot was asked about the drugs that are being used for euthanasia. Zivot responds:
No drug company is manufacturing a drug where the labelled indication is to kill. It's not made for that. ...In both the death penalty and assisted dying, it's recognized that these drugs can be repurposed and be converted into poison.
Zivot comments on medical politics in Canada. He then speaks about dying with dignity:
There's been little focus on is the killing part of being dead. To get from alive to dead, you have to be killed, you have to die, and that's not instantaneous. So there's a thing that has to be done to you that causes your death. And that can take some time.
So words like dignity of course, what does it mean to be dignified, to die with dignity? ...
So to suggest somehow that the only dignity available to people who are suffering is to kill them feels to me to be a very sinister use of the word dignity.
You're basically saying that if you want to be alive and in pain that there is something wrong with you. So if your not dying with dignity then you're living with undignity.
That's branding, that's a false and pernicious claim about people who want to be alive.
Zivot was asked about euthanasia being extended to people with mental illness alone in March 2027. Zivot responds:
That's obviously very disconcerting. Let's hope that between now and then that clearer heads prevail.
I take care of a lot of people who are mentally ill. I have patients who've tried to kill themselves.
When I encounter them, my assumption is that they want to live. Sure enough, in many cases once they have recovered from their attempted suicide, they live. Sometimes there's gratitude.
I think that you want your doctor to assume that you want to live. Mental illness leads to a series of bad decisions. I don't know how. if we say that a person has mental illness and loses capacity, that the capacity to request death, that capacity is preserved.
So why is a person who is mentally ill able to make that decision?
Zivot then comments his experience with patients with mental illness and how they are cared for to help them live. Zivot states:
If there is some particular theoretical person who has thought about it, who's done every possible thing, who is not under resourced, who is not lonely, ... and you think that person should be allowed to die? I still don't think it's my job to do it.
The problem is that once you make that available, you create opportunities and incentives for people to die and that's the worst possible thing.
Zivot was then asked, if lethal injection results in death by drowning, why aren't there more doctors screaming from the rooftops? Zivot responds:
I presented my concerns to the Senate of Canada and I was roundly criticized for it. When I was testifying, a person who was there waiting their turn to speak was an advocate of MAiD, when talking about MAiD he began to cry and said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
When it came to my turn, I said to the chairperson, if you would like me to cry, I can do that too, if that would be effective.
I am not suggesting that this person was not sincere, but the sense that the only beauty lies in killing is a terrible, terrible idea.
Zivot was then asked for his final comments. He said:
MAiD is basically saying that if you don't have MAiD then you're facing a terrible painful death. That is untrue.
Palliative care is a branch of medicine that is probably underfunded. Even without palliative care, I'm a physician in intensive care and I deal with people who are dying and I'm pretty comfortable in providing people with sedation or pain control to allow a natural death.
I don't need to kill them. They will die and they don't have to die in pain.
What people really need is companionship.
Zivot spoke about a study on labour epidurals. The study found that when a woman has companionship and support that the pain she experienced was less. Zivot continued:
We should be there in support of people while they live. If death is going to occur, then we should provide something to ease the pain of natural dying but we don't need to kill them to do that. It's just not true.
I think that MAiD has created this illusion that there's only two choices. It's either a miserable painful death or MAiD.
That has to stop and be challenged.
Zivot ended the interview by commenting on the effect of Canada's Charter on the euthanasia issue.
Considering the fact that Canada abolished the death penalty in two main stages: first for civilian crimes in 1976 (Bill C-84), replacing it with a mandatory life sentence, and then completely for all military offences in 1998. The last civilian executions happened in December, 1962, with the final military executions in 1945.
This is not the first concern about this issue. Tristan Hopper wrote an article that was published in the National Post in May 2023 asking if Euthanasia of Canadian prisoners is a form of capital punishment?
Hopper wrote that, at that time, nine prisoners had died by euthanasia in Canada. The APTN network reported that the first three prisoners to die by euthanasia were indiginous Canadians who remained shackled during the killing.
Ivan Zinger
Hopper's report stated that Ivan Zinger, Canada's Correctional Investigator, told Kathleen Martens, the reporter for the APTN network, that euthanasia should never be done in the prison. Hestated:
“Under no circumstances should the procedure of MAiD be dealt with inside a penitentiary,”
“That is highly problematic, unethical and immoral in my view. I think we would be the only jurisdiction in the world who would do that.”Kim Beaudin, vice-chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and a member of corrections’ National Aboriginal Advisory Committee opposes (MAiD) euthanasia being done in prisons.
According to Canada's Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness December 3 report that of the 15 Canadian prisoners who died by euthanasia, 14 were killed in an external facility and 1 died in the correctional facility.
I have always opposed capital punishment because I do not believe that the government should have the right in law to kill it's citizens.
In the same way, I do not believe that medical practitioners should have the right in law to kill people.
"(American) voters broadly support medical aid in dying: including 60% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans".
Happily, I believe, the situation is much more complex.
In reality, assisted suicide is one of those things, like the death penalty, where strong opinions and majorities are easily formed around extreme hypothetical cases. But the more that people dig into the details of real implementation, the less support remains. This explains why lawmakers have so often frustrated the apparent will of the people as regards capital punishment, and why, even where that option does exist, its application is fraught with great expense and long delays, effectively limiting its use to a very few cases.
As noted above, assisted suicide support is in the same category, which clearly indicates that our strategy must be one of educating voters. For the more they know the less likely they will be to support legalization. And just as importantly, where legalization is achieved, implementation may be restricted, in this way, to a rare number of cases, just as the use of electric chair, lethal injection, and firing squad are now limited for criminal offenders.
That being said, it is instructive to more closely examine the nature of the "broad support" observed.
The poll cited usefully divides positive replies into two categories, "strongly" and "somewhat" in favor, and so also with the negative camp"strongly" and "somewhat" opposed.
Naturally, those in the "strong" groups will have the most political engagement.
On this basis, we see that only a quarter of voters identify as "strongly" in favor. In fact, there is only one proposition that actually generates majority support, and that is the possibility of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In all other categories (severe disability, mental health, non-terminal chronic) there are more people opposed than in support.
Furthermore, again as with the death penalty, things become much more subtle when we speak of actual process. Only 17% believe that assisted suicide might be proposed as an option before "all other options have been offered". This is in comparison with 56% who believe that consideration of assisted suicide might only come after that of all other possibilities, or indeed, not at all 21%. Very tellingly, also, the supposed bi-partisan consensus also breaks down in the comparison of "strong" to " somewhat". For whereas there are half again as many Democrats who are strongly in favor (as compared to those strongly opposed) that proportion is nearly an equal split among Republicans, even though the total of "strong" and "somewhat" is virtually the same in both parties (60% Democrat, 58% Republican).
This last fact explains what we already know: that it is much easier to prevent legalization in Red States, than in their Blue equivalents.
That said, however, I would like to stress, once again, how much these numbers change with accurate knowledge. For even in blue states, it has been possible to push off legalization from year to year, for decades, and in the cases where those battles have been lost, it has been with the smallest of margins.
The man behind the current
Quite apart from what a poll shows, it is always interesting to analyze the intention with which it has been produced.
The author of this poll, Data For Progress (DFP) describes itself as a progressive think tank which exists to produce strategic insight, inform policy making, and equip movements with the tools they need to advance their vision.
In common English, this means that they are using the poll as a tool for trying out different messaging, to see what works. Definition, of course, is everything.
In this poll, each question begins with a short descriptive definition: "Medical Aid in Dying — sometimes called "physician-assisted suicide" — is a practice in which a doctor helps someone end their life peacefully with a prescription medication, typically to avoid prolonged suffering."
The most important observation we might make here, is that "Death with Dignity" and "End of Life Option" are now yesterday's news. The assisted death lobby is now all in on "Medical Aid In Dying", more properly called medical homicide. This is the language of physician identification, suggestion and prescription, not the language of patient request.
At the same time, it is ironic to note that in informing their respondents of what MAID is (for it may well be the first time that typical citizens have heard that phrase), they use the generally understood term "assisted suicide", even though medical homicide advocates now claim that MAID has nothing to do with suicide.
That said, there is at least one bald faced lie in that description (beyond the very questionable claim that death will be "peaceful") and that is the assumption that such deaths are performed to prevent "prolonged suffering". They are not. At least not as people understand those words. From all studies, we now know that pain is not at all the principal reason for which people consent to MAID.
But aside from seeking maximum adhesion in the first line question of support / don't-support, the poll also serves, in more detail to see what policy makers can get away with.
The main example I noticed of this, is in the following question:
Do you think doctors should be allowed to offer each of the following individuals to end their life through Medical Aid in Dying? (terminally ill, disabled, mentally ill, chronic illness, simply wish to die)
What is interesting here, is the replacement of the more usual form "should (doctors) be allowed to provide..." with the new gambit "should doctors be allowed to offer...")
This very aggressively ties in with the transition from an idea of assisted suicide as something that must be spontaneously requested by the patient, to a medical treatment that is proactively proposed by the doctor.
These are not innocent word choices. This is the work of people who would obviously wish to maximize the standardized practice of medical homicide, and are seeking, through their poll structure, to figure out just how aggressive they might get --on the road to a truly systematic program of managed death-- in manipulating the opinions of a largely uninformed public.
Our job, of course, is to provide fuller information and context, to render that job as difficult as we can.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Erik Ortiz reported for NBC news on March 11, 2025 that Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle Louisiana District temporarily blocked Louisiana's first execution in 15 years after lawyers for the condemned man argued a new method known as nitrogen hypoxia would violate his constitutional rights.
Jessie Hoffman Jr. who was convicted of rape and murder, was scheduled to die by execution on March 18 with the use of nitrogen gas. Hoffman stated that the use of a mask to deliver only nitrogen gas, depriving him of oxygen,
"substantially burdens" his ability to engage in his Buddhist breathing
practices and creates "superadded pain and suffering."
Dr. Philip Bickler, the chief of neuro-anesthesia
at the University of California, San Francisco, testified that the
sensation nitrogen hypoxia provides is "very similar to drowning."
"I
think for someone like Mr. Hoffman, nitrogen asphyxiation would be a
particularly horrible method, a really inhumane choice for an individual
who has a history of PTSD," Bickler said.
Judge Dick decided that:
"The public has paramount interest in a
legal process that enables thoughtful and well-informed deliberations,
particularly when the ultimate fundamental right, the right to life, is
placed in the government's hands," she wrote.
She said Hoffman cannot be executed until his claims are "decided after a trial on the merits and a final judgment is issued."
Why is this important to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition?
The Sarco Suicide
Pod is sold to the public as an easy and pain free death. The Sarco is designed in a sleek manner to make it seem like a fashionable way to die. The Sarco pod causes death by releasing Nitrogen gas resulting in death within several minutes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , who support assisted suicide, described the death of Kenneth Smith, who died by Nitrogen gas, as a:
method that constitutes torture, violating international human rights treaties ratified by the U.S.
The ACLU then stated:
Veterinary scientists, who have carried out laboratory studies on animals, have even largely ruled nitrogen gas out as
a euthanasia method due to ethical concerns. Authorities in the U.S.
and Europe have issued guidelines discouraging its use for most mammals,
citing potential distress, panic, and seizure-like behavior.
Death
by Nitrogen gas is not acceptable for animals and is defined as a
method that constitutes torture and yet Nitschke described the death as
looking exactly as expected.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
A few days ago an article that was written by James Liddell and published by the Independent explaining that a death row inmate convicted of the double murder of David and Gladys Larke has chosen to die by firing squad rather than the electric chair or lethal injection.
I must state that I oppose capital punishment.
Liddell explains that Brad Sigmon chose to be executed by firing squad and he rejected execution by electric chair over fears it would “burn and cook him alive,” and he rejected execution by lethal injection because three previous recipients of death by lethal injection in North Carolina were not
declared dead for at least 20 minutes despite the expectation it would take a
fraction of the time.
A few days ago I published an article titled: Death by assisted suicide is not what you think it is. The article referred to the
presentation I gave at the British parliament where I explained how
death by assisted suicide occurs. I told the parliamentarians that:
In 2023, one Oregon assisted suicide death took 137 hours.
The assisted suicide poison cocktail causes a burning feeling in your throat,
Dying by assisted suicide is not simply taking a few pills and then dying. It is more complicated than that.
Testimony in opposition as proposed to Proposed SB 430 An Act Prohibiting Certain Conduct Concerning Drugs and Medical Devices Used to Execute the Death Penalty February 10, 2025
Stephen Mendolsohn press conference
By Stephen Mendelsohn
Senator Maroney, Rep. Lemar, and members of the General Law Committee:
Proposed SB 430 constitutes selective indignation with a vengeance. There is no moral reason to prohibit drugs and medical devices used for capital punishment while omitting what are often the exact same drugs and devices used for euthanasia and assisted suicide. I speak as a disability rights advocate who has repeatedly testified here in Connecticut and in other states opposing legislation that, no matter how well-meaning, constitutes lethal disability discrimination.
Medically assisted suicide and euthanasia constitute capital punishment for the “crime” of being old, ill, and/or disabled, with far less transparency or oversight. All of the legitimate arguments against the death penalty—opposition to state-sanctioned killing, the corruption of the medical profession by turning doctors into agents of death, the wrong people dying for the wrong reasons, racial and class inequities, the inability of medical science to guarantee a quick and painless death—apply all the more so to assisted suicide and euthanasia. If the state has any legitimate reason to take any life, it should be the lives of those like Linda Mai Lee (f/k/a Steven Hayes) 1 and Joshua Komisarjevsky who by their murderous actions have forfeited their moral right to live. Connecticut needs to take a strong stand against exposing vulnerable elders and disabled people to an ableist system of state-sanctioned medical killing.
One need not point to Canada’s extremely expansive euthanasia laws, where disabled people are routinely being denied lifesaving medical care and social supports while being offered euthanasia instead, and where euthanasia is now the fifth leading cause of death, to understand why we need to strongly push back. There are far too many documented problems and abuses in U.S. states that have laws permitting medically assisted suicide. People whose sole diagnosis is anorexia nervosa have been deemed terminal and prescribed the lethal dose in both Colorado and Oregon. A woman with early stage dementia, who did not qualify as six months terminal and may not have been mentally competent, died under Oregon’s law after using voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) to be deemed terminal. If VSED qualifies one for medically assisted suicide, than every adult, and especially those with long-term disabilities, becomes eligible for state sanctioned death.
All three current sponsors of SB 430 are, unfortunately, leading proponents of assisted suicide in Connecticut. Indeed, one of them, Representative Josh Elliott, has openly admitted he wants to pass a “limited” assisted suicide bill only to expand it later. We are witnessing continuous expansion in the several states that have already legalized assisted suicide. In 2024, a state senator in California promoted a bill, SB 1196 to expand that state’s law to non-terminal patients and those with dementia, and to permit lethal injection. A leading sponsor of an earlier assisted suicide bill opposed that new bill merely on tactical grounds as “pushing for too much too soon.” Expansion is not merely a “slippery slope” but a paved road to what Canada now has.
The first Seconal alternative 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.
Jeff drank the lethal cocktail through a straw. Within 20 minutes he was asleep. Twelve hours later, Ada saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye and looked over. Jeff was sitting up and awake. Then, he started vomiting profusely….
After he awoke, scared and confused, Jeff was admitted to the hospital. When Ada visited Jeff the next day, she found him in the “comfort care” ward. Nurses had given him a mild tranquilizer to help with his nausea and vomiting. Over the next four days he declined rapidly. Ada was with Jeff when he died. As he lay flailing in his hospital bed, yanking at the sheets, she held his hand. “He didn’t die peacefully,” she said, her voice almost breaking. “It was a terrible death.”
The Oregon Death With Dignity Act 2023 Data Summary includes on page 18 one case of someone who took 137 hours—nearly six days—to die after ingesting a combination of digoxin, diazepam, morphine sulfate, amitriptyline, and phenobarbital (DDMAPh-1). I have yet to hear of a case of capital punishment where the condemned prisoner took an agonizing 137 hours to die. If we cannot guarantee a painless death from lethal injections used for capital punishment, how can we possibly claim orally ingested lethal concoctions can guarantee a peaceful death? And conversely, if ingesting these compounded drugs supposedly results in the painless death the assisted suicide lobby claims it does, then why has it never been used in states which retain the death penalty (in the manner that Socrates was forced to ingest hemlock when he was executed)?
Because of the self-administration requirement in U.S. assisted suicide laws, doctors are prohibited from directly hastening death to alleviate suffering when there are complications from the ingested lethal compound. This is a major reason why expansion to active euthanasia is inevitable. In foreign jurisdictions like Canada where there is a choice between lethal injection euthanasia and oral self-administration, doctor-administered euthanasia is nearly exclusive.
Moreover, when an execution is botched, there are witnesses, and we are likely to hear about it. With assisted suicide, there are no required witnesses. Prolonged and agonizing deaths, as well as coercion, are easily covered up. The death certificate is intentionally falsified by law or regulation to list the underlying terminal illness rather than the lethal dose as the cause of death, and natural causes as the manner of death. This last provision caused the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice to testify in opposition to bills seeking to legalize assisted suicide in our state in 2015, 2019, and 2021, as this provision covers up a potential murder prosecution.
Finally, Absolute Standards in Hamden, which Senator Anwar and Representative Elliott protested against last year, no longer produces pentobarbital for executions, and we know of no other company in Connecticut that does so. The threat is very real and immanent that these same legislators will work to legalize medically assisted suicide and invite Connecticut-based compound pharmacies to compound DDMAPh and other lethal cocktails whose sole purpose is to kill people. We in the disability community have been here at the Capitol nearly every year since 2013 to defend our lives from this menace. Help send a strong message that our lives matter at least as much as convicted murderers on death row.
In short, I request that this committee reconstruct SB 430 to prohibit the manufacture, compounding, sale, testing, distribution, dispensing or supply of any drug or medical device for the purpose of euthanasia or assisted suicide, and not just the death penalty. Unless and until the bill is so revised, it should not move forward.
I am cognizant of the transgender community’s opposition to deadnaming. However, when this person committed one of the most heinous crimes in Connecticut history, this is the name that appeared in the news and is what is most familiar to the public.
Stephen Mendelsohn 171 Hartford Road, #19 New Britain, CT 06053-1532
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The UK is debating the legalization of assisted suicide. An article by Peter Sefton-Williams that was published in the Spectator on February 11, 2025 concerns him being misdiagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in January 2024.
Sefton-Williams tells his own story. He states:
Perhaps the strongest argument against the reintroduction of capital
punishment is the possibility that mistakes, once made, cannot be
rectified. In the 20th century, such errors – even with legal safeguards
in place – were not uncommon. Infamous cases, such as those of Timothy
Evans and George Kelly, are a testament to that. It is ironic,
therefore, that MPs who would strongly oppose capital punishment can, at
the same time, enthusiastically support the Terminally Ill Adults (End
of Life) Bill brought before parliament by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.
The same argument applies. If a mistake is made, and a person opts for
assisted dying based on incorrect information, that mistake cannot later
be rectified. Supporters of the Bill talk about the rigorous
safeguards that would surround the decision-making process. But, as with
the legal protections surrounding capital punishment, these can
fail. It’s also deeply troubling to learn this morning that one of the
key safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill – that cases have to be signed
off by the High Court – may no longer apply.
Sefton-Williams tells his personal story:
For me, this is no theoretical debate. In January 2024, I was
diagnosed with suspected Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Three months
later, this diagnosis was confirmed. I was suffering badly from
fasciculations (or twitching and cramping) in my hands and arms, and I
had noticeable weakness and muscle wastage in my right hand.
The first doctor who diagnosed my condition did so after a barrage of
tests and said that, although he had written “suspected” in my report,
he wanted me to know that there was no doubt about the diagnosis. He
explained there was no single, definitive test for MND, so he would send
me to a senior specialist at a London teaching hospital for a second
opinion. He also told me there was no cure and that death usually came between
eighteen months and four years after diagnosis, but that the end could
come much more quickly. Finally, he advised me not to make any plans
beyond six months.
The senior specialist to whom I was referred examined me at the start
of April and confirmed the diagnosis. He told me that, while I could
live for a further five years, he had known cases where people had died
within two months of diagnosis. Both doctors also warned that the degree
of muscle wastage in my hand suggested I had already lived with the
condition for some considerable time.
Upon first being diagnosed, I was struck by fear and panic. I knew
broadly how the end would come with MND. Muscle strength gradually fades
until speech, movement, swallowing and breathing become increasingly
difficult. Although I have many good friends and a supportive family, I
am single and live alone. I felt I was in an impossible position and
would not be able to cope with such a decline. And so, on the day after
my initial diagnosis, I filled in the forms to join the Swiss assisted
suicide clinic, Dignitas. I also considered other ways of terminating my
life, perhaps by throwing myself off a cliff.
The Dignitas literature stressed that patients needed to administer the
fatal chemicals themselves. Where patients had conditions such as MND, I
determined that the procedure could not be delayed until the disease
had progressed to the point of debilitation. I therefore felt under
pressure to act.
Sefton-Williams received good news when he learned that he had been misdiagnosed with MND and that he actually had a treatable condiiton:
Yet as spring turned into summer, it became clear that my health was not
worsening as expected. I was sent for further nerve conduction studies.
These revealed that my condition was much more likely to be Multifocal
Motor Neuropathy, a mild condition that is not terminal and which, in
most cases, is treatable.
If assisted suicide were legal, Sefton-Williams states that would have died needlessly.
The Bill currently before Parliament requires that two doctors
independently assess and confirm that a patient has a “terminal illness”
and is “reasonably expected to die within six months”. It sounds
fail-safe. But in my case, I was told by two eminent specialists that I
had a terminal condition and that, in the worst scenario, death could
come within months. If I had had a fixed intention to terminate my life,
I would surely have been a candidate. After my suicide, friends and
family would perhaps have talked about my bravery in opting for a
dignified death. They would have known nothing of my misdiagnosis. They
would have not been aware that my death had been needless.
The question is - how many people are being killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide who have been misdiagnosed or not diagnosed?
According to Brian Mastroianni who published an article in healthline.com on February 22, 2020 medical misdiagnosis is more common than you think. According to the data:
An estimated 40,000 to 80,000 people die annually from complications related to misdiagnoses and a similar number of
people will experience a permanent disability related to misdiagnosis.
After
17 years suffering from chronic pain, Jennifer Monaghan began
researching medical assistance in dying (MAiD), but a miracle diagnosis
saved her life.
Monaghan, a Canadian, was considering euthanasia but then learned after 17-years of chronic pain that she had “Small fiber sensory neuropathy,” which is a treatable condition. Monaghan is alive today because she was fortunate to have been diagnosed with a treatable condition.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The Sarco Suicide Pod is sold to the public as an easy and pain free death. The Sarco is also designed in a sleek manner to make it seem fashionable to die in this manner. But how does death by Nitrogen gas actually work?
The Sarco kills a person by releasing nitrogen gas into the pod causing the person to die of asphyxiation. The Guardian reported Nitscke, the inventor of the suicide pod, describing the first death in the Sarco suicide pod in this way:
He (Nitschke) said he thought she had lost consciousness “within two minutes” and had died after five minutes. “We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look,”
Ed Pilkington reported for The Guardian on September 27 concerning the recent capital punishment death of Alan Miller, the second person in Alabama to die by using Nitrogen gas. Pilkington reported:
Miller shook and trembled on the gurney for about two minutes with his body at times pulling against the restraints, followed by about six minutes of gasping, according to the Associated Press.
The lethal method involves being strapped down with a respirator mask applied to the face and pure nitrogen piped in. The resulting oxygen deprivation will cause death by asphyxia.
Pilkington also reported on the death of Kenneth Smith, who was the first one in Alabama to die by capital punishment using the Nitrogen method:
“Smith began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements … The force of his movements caused the gurney to visibly move at least once. Smith’s arms pulled against the straps holding him to the gurney. He lifted his head off the gurney and then fell back.”
Even though Nitschke describes the death in a positive manner, the discription of the deaths seem similar with the only real difference being that the woman who died in the suicide pod was seeking death.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , who support assisted suicide, described the death of Kenneth Smith as a:
method constitutes torture, violating international human rights treaties ratified by the U.S.
The ACLU then stated:
Veterinary scientists, who have carried out laboratory studies on animals, have even largely ruled nitrogen gas out as a euthanasia method due to ethical concerns. Authorities in the U.S. and Europe have issued guidelines discouraging its use for most mammals, citing potential distress, panic, and seizure-like behavior.
Death by Nitrogen gas is not acceptable for animals and is defined as a method that constitutes torture and yet Nitschke described the death as looking exactly as expected.
On 25 January, the US state of Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith.
Thirty-six years on from being convicted of the ‘murder for hire’
killing of Elizabeth Sennett, the 58-year-old finally ‘answered for his
horrendous crimes’, as Alabama governor Kay Ivey put it.
The execution was rightly condemned by liberals of all stripes. Activists, campaigners, members of the US Supreme Court and even the United Nations re-stated their opposition to the death penalty.
Yuill explains that the method for killing Smith was ‘nitrogen hypoxia’. Yuill quotes many of the outraged groups that stated:
‘Just the idea of using gas for executions is an affront to our community’, said
Mike Zoosman, the co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death
Penalty. Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and
the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights joined in the
condemnation of Smith’s execution. Four independent UN monitors accused
the US government and Alabama of pushing ahead with an experimental
execution technique that would ‘result in a painful and humiliating
death’. Maya Foa, the joint executive director of human-rights campaign
Reprieve, asked
rhetorically: ‘How many more prisoners must die agonising deaths before
we see executions for what they really are: the state violently taking a
human life?’
Yuill states that all of these groups that condemned the capital punishment death of Smith support assisted death. Yuill then compares assisted death to capital punishment:
In fact, the methods of killing in cases of assisted suicide bare an
uncanny resemblance to those used for state-ordered executions. In
Canada alone, there were 13,000 assisted deaths by lethal injection last year. In the 2000s, Dignitas in Switzerland even experimented with helium hypoxia,
a very similar method to that used to kill Smith. Dignitas’s efforts
resulted in the botched killings of one man and three women, because of
ill-fitting masks.
Even the length of time it takes to die is comparable between
assisted suicide and the death penalty. But while critics have described
the 22 minutes it took Smith to die in Alabama as ‘agonising’, they say nothing about the 40-plus minutes it takes individuals to die through assisted suicide in Oregon.
Yuill challenges those who oppose capital punishment but support euthanasia:
Those who oppose capital punishment but support euthanasia will say
that there’s a vital difference between the two. People choose to die in
cases of euthanasia, they say, whereas criminals don’t choose to be
executed. But this is not the clincher they think it is. About 10 per
cent of those who are executed in the US are what are known as ‘volunteers’,
insofar as they choose not to appeal their sentences and accept their
fate. According to the logic of pro-euthanasia advocates, executions
would be more justified in these cases. This highlights the weakness of
the ‘choice’ argument as a justification for state-approved killing.
If we are serious about opposing capital punishment, we need to
oppose the premeditated killing of a human being by the state in all
circumstances. That means opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide with
just as much vehemence as opposing the death penalty.
Supporters of capital punishment and state-sponsored euthanasia share a
similarly low view of human life. They both see certain lives as being
devoid of all value. We need to stop being selective, and start opposing
state-approved killing in all its forms.
Thank you Professor Yuill for your consistent position.
