Military reports disturbing conditions in Ontario nursing homes.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have been writing about the tragic COVID-19 nursing home deaths. On April 14 I wrote about COVID-19 Triage guidelines and nursing home deaths and on May 13 I wrote about the New York State policy that may have led to thousands of nursing home resident deaths. 

In Ontario, nursing home residents comprise more than 75% of the COVID-19 deaths.  The Canadian military was called in to provide needed care and support in nursing homes that were strained by the COVID-19 outbreak.

According to a Global news report:

A total of 285 military members were working in Ontario care homes. In Quebec, more than 1,500 soldiers were sent to 25 long-term care homes, with up to 60 at each facility. More than two dozen Canadian soldiers have now tested positive for COVID-19.

This military intervention not only provided care for vulnerable people, it also provided an impartial witness to the care (or lack thereof), that the residents were receiving.

Military member providing care

Military personnel who were caring for nursing home residents released an horrific report of systemic nursing home elder abuse. According to the CBC News Report by Nick Boisvert:

Military service members, who have been providing assistance at the homes since April 28, say they have observed numerous forms of unhygienic and dangerous behaviour. 

The list of allegations includes:

• Repeated use of medical equipment between COVID-19 patients and others who had not tested positive, without it being disinfected.

• Improper use of personal protective equipment (PPE) by staff and doctors.

• Housing of COVID-19 patients with residents who had not tested positive.

• Staff reusing gloves or not washing hands between resident interactions.

• Staff being aggressive with residents during medical procedures.

• Residents calling for help with no response for up to two hours.

• The presence of insects, including cockroaches and ants.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford

Boisvert reported Ontario Premier Doug Ford stating in his press conference:

"It was so disturbing ... It was the worst report, most heart-wrenching report I have ever read in my entire life"

A Global News report stated:

The soldiers reported witnessing cockroaches, flies, rotten food, as well as residents left in soiled diapers or crying out for help for lengthy periods, the documents allege. At one facility, residents had not been bathed in weeks, they said. 

At a facility in Etobicoke, residents who tested positive for COVID-19 shared rooms with uninfected residents, separated only by a curtain, the documents said. 

It found “major concerns” at Eatonville about care, infection control and narcotics abuse. 

The Orchard Villa home had cockroaches and flies, and residents were “left in beds soiled in diapers.” New staff were not trained adequately, nor was protective gear used properly. 

It said staff were not always sitting residents up before feeding them, and that this may have contributed to the death of a resident who choked after being fed “while suppine.”

All of this and more is occurring in Ontario where we have universal healthcare. Please read the Global news report.

The horrific incidents outlined in the report reveal a culture disrespect and dehumanization towards people needing care. Philosophers like Peter Singer, who teach that people with certain cognitive conditions cease being persons have contributed to this epidemic of disrespect and harm.

This military report confirms the truth of what the community living movement believes, that it is essential for all human beings to have equality and inclusion in society. Institutionalizing people with disabilities or the elderly leads to exclusion and discrimination and eventual abandonment.

The abusive behaviour, mismanagement and dehumanizing conditions is heart breaking and leads me to state that: 

1. Doctors and nurse practitioners, who kill people by euthanasia make decisions based on societal attitudes towards living with physical and psychological needs.
2. The concept of "freedom of choice" does not apply to conditions and attitudes that lead someone to believe that people living with certain conditions are better off dead. Subtle and overt social pressures creates a cultural shift from a "choice to die" to an expectation to die.
3. Some people have asked to die by euthanasia to avoid living in a nursing home. This report may lead to a "clean-up of nursing, it will also lead to more euthanasia deaths.

We need a caring culture: a culture that does not institutionalize the elderly, infirm or people with disabilities, but rather offers compassionate community care. 

Policies that promote home care and enable people to live independently need to be implemented. For people experiencing dementia or Alzheimer's, a community such as Hogeweyk, in the Netherlands provide an excellent example of how this is done.

Institutionalizing and warehousing people results in a culture of abandonment, abuse and often death. 

Let's rethink the concept of nursing homes.

More articles on this topic:

• Report into nursing home deaths will not protect people from suspicious euthanasia deaths (Link).
• New York policy may have led to the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents (Link).
• COVID-19 Triage guidelines and nursing home deaths (Link).
• Pandemic palliative care protocol. Selecting people to die and abusing the purpose of palliative care (Link).
• Euthanasia doctor developed COVID-19 Triage guidelines (Link).

The Nazis' First Victims Were the Disabled.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The sad reality is that people will often forget human history. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Kenny Fries

I think that everyone needs to read the article, The Nazi's First Victims Were the Disabled, that was published in the New York Times on September 13.

This excellent article is written by Kenny Fries, an author who recently published “In the Province of the Gods.” Fries is writing about his explanation to a young German neurologist of the truth about how the Nazi's T4 euthanasia program killed as many as 300,000 people with disabilities. The killing techniques were developed in the Psychiatric hospitals and then used in the Nazi death camps. Fries takes the killing of people with disabilities personally:

I have a personal stake in making sure this history is remembered. In 1960, I was born missing bones in both legs. At the time, some thought I should not be allowed to live. Thankfully, my parents were not among them. 

I first discovered that people with disabilities were sterilized and killed by the Nazis when I was a teenager, watching the TV mini-series “Holocaust” in 1978. But it would be years before I understood the connections between the killing of the disabled and the killing of Jews and other “undesirables,” all of whom were, in one way or another, deemed “unfit.”

Nazi euthanasia victims

Many facts about the Nazi T4 euthanasia program are not well known. Fries explains:

While he does know that approximately 300,000 disabled people were killed in T4 and its aftermath, he doesn’t know about the direct connection between T4 and the Holocaust. He doesn’t know that it was at Brandenburg, the first T4 site, where methods of mass killing were tested, that the first victims of Nazi mass killings were the disabled, and that its personnel went on to establish and run the extermination camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. 

Three years earlier, when I first arrived in Germany, I was consistently confronted with the treatment of those with disabilities under the Third Reich. But I soon realized I had to go back even farther. In the 1920s, the disabled were mistreated, sterilized, experimented on and killed in some German psychiatric institutions. In 1920, the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and the jurist Karl Binding published their treatise, “Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life,” which became the blueprint for the exterminations of the disabled carried out by the Third Reich. 

I am also Jewish. At the Karl Bonhoeffer psychiatric hospital in the Berlin suburb of Wittenau, where the exhibition “A Double Stigma: The Fate of Jewish Psychiatric Patients” was held, I learned about, as the exhibition title suggests, how Jewish patients were doubly stigmatized by being separated from other patients, denied pastoral care, and were cared for not at the expense of the Reich but by Jewish organizations. Jewish patients were singled out for early extermination; by December 1942, the destruction of the Jewish patient population at Wittenau was complete.

Nazi euthanasia victims

Fries explains why the history of the Nazi T4 euthanasia program important to us today:

Why is it important to know this history? We often say what happened in Nazi Germany couldn’t happen here. But some of it, like the mistreatment and sterilization of the disabled, did happen here.

A reading of Hoche and Binding’s “Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life” shows the similarity between what they said and what exponents of practical ethics, such as Peter Singer, say about the disabled today. As recently as 2015, Singer, talking with the radio host Aaron Klein on his show, said, “I don’t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments.” 

These philosophers talk about the drain on “resources” caused by lives lived with a disability, which eerily echoes what Hoche and Binding wrote about the “financial and moral burden” on “a person’s family, hospital, and state” caused by what they deem lives “unworthy of living.”

Many people think that these attitudes towards people with disabilities are in the past. Fries asks the question:

What kind of society do we want to be? Those of us who live with disabilities are at the forefront of the larger discussion of what constitutes a valued life. What is a life worth living? Too often, the lives of those of us who live with disabilities are not valued, and feared. At the root of this fear is misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and a lack of knowledge of disability history and, thus, disabled lives.

• Catherine Frazee: The Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program is part of my history as a disabled person.
• Brain tissue from Nazi euthanasia victims discovered at German research institute.
• Dr Peter Saunders: Lets not forget the lessons of history and the leading role doctors 
  played in the holocaust.
• Memorial to the T4 euthanasia program victims opens in Berlin.
• Historian Götz Aly: The Victims of Nazi Euthanasia Have Been Forgotten.

Where did Nazi doctors learn their ethics? From a textbook

This article was written by Michael Cook and published by Mercatornet on May 2, 2017. 

Note from Alex Schadenberg:
Many people are concerned about the influence that Peter Singer has had on bioethics. When you read this article, you will agree that your concerns about Peter Singer are valid. 

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind of ethics. 

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind - See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/19727#sthash.oTesqVGv.dpuf

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind - See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/19727#sthash.oTesqVGv.dpuf

Physician Karl Brandt (center)

By Michael Cook

German medicine under Hitler resulted in so many horrors – eugenics, human experimentation, forced sterilization, involuntary euthanasia, mass murder – that there is a temptation to say that “Nazi doctors had no ethics.”

However, according to an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Florian Bruns and Tessa Chelouche (from Germany and Israel, respectively), this was not the case at all.

In fact, medical ethics was an important part of the curriculum for German medical students between 1939 and 1945. Nazi officials established lectureships in every medical school in Germany for a subject called “Medical Law and Professional Studies” (MLPS).

There was no lack of ethics. It was just the wrong kind of ethics.

The focus of the scholars’ study is Rudolf Ramm, a German general practitioner who became the pre-eminent purveyor of Nazi medical ethics during the War years. He was an ardent anti-Semite who demanded a “complete solution to the Jewish Question in Europe” and a “radical elimination of the Jews.”

Ramm was editor-in-chief of the journal of the German Medical Association, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, and published a textbook, Ärztliche Rechts- Standeskunde (Medical Law and Health). The textbook sold out within a year.

Ramm did not survive to be a defendant in the famous “doctors trial” in 1947. He was tried and shot by the Soviets in August 1945. His book was banned a few months later.

What did medical students learn during the Nazi era? According to Bruns and Chelouche, it was “the unequal worth of human beings, the moral imperative of preserving a pure Aryan people, the authoritarian role of the physician, the individual’s obligation to stay healthy, and the priority of public health over individual-patient care.”

However repugnant this now sounds, Ramm believed that the Nazi ideology was responsible for the “reinstatement of a high level of professional ethics.” He was delighted that “the profession had been extensively cleansed of politically unreliable elements foreign to our race” (that is, German-Jewish physicians).

Bruns and Chelouche sum up the pillars of his ethics as follows:

Ramm saw 3 distinct dangers facing the German people: “racial miscegenation,” a declining birthrate, and the “growth of inferior elements” in the German population. He traced the origins of these perceived dangers to a “disregard for the laws of nature,” caused by church dogma and socialist ideologies. Ramm denounced any form of health care for “hereditarily inferior” people and asserted that every person in Nazi Germany had a moral duty to stay healthy.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see Nazi “medical ethics” for what they are: a flimsy rationalisation to allow physicians to participate in imposing the rule of the Third Reich upon Europe. Their collaboration with the regime was shameful, to say nothing of the horrors of experimentation on unwilling prisoners and mass extermination.

But Bruns and Chelouche are less interested in raking over the coals than in drawing lessons for today’s doctors. Doctors must resist the temptation to believe that they are much more ethical than in “the bad old days,” they observe. Ethical standards do not always progress; sometimes they can regress.

In fact, in the Weimar Republic, ethical standards for human experimentation were “remarkably advanced,” they write. In 1931 the government had responded to scandals in medical practice by setting down clear guidelines. In some respects, they were even stricter than the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics which was adopted after World War II. Non-therapeutic research was “under no circumstances permissible without consent,” a cost-benefit analysis and animal experimentation were required to minimize the risk to humans; publication of results had to respect human dignity, and so on.

So the Nazi doctors could hardly plead ignorance of humane ethical standards. In fact, the authorities did not even bother to repeal the Weimar legislation. They simply redefined the subject of experimentation to exclude concentration camp inmates.

Bruns and Chelouche conclude with this warning:

It is important to realize that ethical reasoning can be corrupted and that teaching ethics is, in itself, no guarantee of the moral integrity of physicians. The history of bioethics reveals that the professional ethos of physicians is more fragile than we might believe because it depends on the moral zeitgeist and politico-social circumstances, both of which are subject to change …

Today’s danger is imposing extreme individualism upon medical practice so that ethics is defined by the single standard of autonomy. As long as a patient acts “autonomously,” with informed consent, anything goes: from abortion, to self-mutilating surgery, to euthanasia.

And in the name of this ideology, every kind of injustice can be rationalised. Today, as in Nazi Germany, the medical profession is in danger of being purged of “politically unreliable elements” – conscientious objectors.

But autonomy is only one dimension of human well-being. It is compatible with loneliness, unhappiness, physical suffering, cruelty, and anti-social behaviour – as Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada are discovering while legal euthanasia expands its reach.

In many cases, today’s medical ethicists looking for examples of corrupt ethical reasoning need not google for images of Rudolf Ramm; they can simply take a selfie.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. This appeared at mercatornet.com and is reposted with permission.

The Dutch concern with international scrutiny of euthanasia law.

Paul Russell published this article on the Hope Australia website on April 25 under the title: The Dutch Mouse that Roared.

Paul Russell

Paul Russell, the Director of Hope Australia.

Public challenges to the zeitgeist on euthanasia are rare in the Netherlands. The practice of deliberately killing patients in Holland has a long history reaching back more than thirty years. The Dutch, like their Belgian neighbours, have grown used to the idea. Promotion of the practice through sympathetic propaganda on prime time television and even a euthanasia film festival a few years ago have served the agenda to normalise the practice.

This has lead some commentators to suggest that everything is going just fine and dandy in the Low Countries, supposing that the cultural acceptance of euthanasia is a sign that the practice is entirely under control. The lack of political opposition has been cited by the likes of Peter Singer in an attempt to confirm this. This is thinking in a bubble: it ignores the realities that what is legal becomes broadly accepted as being moral and that repeal or reform is incredibly difficult in such circumstances.

But opposition does exist and has always existed. Principally held by disenfranchised voices, there is nevertheless significant disquiet in many quarters; exemplified by the public declarations of people like Professor Theo Boer who once supported the Dutch law but has changed his mind under close observation of developments in recent years.

One would think that, in such circumstances and in a society noted for its tolerance, that the occasional roar of a mouse against the zeitgeist would be simply noted and then largely ignored. Not so if the recent declarations by the Reformed Political Party (SGP) at their annual convention are anything to go by.

The SGP is Holland's oldest political party. Confessionally Calvinist, they have been a consistent yet very small player in the Dutch Parliament currently holding three seats in the Dutch House of Representatives (out of 150) and being one of thirteen parties in that chamber.

At their national convention this week in Hoevelaken, party leader, Kees van der Staaij, took the SGP's longstanding opposition to Dutch Euthanasia Laws to a new level. Van der Staaij wants to fuel the international concern about Dutch euthanasia through the production of an English language documentary on Dutch euthanasia practice so as to engage the international anglophone media.

"Van der Staaij says people are shocked abroad when he says that it is used in the Netherlands (for) euthanasia on people with mental illness and dementia. He also claims that this happens "without being able to explain at the time that they really want, and without a court is involved." (see, for example, the recent Dutch nursing home dementia case)

The Dutch Euthanasia organisation NVVE are not amused. But instead of ignoring the SGP commentary - as would any rational organisation confident of its position and confident that such a call would simply fade into obscurity - the NVVE and others have fought back in the media. Is there something to hide here? Is the NVVE cultural reign on shaky ground?

The NVVE railed against the SGP in the Dutch media claiming that they are putting Dutch euthanasia policy in a 'deliberately bad light'. Full marks there. Spokesperson, Dick Bosscher cited support from 'sister' organisations around the globe to somehow claim that the international opinion of the Dutch death regime is somehow positive.

Another commentator, Rik de Jong, claimed that van der Staaij had 'crossed a line' by seeking to expose the Dutch regime internationally. Somehow, according to de Jong, it is acceptable for the SGP to hold a Christian perspective on the issue and to make a 'constructive contribution' to debate; but clearly not to rattle the cage internationally: keep 'the opinion of foreign conservatives outside'!

So what's the problem? If everything is above board, if there are no problems, if there are no abuses, surely there is a robust defence of the Dutch euthanasia laws from within the polity and the public that can stand such scrutiny?

Maybe not!

• Netherlands 2016 euthanasia deaths increased by 10% again.
• Netherlands review committee says that forced euthanasia of woman with dementia was done in "good faith".

Euthanizing Children

This article was written by Wesley Smith and published by First Things on October 14, 2016

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

The death of a terminally ill seventeen-year-old boy made headlines recently, as Belgium’s first case of child euthanasia. I don’t understand the sudden fuss. The Netherlands has long allowed minors to request and receive euthanasia: Dutch children down to age sixteen can receive euthanasia without their parents’ consent, and children can be killed by doctors with parental consent starting at age twelve.

Perhaps Belgium’s euthanasia law has received this recent media attention because it has no age limits, instead requiring that a minor demonstrate a capacity to make autonomous decisions before receiving assisted suicide.

Think about this: Children who can’t enter into legal contracts, get tattooed, or be licensed to drive a car may request—and receive—death.

The healthcare system doesn’t dole out death only to teens and preteens. In the Netherlands, doctors commit infanticide against babies born with serious disabilities or terminal illnesses with impunity, even though the practice remains technically illegal. Indeed, doctors at the Groningen University Medical Center felt so safe committing infanticide that they published the Groningen Protocol, a bureaucratic checklist to help determine whether a baby is killable.

The protocol permits doctors to administer lethal injections to infants under three scenarios:

1. the baby has no chance of survival (a circumstance that is sometimes misdiagnosed);
2. the baby “may survive after a period of intensive treatment but expectations for their future are very grim”;
3. the baby does “not depend on technology for physiologic stability” but has “suffering [that] is severe, sustained, and cannot be alleviated.”

This means that doctors are lethally injecting not only babies who are dying, but also babies with serious disabilities who do not need intensive care—those who are living what is sometimes called an “unlivable life” by Dutch infanticide apologists. The Groningen Protocol was published without criticism in the New England Journal of Medicine.

But babies don’t have decisional capacity. Thus, in order to maintain the pretense that euthanasia is about “choice,” the protocol requires parental consent. That, however, opens the door to all kinds of horrors. One can easily envision parents deciding that they would be better off without a disabled child for whom they would have to provide ongoing care. After all, such decisions are ubiquitous involving later-term abortions of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Moreover, according to a study published in The Lancet in 1997—admittedly, before the protocol was crafted—some 21 percent of babies killed by doctors responding to the authors’ questionnaires had been euthanized without parental consent.

I guess we should be pleased that the euthanasia death of a seventeen-year-old remains at least mildly controversial. But it is clear that the culture of death, if allowed to progress further, will eventually consider such deaths routine. That is why I was completely unsurprised that Princeton University’s Peter Singer, who believes it should be acceptable kill babies because (in his view) they are not “persons,” came to the Belgian law’s defense.

Singer assures us that the law “effectively excludes very small children.” But why would the age of the euthanized be of any significance to Singer, given that he supports not only infanticide but also the non-voluntary euthanasia of adults who have lost decisional capacity? Moreover, Singer believesthat children do not attain “full moral status” until “after two years” of age—implying they too could be killed, although he is too politically savvy to support such a public policy.

Singer also grapples—poorly—with the fact that children he thinks should be allowed to choose to die can’t make other adult decisions:

Age limits are always to some extent arbitrary. Chronological age and mental age can diverge. For some activities for which a mental age limit may be relevant, the number of people engaging in the activity is very large: voting, obtaining a driving license, and having sex, for example. But it would be very costly to scrutinize whether every person interested in those activities has the capacity to understand what is involved in voting, driving responsibly, or giving informed consent to sex. That is why we rely on chronological age as a rough indication of the relevant mental capacity.

This is not true of minors requesting euthanasia. If the number of those who meet the requirements of the law is so small that Belgium has had only one case over the past two years, it is not difficult to carry out a thorough examination of these patients’ capacities to make such a request.

Please. There are plenty of minors who could be shown in court to have the decision-making capacity that allows Belgian youngsters to receive death, and yet who are still considered rape victims when they have consensual sex with an adult. The issue isn’t the cost or difficulty of measuring maturity, but the defining need to protect all minors from harmful choices.

Here’s the bottom line. Euthanasia consciousness isn’t really about “choice.” Nor is it about terminal illness. Rather, euthanasia proponents see killing and suicide as acceptable answers to human suffering and acceptable means of reducing costs of care. Publicizing the euthanasia of a seventeen-year-old marks the beginning of a campaign to normalize putting dying (and eventually disabled) children to sleep.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His new book Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine was just published by Encounter Books.

Assisted Suicide - A lifestyle choice?

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Bill Peace PhD teaches at Syracuse University.

Disability rights leader and academic, Bill Peace, recently wrote an article concerning the assisted suicide death party by Betsy Davis. Davis. It is culturally significant that some media outlets turned her death party into celebration turning assisted suicide into a culturally "cool" act.

Peace states in his article:

No physician could force a patient to accept a feeding tube. No physician could force a patient to use a ventilator. These are choices Davis chose to make. At any point after she was diagnosed with ALS she had the choice to refuse treatment. Physicians could be opposed to Davis refusal to utilize life extending care but that would be her choice. The operative word here is choice. Davis made many choices post ALS diagnosis. In June of this year Davis made the choice to live long long enough to end her life via assisted suicide. She made these choices and many more. But there is a difference between making these choices and her human rights. Choice are not the equivalent to rights. Given the severity of ALS any one of a number of choices Davis made could have led to her death. Instead, she made a choice to die a very public and misleading death. In her effort to advocate for assisted suicide legislation she has had predecessors who also had public deaths on behalf of Compassion and Choices. The emotional rhetoric found in tabloids such as People sells. Sympathetic television news segments generate ratings. Again, this misleading emotional made for mass media consumption works. The fact it is wrong is lost in the flow of tears. I too cry but not for Davis but for all those whose lives are at risk. 

Having been through the medical mill as a morbidly sick child and narrowly escaping death from a severe wound that took over a year to heal, I will readily admit I have suffered. That suffering has taken the form of gut wrenching pain and serious debilitating depression. Suffering is decidedly unpleasant but to expect to avoid suffering throughout one's life is not realistic. I do my best to avoid suffering but I can freely states I have suffered far more the average human being. Not to revert to my Catholic upbringing but I can state with certainty that suffering has made me a stronger human being. In an effort to eliminate suffering we are being foolish. I don't want others to suffer but like it or not all humans will suffer. Suffering is part of the human condition. The effort to avoid suffering is understandable but unrealistic and there is more than a bit of narcissism involved. Hence the death selfie. 

I am sure my words will be met with disgust by those who support assisted suicide legislation. How dare I criticize a person's "right to die". How dare I impose my beliefs on others. Some will proclaim I am an opponent of individual freedom. Others will proclaim I want to undermine autonomy. This makes good fodder for debate. Typical others thoroughly enjoy such a debate. A perfect example of such a "good natured debate" can be found the edited volume Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy. Read Chapter 22 and the exchange between Eva Kittay, Jeff McMahon, and Peter Singer that illustrates we are talking about a two tiered morality in which some lives have more value than others. I know this two tiered system all too well. Most of my life typical others have made it abundantly clear my life is inherently less. Paralysis is a fate worse than death. My body in Davis estimation has been entombed. This viewpoint is wildly wrong. I know this. Liz Carr knows this. My paralyzed peers know this. My blind and deaf friends know this. Our ability to thrive in the face of a myriad of bodily deficits should be celebrated as human adaptation at its finest. Instead, we get the message loud and clear. We are inherently less human. We are a burden. We are a drain on limited health care resources. All things considered, it would be in the best interest of society if we did live. This is couched in polite language of course. Everyone is kind to the handicapped. We cripples are special. We have your best interests in mind I am told. When I hear these words, "we have your best interests in mind", I am certain of one thing: I shudder in fear and get as far away as humanly possible from the person that uttered those dangerous words. Believe me, I can take care of myself. I have thrived in a hostile world for over 35 years. Don't be fooled by emotional rhetoric surrounding the right to die. See it for what it is. Needlessly premature death to lives worth living.

Peace recognizes that legalizing and now promoting assisted suicide will effect the attitudes towards people with disabilities. The Betsy Davis campaign is part of a plan to turn assisted suicide from a criminal act of medical killing to a cultural "avant garde" act.

Not Dead Yet (NDY) Celebrating 20 Years in the Fight for Our Lives

This article was published by Not Dead Yet on April 26, 2016.

Dear Disability Rights Supporter:

Twenty years ago, on April 27th, at a disability rights gathering in Dallas, Bob Kafka, one of the leaders of ADAPT, said to me, “I’ve got a name for your group.” For years, ADAPT had been supportive of disability advocacy to challenge the assisted suicide movement and other deadly forms of medical discrimination. With the increasing popularity of “Dr. Death” Jack Kevorkian, whose body count was mainly people with disabilities who were not terminally ill, there had been growing talk of a street action group like ADAPT to address this critical threat to our lives. So, from a running gag in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Bob suggested “Not Dead Yet.” On that day, as over 40 disability rights leaders from across the country signed onto Congressional Subcommittee testimony co-authored by Carol Gill and myself, Not Dead Yet (NDY) began.

The struggle against assisted suicide was about to take a dramatic turn. On June 21, 1996, NDY activists held our first direct action, picketing outside the Michigan cottage where Kevorkian was known to stay. The AP newswire carried a photo of the protest, the first media notice of our opposition. Three years later, when Jack Kevorkian was finally back in a Michigan courtroom, on trial for one of his self-confessed assisted killings, disabled activists appeared for the first time to call for the equal protection of the law, to demand that the court and jury “Jail Jack,” and to declare before the court and the public at large that we were “Not Dead Yet.”

The presence of disabled activists at this fifth Kevorkian trial finally led to a murder conviction, and announced to the world the movement of disabled people against the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Supported by a 1997 position statement by the National Council on Disability, a Resolution adopted by the membership of the National Council on Independent Living, and positions taken by many major disability rights groups, Not Dead Yet continued the struggle against assisted suicide, euthanasia, and other discriminatory ending-of-life practices into the new millennium. According to the Patients’ Rights Council, more than 175 assisted suicide legislative proposals in more than 35 states were defeated between 1994 and 2015; only four such laws have passed. NDY has built a network of activists throughout the country that has responded, over and over again, to educate legislators about the dangerous public policy of state-sanctioned selective killing.

In addition to direct action tactics, Not Dead Yet has continued using the full array of advocacy strategies, including filing friend-of-the-court briefs in over ten cases, two with the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to briefs arguing against a constitutional right to assisted suicide, NDY has filed briefs in support of efforts to protect people with disabilities from involuntary withholding of life sustaining medical treatment by guardians or health providers, and in support of regulations protecting the right of disabled newborns to medical treatment.

Though less high profile, NDY’s more traditional efforts to influence public policy are an important part of our work, as well. By submitting detailed public comments on proposed governmental and quasi-governmental policies, NDY has opposed disability discrimination in protocols for procuring donated organs, physician orders on life-sustaining treatment, implementation of the Affordable Care Act, best practice guidelines in adult protective services, advance care planning and related educational materials, and much more.

NDY has made a lot of progress in 20 years. We are now a “go to” source for media outlets looking for quotes on the issue of assisted suicide. We have cultivated and lived up to our reputation for the highest standards of integrity and intellectual rigor. We have distinguished ourselves and our positions from that of the faith community, and earned the grudging respect of our opponents. And we remain the articulate and principled voice of disability rights opposition to the legalization of medical killing.

Though Kevorkian is gone, we still have to contend with death-advocates like Peter Singer and the mainstream bioethicists who agree with him, with the well-funded PR campaigns of assisted suicide advocates, and a never ending stream of public policy initiatives that need our perspective on living well with disabilities. Time has already taken from us many invaluable members and allies along the way, yet those still here will continue as long as we are Not Dead Yet.

On this, the 20th anniversary of the founding of NDY, we’re asking you to join us in renewing our pledge to prevent the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, through the courts, the legislatures, the ballot box, and public policy. There are many ways you can help.

1. Donate to NDY. Five bucks or five hundred bucks. We promise to steward it well and put it right back into the fight!
2. Pro Bono Attorneys. We have regular need for attorneys to help us file briefs, assist individuals whose life-sustaining care is threatened, and lend their smarts to other legal matters, and we would love to build up our network of supportive attorneys across the country. Let us know if you might be willing for us to call on you from time to time to see if you can help us out in your state!
3. Community Organizers. Whether it’s advocacy at the statehouse or a protest at an assisted suicide or bioethics conference, we’d love to hear from you if you’re willing to join us as a participant or organizer when the rubber meets the road!
4. Letters to the Editor. Has the assisted suicide fight come to your state in full swing? NDY’s got a great online toolkit to help you sound like the policy buff you really are on this topic and help give you fodder for writing a letter to the editor the next time your hometown paper touts the proposed bill’s virtues! (Be sure to write us and tell us if your letter is published!)
5. Coalition Support. Do you lead a nonprofit that would love to partner with NDY on activities related to issues like assisted suicide, “futile care” policies, surrogate healthcare decision-making, equal rights in organ donation, or just learn more about them?
6. Become an Online Foot Soldier. You already told us you love us, so like NDY on Facebook, subscribe to our blog, and follow us on Twitter to help signal boost our message to help us get the disability perspective out there on assisted suicide and other health care issues.
7. Send Us Your Stories. S/he who hath the best arguments does not always prevail. We have always felt we have the data on our side in our arguments, but that doesn’t always sway policymakers. We need stories to share that will drive our points home and give them a personal face. If you have a story (yourself, a loved one, friend or client) you think could benefit our advocacy, please send it our way!

Together we can build a society where the threat of assisted suicide and euthanasia no longer hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of disabled people seeking medical assistance, and where disabled people have truly equal life choices.

Sincerely,

Diane Coleman                                                Anne Sommers
Founder, President and CEO                            Board Chair

Better off dead? What Peter Singer doesn't get about disability and euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Last week Peter Singer, the bioethicist from Princeton University debated Anthony Fisher the Archbishop of Sydney Australia. Singer, who has published books supporting euthanasia, assisted suicide and infanticide, faced strong criticism from the disability rights community.

Today, Craig Wallace, the convenor of Lives Worth Living, a disability advocacy group speaking out about euthanasia and eugenics, and is the president of People with Disability Australia (PWDA), was published by Crickey with an article explaining why the disability rights movement opposes Singer's philosophy and why they oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Craig Wallace speaking to the media

Wallace explains:

If proponents of voluntary euthanasia were looking to reassure us that legalised suicide would, in fact, be voluntary and not about people with disabilities, they chose the wrong standard bearer. Singer is consistently on the record supporting infanticide of babies with certain disabilities. In his book Practical Ethics, Singer argues the case for selective infanticide. He believes it unfair that:  

“At present parents can choose to keep or destroy their disabled offspring only if the disability happens to be detected during pregnancy. There is no logical basis for restricting parents’ choice to these particular disabilities. If disabled newborn infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after birth it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant’s condition than is possible before birth.” 

Singer may not be “poised, needle in hand” ready to plunge it into the arm of the nearest disabled person. It is, nonetheless, difficult to stick to topic when a person who thinks it might have been a good idea to “destroy” you as a child offers you a whisky shot glass and a pistol in latter days. Forgive us for having trust issues.

Wallace challenges the euthanasia lobby that if euthanasia is mean't to be truly voluntary and not about disability, why don't they define the laws in that way?

If euthanasia is truly only about forestalling the excruciating final hours of people with conditions like end-stage cancer, then why not list the illnesses that are covered in clear diagnostic terms 

Because euthanasia legislation consistently defines eligibility through terms like “terminal or irremediable illnesses” the extent of coverage remains opaque.
When does a condition become terminal, exactly? Most medical practitioners would say that a disability like mine shortens the lifespan. There is no clearly defined boundary between a shortened life span and a terminal illness. 

When is a condition “irremediable”? Many disabilities are permanent and a person might be unable to move, eat, walk or shower without the support of another person. I know many people with disabilities that look like this. And, at the time they acquired their disabilities, they have told me they want to die.

Wallace explains that his opposition to euthanasia is not based on a religious belief but rather societal attitudes towards people with disabilities.

I oppose introducing euthanasia in a toxic climate. Much of the discourse around disability positions us as better off dead. You do not have to look hard to find people advocating involuntary sterilisation and minimising parental homicides of people with disabilities. You also do not have to look hard to find stories — including on the front pages of daily newspapers — that label all of us as slackers and a drain on society.

Liz Carr

Wallace ends his article by emphasizing that people with disabilities are seeking to live with dignity, they are not seeking euthanasia. 

Well, life gets better for many people with disabilities, too. And that happens when we remove abuse, end discrimination, eliminate access barriers and receive the right supports. Commenting on the recent debate on legislation before Parliament in the United Kingdom, Silent Witness actress and disability campaigner Liz Carr put it well when she said that “what disabled people need is an assisted living, not an assisted dying bill”. 

For some of us in Australia, the assisted living part needs to get a lot better. Australia is still at the early stages of implementing a National Disability Insurance Scheme, which will provide the most basic help to hundreds of thousands of people with disability, up until now denied any kind of support. 

As Stella Young put it: conversations about dying with dignity are important. But we must first ensure we’re all able to live with dignity.

Previous articles by Craig Wallace:

• Nitschke: The fallout and the problem with the few.
• Disability leader comments on euthanasia round table in Australia.

Disability Activists Urge Princeton University to Denounce Professor Peter Singer’s Comments and Call for His Resignation

This Press Release was published on the Not Dead Yet website.

[For a PDF formatted version of this press release, go here.]

Princeton, NJ (PRWEB) June 09, 2015

Disability rights activists from Pennsylvania Not Dead Yet and New Jersey centers for independent living, as well as groups representing parents of people with disabilities, will be marching to Princeton University and holding a protest on June 10, 2015. Activists want Princeton to publicly denounce recent statements by Professor Peter Singer, promoting ending the lives of disabled infants through denial of health care, and for Princeton to take other steps to address what the activists describe as Singer’s “hate speech” toward disabled people.

“Since about 1980, Singer has promoted public policy that would legalize the killing of disabled infants in the first month of life,” said Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet’s research analyst and expert on Singer. “More recently, he has expanded his position in the context of health care rationing.”

In 2009, the New York Times Magazine published an article by Singer titled ‘Why We Must Ration Health Care.’ In the article Singer spoke hypothetically of assigning a life with quadriplegia as roughly half that of a life without any disability at all. On this basis, Singer laid out a case for denying health care to people with significant disabilities on the basis that these lives have less value than the lives of nondisabled people. A response signed by 20 disability rights organizations was submitted to the magazine, criticizing the decision to seek out Singer as an analyst of healthcare and for the specific content of the article.

“This was probably Peter Singer’s most direct assault on the value of the lives of people with physical disabilities past the age of infancy,” said Drake.

On April 26, 2015 on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” Singer again rationalized the killing of disabled infants. Three days later, the National Council on Disability, a council appointed by the U.S. President to provide advice on disability policy, issued a press statement on Singer’s comments during the show. According to the NCD release:

Singer told Klein that health care rationing is already happening, and surmised that hospitals routinely make decisions not based on need, but rather on cost. He then used the presumed practice to rationalize the killing of disabled infants by arguing in support of “non-voluntary euthanasia” for human beings who Singer contends are not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including “severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved.”

In addition, Not Dead Yet issued a petition to Princeton through change.org.

Peter Singer: Don’t Care for Disabled Babies.

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on May 11.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Peter Singer is a bigot. Rather than believing in universal human equality, he would invidiously measure the capacities of human beings to determine whether they are “persons.”

Those with insufficient capacities, are to be deemed human “non-persons,” are to be viewed of lesser moral value, and hence, potentially subject to both killing and objectification for harvesting, medical experimentation, etc.

He also supports health care rationing based on quality of life. This blatant medical discrimination would victimize babies born with severe disabilities–whose care, Singer argues, should not be paid by national health insurance schemes.

The National Council on Disability is not amused. From its press release:

On Sunday April 16, contentious Princeton Professor Peter Singer, once again argued that it is “reasonable” for the government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to infants with disabilities. Singer’s remarks were made on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” which is broadcast on New York’s AM 970 and Philadelphia 990 AM. 

In the interview, which was perhaps ironically conducted as part of a press tour Singer is currently on promoting his new book about charities, “The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically,” the professor advocated the shocking claim that health care laws like the Affordable Care Act should be more overt about rationing and that we should acknowledge the necessity of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.” 

“Mr. Charity” then makes an uncharitable utilitarian assertion:

Without offering any concrete measure on how quality of life could or should be determined, Singer admitted, “I don’t want my health insurance premiums to be higher so that infants who can experience zero quality of life can have expensive treatments.” 

The NDC makes a point about Singer that is also lost to the media slavishly pushing assisted suicide/euthanasia, which also threatens the lives and bodily integrity of people with disabilities:

Increasingly, negative predictions of quality of life have little to do with the actual life experiences of people with disabilities. People with disabilities commonly report more satisfaction with their lives than others might expect. Though it might surprise Singer and those with limited imaginations, even people with disabilities who encounter obstacles, prejudice, and discrimination, derive satisfaction and pleasure from their lives.

As the Belgian Euthanasia Turns: Stay of execution (euthanasia) for Belgian rapist.

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on January 5.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

What a soap opera.

The planned euthanasia killing of the Belgian murderer and rapist has been put on hold because the death doctor came down with an unexplained case of cold feet. From the De Staandard story (Google translation):

Frank Van Den Bleeken Sunday will not get euthanasia because of unbearable psychological suffering. Reported the Minister of Justice Koen Geens. The doctors who would assist in the Van Den Bleeken euthanasia procedure have dropped out. 

Minister of Justice Koen Geens late Frank Van Den Bleeken transferring Turnhout to the recently launched forensic psychiatric center (FPC) in Ghent. This center is not suitable for long stays, but for people who can be integrated into society. There Bleeken Van Den will be observed. 

The idea is an observation with a view to the appropriate treatment or the development of a custom care process. If our country would not prove possible treatment, Van Den Bleeken is probably transferred to the Netherlands.

I suspect this planned killing came too close to capital punishment, so disdained in Western Europe. Hence, a rare bout of conscience among Belgian death doctors.

It’s all so surreal. Let’s recap the current state of Belgian euthanasia, shall we?

• Euthanasia for a botched sex change surgery? Yes!
• Euthanasia of the mentally ill coupled with organ harvesting? Yes!
• Euthanasia of psychiatric patient sexually exploited by her psychiatrist? Yes!

But so far, no quasi-capital punishment. We’ll see if this shaky death boundary sticks.