The great Diane Coleman has died. She has left an amazing legacy.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

It is very sad news to announce that the great Diane Coleman has died. Diane founded Not Dead Yet in 1996 and was the President and CEO of Not Dead Yet until her death. The fact that other Not Dead Yet organizations world-wide were founded in conjunction with Not Dead Yet in America proves that her activities had world-wide significance.

I have always had incredible respect for Diane's direction, understanding of the issues and her leadership skills. Diane led a group of people who differed greatly and yet she effectively enabled them to work together.

Not Dead Yet, under Diane's leadership, was the most effective organization in preventing the spread of assisted suicide in America.

Diane and Stephen Drake

Diane Coleman and Stephen Drake spoke at some of the earlier EPC conferences that Not Dead Yet co-sponsored.

Not Dead Yet were incredibly successful in helping defeat the Massachusetts assisted suicide voter initiative in 2012. Diane worked with John Kelly to establish Second Thoughts Connecticut as the disabilitity rights voice - voting NO on question 2. This decision was a decisive factor in the defeat of the assisted suicide voter initiative in 2012.

Diane and Not Dead Yet effectively lobbied state legislators in multiple jurisdictions. Just to mention a few, Diane and Not Dead Yet, lobbied politicians in New Hampshire to defeat SB 170 in 2013, she supported attempts to reverse assisted suicide Baxter decision in Montana, opposed assisted suicide bills in New Jersey, opposing an assisted suicide court decision in New Mexico, assisted suicide bills in California, (California 2), opposing New York assisted suicide bills, and New York assisted suicide court cases, Deleware assisted suicide bills, Hawaii assisted suicide bills, Maine assisted suicide bill, 

Diane wrote articles that were published in newspapers throughout American. Here is are links to some of those articles: (Link 1), (Link 2), (Link 3), (Link 4), (Link 5), (Link 6), (Link 7), (Link 8).

Diane and Not Dead Yet continued to organize protests. One of the more memorable protests was the one at the World Federation of Right to Die Societies Conference in Chicago in September 2014. Not Dead Yet organized an effective protest of the Me Before You disability snuff film and a protest against the Colorado assisted suicide bill.

Diane lobbied the American Medical Association to maintain its policy opposing assisted suicide. She explained to medical students why assisted suicide was wrong, she lobbied the US federal government, and provided expert analysis of assisted suicide laws in America.

Diane and Not Dead Yet were involved with the discriminatory Covid 19 rules. Links to the articles (Link 1), (Link 2).

Not Dead Yet is also a central part of the litigation to overturn the California assisted suicide law (Link).

Diane Coleman was involved with much more than I have linked to in this article, but I decided to limit it for readability.

Not Dead Yet will continue to be a key group opposing assisted suicide. Diane Coleman will be a hard act to follow, but her leadership and focus enabled future generations of Not Dead Yet leaders to follow the direction that has been established.

Covid-19 reveals a deadly failure of priorities.

This article was published by the disability rights group, Not Dead Yet on March 17, 2020

Diane Coleman

By Diane Coleman
President and CEO of Not Dead Yet

With the looming and imminent threat of insufficient hospital and ICU beds, medical equipment and healthcare staff, I found myself recalling an old favorite TV show from my college years. MASH (mobile army surgical hospital) created both comedy and drama around the reality of having three operating room beds in an army tent on the war front in South Korea. Triage was part of the routine, determining who gets on the operating table first, and who gets the best surgeon (Hawkeye) of the four in the unit. Now and then, when the frontlines had faced a heavy attack and massive casualties poured in, the plot explicitly focused on triage situations. Hawkeye always struggled to do the right thing.

COVID-19 is leading to more and more news reports on the fast approaching reality that the demand for hospital beds and ventilators will exceed supply. New York’s Governor Cuomo was carried on MSNBC yesterday and today, discussing this crisis.

A few years ago, NDY’s research analyst, Stephen Drake (aka my husband, now retired), reviewed New York’s Ventilator Allocation Guidelines, released in 2015. The pandemic guidelines operate on the principles of triage.

The primary goal of the Guidelines is to save the most lives in an influenza pandemic where there are a limited number of available ventilators. To accomplish this goal, patients for whom ventilator therapy would most likely be lifesaving are prioritized. The Guidelines define survival by examining a patient’s short-term likelihood of surviving the acute medical episode and not by focusing on whether the patient may survive a given illness or disease in the longterm (e.g., years after the pandemic). Patients with the highest probability of mortality without medical intervention, along with patients with the smallest probability of mortality with medical intervention, have the lowest level of access to ventilator therapy. Thus, patients who are most likely to survive without the ventilator, together with patients who will most likely survive with ventilator therapy, increase the overall number of survivors.

Within the hospital environment, ventilators would be allocated and, if necessary, re-allocated as the pandemic proceeds. Importantly, the guidelines state:

In its consideration to protect vulnerable populations, i.e., ventilator-dependent chronic care patients, the Task Force determined that these individuals are subject to the clinical ventilator allocation protocol only if they arrive at an acute care facility for treatment.

It would be helpful if disability advocates determine whether similar guidelines exist in their state and, specifically, what they say, in order to inform their communities and ensure that individuals who use breathing support can make the best decisions for themselves if they get sick. (In my opinion, I should not go to an acute care facility if I get sick.)

It’s hard to disagree with the principle of maximizing the number of pandemic survivors but, nonetheless, a few things need to be said.

First, COVID-19 is not the only cause of the shortages we face. I’m on a New York Medicaid advocacy listserv in which one member quoted Judy Wessler, former head of the NY Commission on the Public’s Health System:

Let’s Remember That Since At Least 2006 There Has Been A Tremendous Push In New York State To Close Hospital Beds And Consolidate Hospitals. We Used To Have 4 Beds Per 1,000 And Now We Have Something Like 2.8 Beds Per 1,000. So Now We Have To Play Catch-Up.

Wessler was also quoted in a NY Post article entitled New York has thrown away 20,000 hospital beds, complicating coronavirus fight.

How many states have taken similar steps as they offload their healthcare responsibilities, letting managed care take over and allowing that industry to suck up around 20% of our healthcare dollars and put profits over people? So our shortage of beds and ventilators is not just caused by COVID-19 but also by unacceptable political and fiscal decisions made largely under the public radar.

Second, how will the idealized triage principles be implemented in practice? The NY guidelines call for a triage committee. It will not be the attending doctor. I don’t think we can count on the committee being composed only of doctors like the caring Hawkeye Pierce. And there will be a time crunch. The situation invites biases like ableism and racism to creep in.

Third, we already know that healthcare resources are denied based on disability bias under futility policies, denial of transplants and other practices reported in the National Council on Disability’s bioethics series. In this crisis, further devaluation of our lives is a real threat.

Not Dead Yet was among many organizations that signed onto a National Disability Rights Call To Action on March 3rd. We are all are trying to impress upon policymakers that our lives are valuable. We are not worth-less and we are not expendable!

This pandemic resource shortage will touch people who previously felt safe from healthcare rationing. How we treat people in need is a reflection of the priorities of the policymakers we elect. All too often, the voices of people with disabilities and other justice communities have been drowned out. Perhaps the unnecessary loss of life from this pandemic due to healthcare capacity limits will cause others to join with us in re-evaluating the priorities that got us here.

The Anonymous Three: Child euthanasia in Belgium and Elsewhere.

This article was published by the disability rights group Not Dead Yet on September 19, 2018

By Lisa Blumberg

The Belgium Federal Commission on the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia in its most recent report of Belgium euthanasia statistics stated that between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2017, three children died by lethal injection under the country’s euthanasia law. They was a nine year old with a brain tumor, an eleven year old with cystic fibrosis and a seventeen year old (probably a boy) with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. (1) 

We know nothing else about these persons. We don’t even know whether each of them had involved parents or if one or more had guardians. In both life and untimely death, they are reduced to age and general diagnosis. As individuals, they are given no backstory. They are profoundly anonymous.

It calls to mind that in 1980s America, infants who were denied basic medical care and nourishment due to disability were called “Baby Does”. (2)

Belgium’s euthanasia law, as amended in 2014, allows children of any age to opt for a lethal injection provided certain criteria are met. A doctor must state that the child is “in a hopeless medical situation of constant and unbearable suffering that cannot be eased and which will cause death in the short term.” Another doctor who is a psychiatrist must opine that the child understands what euthanasia is and is not “influenced by a third party”. Parental consent must be obtained.

These rules have been characterized as very strict (3) but they implicitly allow the two doctors and the parents to drive the process. A child can be killed if his doctor judges that he is embroiled in hopeless suffering and will die soon, the parents agree that the child would now be better off dead, and the child buys into this enough that the second doctor – who knows the judgment of the first doctor – can attest the child is acting of his own free will. (I call this the domino theory). Did something like this happen to any of the anonymous three? We just don’t know.

All the criteria are subjective. For example, what is the dividing line between a child being influenced in her decision and not being influenced? The Conversation Project in the U.S. suggests that one way to elicit a “seriously ill” child’s views on end-of-life care is to discuss heaven. (4) Will bringing up heaven when speaking about options influence a nine year old who may view heaven as Disneyworld? Might an eleven year old be influenced if she reads an article about how much it costs to treat kids like her? Would knowing that your parents would consent to euthanasia if you wanted it influence a seventeen year old? It is enough to make a psychiatrist’s head spin. What underlines a finding of constant suffering? Would a doctor ever equate the disability associated with a condition with suffering? Would suffering associated with a lack of pain management or with treatment delivered in a needlessly invasive way ever be erroneously attributed to the child’s condition rather than to a deficiency in medical practice? Until quite recently, babies were operated on without anesthesia in the United States.

Luc Proot, a member of the Belgian Commission, said in regard to each of the anonymous three, “I saw mental and physical suffering so overwhelming that I thought we did a good thing.” (5)

Some things are strange about this statement. It suggests that Proot met each of the kids. Instead, as part of his official role, he read the case file on each child after they died – case files written by the doctors involved in the euthanasias and whose identities like the identities of the children were withheld. (6)

Proot said “we did a good thing.” This seems like an acknowledgment that the children, rather than being beneficiaries of children’s rights and in charge of their destinies, were acted upon.

Lastly, there is no mention of the kids being close to death.

In Belgium, euthanasia is available to a wide swath of the adult population. To be sure, those with terminal illness can request the needle but so can people with two or more incurable conditions, neither of which is life threatening, as well as people with dementia or psychiatric disorders. In 2017 there were 375 cases of reported euthanasia of people whose deaths were not expected in the near future or 16.2% of all cases of reported euthanasia. (7)

With children though, euthanasia is supposed to be restricted to cases where death is near. There is no way to speculate on how far along the 9-year-old’s brain tumor was but there is a good chance that the 11-year-old and 17-year-old were not inevitably dying. Today, cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy are chronic, disabling diseases but with proper medical management, they don’t tend to be fatal in childhood. The median life expectancy of a child born in the United States with cystic fibrosis is now 43 years and that doesn’t factor in the scientific advances that are likely to occur. (8) Guys with Duchenne often live through their 30s and sometimes into their 40s and 50s. (9) To put this into context, the average life expectancy for men and women in the United States in 1917 was 48 and 54 years respectively and this was before the great influenza epidemic where average life expectancy really plummeted. (10)

Were their special circumstances leading the doctors of the eleven-year-old and the seventeen-year-old to conclude they were both close to death? We just don’t know. Had the children had access to reasonable and empathetic care for their condition? We just don’t know. Were these instances where the doctors conflated ongoing disability with a terminal state? We just don’t know.

Parents usually want the best for their offspring but it is naïve to assume that the need for parental consent is a foolproof safeguard. Doctors are authority figures. They steer parents just as parents steer their children. When Stephen Drake was born, the doctor who injured him through improper use of forceps told his parents that the odds were 100 to 1 against him living through the night, and the odds were a million to one against him not being a “vegetable” if he did survive. Stephen has written, “The odds the doctor cited for my survival and recovery were almost certainly made up on the spot and were aimed at getting my parents to ‘accept’ my death as a good, if not clearly inevitable, thing”. (11) Fortunately for us all, his parents rejected the suggestion but there may well have been other cases where this doctor succeeded in using a speculative prognosis to convince the parents to “let nature take its course.”

In the 1980’s, the groups who opposed any legal protections for disabled infants in hospitals -mainly medical groups – argued that parental autonomy was paramount. Nevertheless, one pediatrician told me that as long as she evidenced enough concern for child and family, she could generally get parents to agree to almost anything. She felt that parental autonomy was quite often a sham.

Of course, there have been cases like the Charlie Gard case in Britain where parents have indeed wanted life sustaining care for their child and have been opposed by doctors and hospitals.

Why was parental or guardian consent given for the euthanasia of the anonymous three? We just don’t know.

In the last analysis, all that can be said about the fate of the anonymous three is what Charles Lane said in his opinion piece in the Washington Post, “the Belgian public’s support for euthanasia remains undiminished. The precedent for euthanizing children has been established, and more will almost certainly receive lethal injections this year, next year and the year after that.”(12)

As for the Baby Doe controversy, it was never resolved, just submerged. Food, water and antibiotics in hospitals have been redefined as life support and extraordinary care, depending on the circumstances.

As a young professional woman in the 1980s, I had the wind knocked out of me when I learned there was no social consensus about the right of people with disabilities to survive early childhood. I would like to say to the young people with disabilities of today, there is a resistance. Older people with disabilities are working hard to make you safe in medical settings. We will be passing the torch to you.

FOOTNOTES

1. http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2018/08/euthanasia-in-belgium-social-experiment.html?utm_source=Euthanasia+Prevention+Coalition+Contacts&utm_campaign=bc1ff5964a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_31_02_01_COPY_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_105a5cdd2d-bc1ff5964a-198574557
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/children-are-being-euthanized-in-belgium/2018/08/06/9473bac2-9988-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?utm_term=.0310c1b7da8d
3. http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0700/0700ft1.html
4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-dies-by-euthanasia-in-belgium-where-assistance-in-dying-is-legal/
5. https://theconversationproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ConversationProject-StarterKit-Pediatric-English.pdf
6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/children-are-being-euthanized-in-belgium/2018/08/06/9473bac2-9988-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?utm_term=.0310c1b7da8d
7. Ibid.
8. http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2018/08/euthanasia-in-belgium-social-experiment.html?utm_source=Euthanasia+Prevention+Coalition+Contacts&utm_campaign=bc1ff5964a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_31_02_01_COPY_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_105a5cdd2d-bc1ff5964a-198574557
9. https://www.cff.org/CF-Community-Blog/Posts/2017/Survival-Trending-Upward-but-What-Does-This-Really-Mean/
10. https://www.mda.org/disease/duchenne-muscular-dystrophyhttps://www.google.com/search?ei=aH2aW-S0Os-izwKWjrrYBw&q=life+expectancy+1918&oq=life+expectancy+1918&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l2j0i22i30l8.85101.91288..96229…0.0..0.99.366.4……0….1..gws-wiz…….0i71.HU__69ZKIfI
11. http://notdeadyet.org/2012/03/stephens_story.html
12. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/children-are-being-euthanized-in-belgium/2018/08/06/9473bac2-9988-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?utm_term=.0310c1b7da8d

Disabled 8 year-old's death by organ donation is being investigated.

This article was published by the disability rights group, Not Dead Yet on June 15, 2017

Stephen Drake

By Stephen Drake

The LA Times is reporting that the death of a disabled 8-year-old boy in 2013 is currently under investigation by Los Angeles police and the DA office.

Back in 2013, Cole Hartman’s father found his son with his head submerged in their washing machine. Cole went into cardiac arrest, but paramedics were able to resuscitate him.

From the story:

Physicians at UCLA’s pediatric intensive care unit told Cole’s family that the child was not brain-dead but “would never recover normal neuro function and … could never awaken,” according to an entry in his medical chart. 

The Hartmans decided to take Cole off life support and donate his organs. He was removed from the ventilator and, 23 minutes later with his family at his bedside, pronounced dead by an anesthesiologist.

Before getting into why there’s an investigation into Cole’s death – and why it’s happening four years after his death – here’s some info on Donation after Cardiac Death (DCD), and what we call “rush to judgment.”

First, there are long established protocols regarding waiting times for recovery in brain injury cases, as were shared in this blog post:

I recently attended a medical ethics seminar held at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago that reaffirmed medical practice guidelines about brain injury. Doctors continue to agree that it is necessary to wait before they can predict brain injury outcomes with reasonable, though they also admit not total, certainty. For traumatic brain injury (e.g. car accidents), the waiting period is one year. For anoxic brain injury (e.g. stroke or heart attack), it’s three months.

And, experts say that children are more likely to recover from brain injury than adults, as discussed by doctors regarding the “end of life” case of Haleigh Poutre. Here are excerpts from a story by Joe Shapiro after 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre’s brush with an “end of life” judgment:

Dr. JANE O’BRIEN (Chief Medical Director, Franciscan Hospital for Children): Children’s brains are amazing. They are very plastic. There is often a lot of potential to reach levels that nobody expects. 

SHAPIRO: There are 39 children living on the inpatient unit. They’re kids but with a difference. Most depend upon some piece of technology. 

Dr. O’BRIEN: Many of them would have tracheostomy tubes or tubes that they need in order to breath. They might be attached to ventilators. Many of them rely on feeding tubes into their stomachs in order to get the nutrition that they need. 

SHAPIRO: Typically, a child stays at the hospital for about three months. 

Dr. O’BRIEN: People hear about children when they have accidents at the time because that’s often the newsworthy story. But most of the children who come into our hospital, go back out into the community and most of them, they’re able to go to school. They have much more recovery, I think, than most people realize is possible.

Also this:

SHAPIRO: Bernat’s a neurologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. He’s not the girl’s doctor. But he says its unusual to give up so quickly on a child. 

Dr. BERNAT: In this case this girl has been in a vegetative state for somewhat under five months from trumatic brain injury. And we know that those can recover in up to a year. Or sometimes too, people will spontaneously recover awareness.

(note: the state actually sued for treatment removal ten days after Poutre’s injuries – the court fight over the removal of treatment took five months.)

Final Exit Network - Exposé in the Atlantic magazine.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Atlantic Magazine published an exposé on the Final Exit Network (FEN) that appears to promote their "services." FEN is an association of groups and individuals who assist the suicides of others by counseling, providing advice and providing the means for suicide.

The Atlantic does interview Stephen Drake, from Not Dead Yet, who is the longest and one of the most active critics of the Final Exit Network. According to the Atlantic:

Others opponents include disability-rights groups and hospices. Critics of the right-to-die movement have called Final Exit Network extremist. Some have even called it a death cult. Others have accused the group of glorifying suicide. One such band of critics is Not Dead Yet—essentially the antithesis of Final Exit Network. Not Dead Yet “is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia,” according to its website. 

Stephen Drake, a Not Dead Yet research analyst—who dubbed Final Exit Network “the Tea Party of the right-to-die movement”—said most people are missing the bigger picture. “The fact of the matter is they have no idea if [exit guides] are following their policy,” Drake said. “Lots of people who contemplate suicide change their mind. … Why would people who are old, ill, or disabled not change their minds at the last moment?”  

... 

Drake’s sentiments are well echoed among critics of the network. Stephen Rosenbaum, who has litigated in disability and civil rights law and teaches at the law schools of Golden Gate University and the University of California, Berkeley, characterizes Final Exit Network’s tactics as “stark” and “a little too far out there.”  “I am strongly ambivalent—and maybe even troubled—and see it as overkill in [how the network is] publicizing its mission,” he says. “If you really want to take to heart terms like ‘death with dignity’ … then your approach cannot be a slick, Madison Avenue-style advertisement for death.” 

Past articles about the Final Exit Network

• FEN found guilty for assisting the suicide of depressed Minnesota woman.
• America's Dr Death loses medical license.
• Who are the Final Exit Network?
• Exoo, Exit, Derek Humphrey and Assisted Suicide.
• Misleading claims by Final Exit Network.

The Final Exit Network will cover-up a suicide. The Atlantic article continued:

“Once the Exit Guides have determined the member has died, they will proceed to gather equipment used in the suicide. They will also collect all materials referencing any connection with Final Exit Network,” the statement reads. “If requested by the member, Exit Guides will also remove all other items indicating a suicide had occurred. Exit Guides subsequently dispose of these materials in a trash bin some distance away from the location of the suicide.”

John Celmer died in Georgia.
He was depressed but
recovering from cancer.

Final Exit Network lawyer, Robert Rivas, says that he understands that sometimes mistakes happen. The Atlantic article states:

He (Rivas) channels his bluntness into all of his exit guide training sessions. Before an exit guide sits with a person as they die, they sit in a room with Rivas as he explains the “looming possibility” that they could very well be prosecuted. 

Like in 2009, when four exit guides were jailed—then released after two days, when bail was made—and other members’ homes were searched amid a Georgia Bureau of Investigation national campaign to prosecute the network. The bureau seized “paperwork, records and computers,” from key members in the network, according to GBI. Investigators uncovered 523 names of people who reached out to Final Exit Network “for assistance with their suicide.” 

“Nobody knows better than I do, sometimes courts make mistakes. Exit guides make mistakes,” Rivas said. “It’s a looming possibility out there for every exit guide, and I make them say to themselves in training sessions: ‘I understand this is possible, and I’m prepared to accept that possibility.’”

The Final Exit Network claims that all of the suicide's are of people who are vetted and not mentally ill. The Atlantic then reported on the death of Jana Van Voorhis.

In 2007, Jana Van Voorhis, a 58-year-old woman from Phoenix, told Final Exit Network that she was dying of cancer. But Van Voorhis wasn’t dying at all. “She had no terminal illness,” says Jared Thomas, Van Voorhis’ brother-in-law, who found her body when he and his wife went to check on her at her home. “She was mentally ill. … She was a doctor-shopper.”... 

In 2007, Jana Van Voorhis, a 58-year-old woman from Phoenix, told Final Exit Network that she was dying of cancer. But Van Voorhis wasn’t dying at all. “She had no terminal illness,” says Jared Thomas, Van Voorhis’ brother-in-law, who found her body when he and his wife went to check on her at her home. “She was mentally ill. … She was a doctor-shopper.”

Thomas then says:

“One of our problems with the organization in this case was their arrogance,”

The Final Exit Network is once again trying to build an image of freedom fighters or "caring" advocates, when in fact they are people who based on a philosophy or a personal life experience have decided that some lives are better off dead, and they will help those people die.

Stephen Drake: Don't buy into aid in dying.

This article was published by the Rochester NY Democrat and Chronicle on October 30, 2015 and republished on the Not Dead Yet website on October 31.

Stephen Drake

By Stephen Drake - Guest Essayist.

Stephen Drake is the research analyst for Not Dead Yet.

Recently, you’re hearing and reading a lot about “aid in dying” — a relatively new term that is increasingly used in place of “assisted suicide.” You’re also being told that the issues surrounding assisted suicide are simple, with the only objections coming from far-right Christian conservatives.

There are many nonreligious progressives who have actively opposed legalization of assisted suicide for many years. The organization I work for is a secular disability rights group formed 19 years ago to oppose legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Thirteen other national disability rights groups also oppose legalization – many of them for over a decade.

Legalized assisted suicide sets up a discriminatory policy toward suicide based on the health status of the person who wants to commit suicide. Young, healthy, nondisabled people’s suicides are treated as preventable tragedies, while old, ill and disabled people are seen as expressing autonomy and deserving assistance to make sure our suicides don’t fail.

Seen from our perspective, that doesn’t smack of compassion or respect. Is it a coincidence that assisted suicide is gaining ground just as more of us are aging while we face growing cuts in the health care and social safety nets on both state and federal levels? Derek Humphry — often called the father of the assisted suicide movement — wrote in a book he co-authored in 2000 about the Unspoken Argument that it would be economics more than anything else that would drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptance.

Advocates for assisted suicide also claim that legalization will bring an underground practice into the light. That’s bogus. First of all, the state reported “data” we get from Oregon comes from the doctors who prescribe lethal drugs and the pharmacies that dispense them, with no state verification or investigation, even when problem cases come to light in the mainstream press. While advocates for assisted suicide generally support statutes that have the appearance of accountability, it’s no accident that two of the five assisted suicide bills proposed in New York State have no reporting requirements at all.

As for the “aid in dying,” this term was the result of extensive testing with focus groups, according to assisted suicide advocates giving a presentation at a conference several years ago.

“Aid in dying” is a marketing term to draw more support than the term “assisted suicide.” But don’t buy it.

Stephen Drake is research analyst for the disability rights group, Not Dead Yet.

Statement of Not Dead Yet (USA) to Canadian Panel on Carter Case Decision

Submitted by

Diane Coleman, J.D., M.B.A., President/CEO

Stephen Drake, M.S., Research Analyst

Not Dead Yet

497 State Street Rochester, New York 14608 USA

October 14, 2015

This statement was originally published by Not Dead Yet on their website.

Executive Summary

Not Dead Yet is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination against old, ill and disabled people. Not Dead Yet helps organize and articulate opposition to these practices in the United States based on secular social justice arguments. Not Dead Yet also demands the equal protection of the law for the targets of so called “mercy killing” whose lives are seen as worth-less.

This submission to the External Panel on Options for a Legislative Response to Carter v. Canadawill focus on the Panel’s “key issue” in Terms of Reference Section 3.2 (c): “Risks to individuals and society associated with physician-assisted dying.” We will discuss the evidence coming from Oregon, the earliest of the four U.S. states to legalize assisted suicide, and outline the concerns of the disability community.

Regardless of our abilities or disabilities, none of us should feel that we have to die to have dignity, that we have to die to be relieved of pain, or that we should die to stop burdening our families or society. The realities of assisted suicide implementation in Oregon and three other U.S. states demonstrate the urgency of limiting the harms done by the Canadian Supreme Court ruling.

With that goal, we have two recommendations:

Adopt the detailed Goals, Principles and Recommendations submitted by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD),[1] which demonstrate a well-informed, evidence based and reasoned approach to reducing the dangers that will inevitably flow from implementation of Carter v. Canada. In order to completely incorporate CCD’s recommendations, direct consultation with a representative of CCD in drafting the legislation is necessary.

Provide training, guidance and encouragement to law enforcement agencies to exercise their existing level of authority to prosecute physicians and others involved in an assisted suicide or euthanasia death, while allowing those prosecuted to defend themselves by proving that the guidelines submitted by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities were met.

Introduction

Not Dead Yet is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination against old, ill and disabled people. Not Dead Yet helps organize and articulate opposition to these practices in the United States based on secular social justice arguments. Not Dead Yet also demands the equal protection of the law for the targets of so called “mercy killing” whose lives are seen as worth-less.

This submission to the External Panel on Options for a Legislative Response to Carter v. Canada will focus on the Panel’s “key issue” in Terms of Reference Section 3.2 (c): “Risks to individuals and society associated with physician-assisted dying.”

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal constitutional right to assisted suicide does NOT exist[2], but noted that individual states might be able to experiment with laws pertaining to the practice. Since then, four of the 50 states have legalized the practice by statute, beginning with Oregon in 1997 by ballot referendum. In addition, the high court in the state of Montana declined to find a state constitutional right to assisted suicide, but ruled that physicians may raise the defense of a victim’s consent if they are prosecuted for homicide in an assisted suicide case[3]. While we disagree with much of the Baxter court’s decision, it’s approach has the benefit of denying to those involved in the death of an old, ill or disabled person the blanket legal immunity that is characteristic of the four state statutes that have been enacted. This ruling forms the basis of our second recommendation to the External Panel.

An Analysis of Claims About Assisted Suicide in Oregon

In view of the frequent claims by assisted suicide proponents that Oregon’s experience demonstrates that there have been no problems of mistake, coercion or abuse of the state’s assisted suicide law, our analysis begins there.

Assisted suicide proponents claim that the data from Oregon on implementation of its assisted suicide law demonstrate that there are no problems. The Oregon “Death With Dignity Act” Reports,[4] and now the Washington Reports[5] as well, provide the appearance of scientific data, but little substance. They leave the most significant questions unasked and unanswered, mostly providing an annual excuse to announce through the press that everything’s fine, no problems, nothing to see. Nevertheless, as the Reports repeatedly admitted, the state is unable to assess the extent of under reporting and noncompliance with the law’s requirements.[6]

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.

Why disability rights advocates oppose assisted suicide.

By Diane Coleman, President of the disability rights group - Not Dead Yet.

Diane Coleman

This past Monday, the Syracuse Post Standard published an op-ed I wrote that gives a bit of the history behind the position that so many national disability groups have taken in opposing assisted suicide laws. Our position often surprises people because we are also such strong supporters of self-determination by people with disabilities, but we also oppose discrimination, especially medical discrimination. Here’s part of the discussion:

Those of us with serious disabilities have good reasons to be skeptical about the mantra of choice being used to market assisted suicide in our profit-driven health care system. Anyone could ask for assisted suicide, but the law gives doctors the authority to decide who is eligible. 

Doctors used to exercise near-total control over the lives of people like me with significant disabilities, discouraging parents from raising such children at home, sentencing us to institutions, and imposing their own ideas about what medical procedures would improve our lives. 

Disability groups started paying attention to the problem of doctors making life and death determinations in the 1980s in high-profile court cases involving the right to refuse treatment. One involved Elizabeth Bouvia, a 26-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who had a miscarriage and marriage breakup and wanted a hospital to make her comfortable while she starved herself to death. Other cases involved men on ventilators stuck in nursing facilities like Larry McAfee, who wanted the right to live in apartments or real homes, or else “pull the plug.” The doctors, courts, media and public all viewed these severely disabled individuals as the equivalent of terminally ill. They did not get suicide prevention equal to that offered non-disabled people, nor the right to live in real homes instead of facilities, but courts uniformly granted them a “right to die.” 

Then the 1990s brought Dr. Jack Kevorkian, conducting assisted suicides using lethal drugs, with two thirds of his body count being people who were not terminally ill. As before, the difference between being disabled and dying was not recognized or considered relevant. As before, the difficulties disabled individuals faced in living – community access, getting a job, getting married – were not considered, or worse, accepted as rationales for ending their lives.

To read the whole op-ed, go here. We were told that the piece would also appear in the print edition sometime this past week. And there are a number of comments, including two from me and two from Stephen Drake in response to others.

“New Scientist” Reporter Goes Over Oregon Assisted Suicide Data with NDY’s Diane Coleman

This article was published by Not Dead Yet on February 26, 2015.

Diane Coleman

By Stephen Drake, researcher for Not Dead Yet.

A newly-published article in New Scientist includes a section in which reporter Clare Wilson reports on actual Oregon data on assisted suicide after a go-through with NDY CEO and founder Diane Coleman. It’s rare – almost unheard of – for a reporter to go into this kind of detail on assisted suicide in Oregon. The same is true of bioethicists weighing in on the topic. Here’s the section of the article dealing with data in "2015 a watershed year for assisted suicide in the US":

Diane Coleman, head of advocacy group Not Dead Yet, which opposes assisted suicide, says the Oregon Health Authority’s annual reports on the practice show the law there isn’t working as intended. She points to the motives people gave for choosing this option. According to the latest figures, released on 12 February, only a third of people who took a prescribed lethal dose of medication in 2014 cited pain or fear of pain as one of the reasons for doing so. 

Supporters of assisted suicide often cite pain as a primary reason why people should have the legal right to die. But the state’s report showed that people’s concerns tended toward loss of autonomy (91 per cent), loss of dignity (71 per cent) or being a burden on their family (40 per cent). Coleman is particularly concerned that people are choosing assisted suicide because they feel they are a burden. “To me that feels more like a duty to die than a choice to die,” she says. 

What’s more, according to the data available for Oregon, some people waited longer than six months between asking for the overdose and taking it. It isn’t stated how many times this happened, but at least some people lived a few years after obtaining the drugs. Coleman is concerned that this means people are being accepted for assisted suicide who don’t meet the criteria of having less than six months to live. “Those people were not actually terminally ill,” she says.

Talking Points and 2014 year in review.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In 2014 there were many great articles opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide. Here are some of the key articles published from different perspectives in 2014.

People with disabilities oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Kevin Fitzpatrick

●  January, Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for Not Dead Yet UK and the new Director of EPC International wrote an article - Legalizing euthanasia threatens people with disabilities. 

●  In February, Stephen Drake, the researcher for Not Dead Yet explained how the New Hampshire assisted suicide bill definition of "Terminal Condition" was broad enough to include anyone with a chronic condition.

●  In April, Jim Derksen, a founder of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities wrote an about euthanasia and eugenics - Not Dead Yet.

●  In June, John Kelly, from Second Thoughts wrote - Assisted Suicide: Just Too Dangerous.

●  In July, Baroness Jane Campbell from the UK wrote - Assisted Suicide could lure me to the grave.

●  In October Catherine Frazee wrote - Assisted suicide debate masks disability prejudice.

●  In November, Marilyn Golden from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund wrote - Assisted Suicide is Bad Medicine.

Depression, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

●  In March Patricia, who had lived for many years with chronic depression, contacted us. She is concerned with the effect that assisted suicide has on suicidal people. After discussing her concerns, she sent us this article Assisted Suicide and Depression: A Personal Experience. Thank you Patricia for sharing your story. 

●  In September, Tom Mortier launched a court case at the European Court of Human Rights concerning the euthanasia death of his depressed mother.

Elder abuse, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

●  In Febuary, Washington State lawyer, Margaret Dore, published the article - Guardianship, Elder Abuse and Assisted Suicide: A personal shift in focus.

●  In March, an article written by a Secondary School student from Washington State connected elder abuse to the legalization of assisted suicide. Assisted Suicide has devalued the lives of the elderly in Washington State.

●  In October, disability leader, John Kelly from Second Thoughts wrote - Assisted Suicide laws more dangerous than people acknowledge.

Suicide Prevention and assisted suicide.

●  In January, Susan Martinuk (Calgary Herald), wrote an excellent column - Suicide Prevention at odds with assisted suicide.
●  In July, Paul Russell - the Director of Hope Australia reported: Australian Suicide Prevention groups condemn Nitschke's suicide promotion.
●  In August I wrote the article - Assisted suicide groups linked to suicide promotion website.
●  In November, Margaret Dore, wrote - Assisted suicide and the suicide contagion effect.
●  In December I wrote the article - Brittany Maynard story: a suicide contagion.

Dutch ethicist changes his mind on euthanasia.

●  In July, Professor Theo Boer, a nine year member of a Netherlands Euthanasia Regional Review Committee wrote an article explaining why he changed his mind and now opposes the euthanasia law. EPC contacted Professor Boer and learned that he had originally sent the Daily Mail an article that they did not publish and he gave us permission to publish his article - "Assisted Suicide: Don't Go There"

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide 2014 News:

America's Dr Death loses medical license.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Lawrence Egbert

Lawrence Egbert, a leader of the Final Exit Network, has lost his medical license in Maryland.

After a two year review, the Maryland Board of Physicians revoked his medical license after deciding that Egbert's actions were unethical and illegal. Egbert has said that he plans to appeal.

An article in the Baltimore Sun stated:

A Baltimore anesthesiologist who made national news as "The New Doctor Death" held six elderly Marylanders' hands as they asphyxiated themselves with helium and covered up the suicides after they died, according to a state order filed this month stripping him of his medical license. 

Notice that Egbert held their hands to ensure that they couldn't remove the asphyxiation bag. He should have been charged with homicide, not assisted suicide. The article continued:

The suicides are among nearly 300 Lawrence D. Egbert said he helped arrange across the country as an "exit guide" for right-to-die group Final Exit Network. He and several colleagues were arrested in 2009 amid an undercover investigation in Georgia, but he avoided any punishment there or in another case in Arizona. He awaits trial for assisting in a suicide in Minnesota.

Stephen Drake

Stephen Drake, an expert on the Final Exit Network and the research analyst for the disability rights group Not Dead Yet told the Baltimore Sun:

"Revocation of his medical license is a good thing and long overdue,"

Egbert was first charged by the Maryland board with unprofessional conduct in 2012. The Maryland Board were tipped off by a Baltimore Sun article in which he said he had assisted in a handful of suicides in Maryland as medical director of the Final Exit Network. Newsweek dubbed him "The New Doctor Death" in 2011 after he was criminally charged for assisting in suicides in Georgia and Arizona.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Egbert's, the Maryland Board of Physicians based their decision on the following reasons:

Robin Williams and the hypocrisy of suicide prevention organizations.

This article was originally published on August 24, 2014 on the Not Dead Yet website.

Stephen Drake

By Stephen Drake, Research Analyst with Not Dead Yet USA

The sudden emergence of suicide prevention organizations and their representatives in the media responding to the death of Robin Williams has been mind-blowingly outrageous to me – I track the suicide coverage – assisted and non-assisted – of old, ill and disabled people regularly. It’s part of my job. A near-constant in reading and watching that coverage has been the near-total absence of suicide prevention organizations and professionals in reacting to any suicide of old, ill or elderly people labelled as “right to die,” death with dignity,” “end of life,” “assisted suicide” or any other terminology that seeks to differentiate the suicides of some people from the larger group deemed as “preventable tragedies.”

In the aftermath of Robin Williams’ apparent suicide, suicide prevention experts and the press want to take special care about warning the public and make sure that the coverage of his death doesn’t spark a rise in suicidal behavior. Here’s a sampling of the reactions, starting with a response to a tweet put out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as reported in the Washington Post:

On Monday night, as fans around the world began to grieve Robin Williams’s death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — best known, in many circles, as the people behind the Oscars — sent out what may be the iconic social media image of Williams’s death. 

          “@TheAcademy: Genie, you’re free. pic.twitter.com/BPsV44mTvD” 

          8:26 AM – 12 Aug 2014 Los Angeles, CA, United States 

More than 270,000 people have shared the tweet, which means that, per the analytics site Topsy, as many as 69 million people have seen it. 

The problem? It violates well-established public health standards for how we talk about suicide. 

“If it doesn’t cross the line, it comes very, very close to it,” said Christine Moutier, chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “Suicide should never be presented as an option. That’s a formula for potential contagion.” (Emphasis added.) 

Moutier is referring to a well-documented phenomenon, better-known as “copycat suicide,” in which media coverage or publicity around one death encourages other vulnerable people to commit suicide in the same way. Adolescents are most at risk of suicide contagion; in recent years, groups like AFSP have also become particularly attentive to the role the Internet plays in romanticizing notorious or high-profile deaths, something it has long asked both the news and entertainment industries to avoid. 

“The potential for online reports, photos/videos and stories to go viral makes it vital that online coverage of suicide follow site or industry safety recommendations,” one media guide reads. 

But in the hours since @TheAcademy’s tweet went viral, professionals like Moutier have become concerned that it doesn’t, in fact, follow established safety recommendations. The starry sky from Disney’s Aladdin, and the written implication that suicide is somehow a liberating option, presents suicide in too celebratory a light, Moutier said.

The International Business Times presented this quote from a representative of the American Association of Suicidology:

The American Association of Suicidology has advised journalists to sensitively cover the death because certain types of news coverage are believed to increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals. The association noted that the risk of copycat suicides increases when the story specifically describes the suicide method, but covering the suicide carefully can change public misperceptions and prompt those who are vulnerable or at risk to seek help.

Those are just two examples, but they’re typical of the way in which top suicide prevention organizations have been aggressively going after the press and spreading caution about the harm caused by irresponsible journalism.

I, for one, am extremely unimpressed and underwhelmed by the suicide prevention brigade. Even in this latest episode of a publicized suicide, I see nothing in their messaging to indicate that any of the organizations or their reps care at all if old, ill and disabled people kill ourselves (unless, of course, we’re Robin Williams).

Let me offer up one more quote before I talk about the total lack of integrity these organizations have shown in regard to suicides of old, ill and disabled people – deaths I get to read about far too often. This is from Michelle Cornette, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, who appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show “The Last Word” on MSNBC:

I think what`s really important to keep in mind with respect to suicidal thinking and individuals who die by suicide is that they have essentially reached a cognitive state where they`re not really thinking about other people. In fact, there`s some interesting research that`s come out in recent years indicating there`s a very strong association between perceptions of burden on others and risk for suicide, meaning the individuals come to believe that their death is worth more than their life to their loved ones. (Emphasis added.)

Starting with that last point – about the association of being a burden – there’s an elephant in the living room (one of many) in Oregon assisted suicide data. According to information given by prescribing doctors, 49% of people requesting assisted suicide give “being a burden” as a major reason for wanting to commit suicide. Oregon, btw, has one of the highest overall suicide rates in the country, and the rates for all ages are climbing. The state government (and suicide prevention organizations) aren’t inclined to look at legalized assisted suicide and the promotion of suicide as rational, even brave by both pro-assisted organizations and the press and how they might be influencing the overall suicide rates. One would think that good science would dictate at least considering a contagion effect from the normalization of suicide under the assisted suicide statute. It’s interesting – and disturbing – that outside of ex-director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Herbert Hendin, I’ve never heard or read any suicide prevention professional highlight that the feeling of “being a burden” is a significant risk factor for suicide in general.

All of these suicide prevention organizations have media guidelines on reporting responsibly when covering suicides. Among those guidelines are:

• Suicide is complex. There are almost always multiple causes, including psychiatric illnesses, that may not have been recognized or treated. However, these illnesses are treatable. 
• Refer to research findings that mental disorders and/or substance abuse have been found in 90% of people who have died by suicide.
• Avoid reporting that death by suicide was preceded by a single event, such as a recent job loss, divorce or bad grades. Reporting like this leaves the public with an overly simplistic and misleading understanding of suicide.
• Consider quoting a suicide prevention expert on causes and treatments. Avoid putting expert opinions in a sensationalistic context.
• Use your story to inform readers about the causes of suicide, its warning signs, trends in rates and recent treatment advances.
• Add statement(s) about the many treatment options available, stories of those who overcame a suicidal crisis and resources for help.
• Include up-to-date local/national resources where readers/viewers can find treatment, information and advice that promotes help-seeking. (Source: https://www.afsp.org/content/download/1066/16814/file/recommendations.pdf)

Over the last eight years, the activities of the Final Exit Network (FEN) – whose “exit guides” are claimed to have facilitated hundreds of suicides in the U.S. – have received national coverage. The greatest coverage has come from their role in the death of John Celmer of Georgia, clear of mouth cancer he’d been treated for, but deeply distressed over his post-surgery appearance. The death of Jana Van Voorhis – a woman without serious physical illness but a history of emotional issues – has also received a great deal of attention. Favorable profiles of FEN and its members have appeared in Time magazine and in the Washington Post. 

A NY Times health columnist recommended FEN as a resource for nonterminally ill people who want to kill themselves. (FEN openly advocates the “right” of anyone with any kind of illness, condition, etc. to receive assistance and support in committing suicide.)

Virtually every one of these articles broke every single element of “good practice” in terms of reporting about suicide.

• Percentage of articles detailing means of suicide: ~100%;
• Percentage of articles sharing contact info for suicide prevention: almost none;
• Percentage of articles quoting a suicide prevention representative: almost none;

A couple of articles got our hopes up that maybe suicide prevention groups were beginning to wake up and maybe give a crap about the ongoing promotion of suicide as “rational” for old, ill and disabled people.

In 2010, FEN put up a number of billboards across the country with the message “My Life My Death My Choice,” and their URL printed underneath. One of the first appeared in the San Francisco area. The Bay Citizen, an independent newspaper, published an article with two suicide prevention professionals responding to the billboard:

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

There’s also a quote from a representative of a local organization:

“Regardless of what someone might feel about assisted suicide, I feel the message behind this billboard is confusing and dangerous,” wrote David Paisley, deputy director of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, in an email. 

“It assumes people will understand that it is a billboard about assisted suicide or they will go to the website,” he wrote. “In reality, most people who see the billboard from the street or car will not go to the website, but are left with a message that could be interpreted very tragically by someone in crisis and acting impulsively.”

At the time, I thought these comments were terrific breakthroughs. To the extent that the reporter managed to get suicide prevention folks to come out of hiding for this story, it was a breakthrough. But the more I read them, the more troubling the comments became. Berman and Paisley seemed not so concerned with the general message so much as the possibility it would reach the wrong audience.

Within weeks, that concern would be validated in another story about the billboards – this one from New Jersey, where FEN also paid for a billboard. In July 2010, Judith Springer spelled it out:

Dr. Judith Springer. Springer is a psychologist and board member of the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide.

The first red flag went up on Springer’s comments in her first press quotes that appeared in the Star-Ledger, giving her reaction to the FEN billboard:

Therapists called the billboard “irresponsible,” arguing it could serve as a “tipping point” for troubled teens or others at risk of suicide.“The idea of any of these upset, impressionable kids seeing a billboard like that absolutely horrifies me,” said Judith Springer, a Morristown psychologist and board member of the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide. “You can’t filter who sees a publicly displayed sign.”

The quote bothered me a little, since there seemed to be room here that – in her opinion – there is an appropriate audience for the sign and the organization.

Turns out my vague concerns were all too valid. The good Dr. Springer ended up showing the depth of her concern when it comes to suicide for the elderly – or more accurately, her complete lack of concern. In a July 16th article written by Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green, Springer reiterated her previous comments and then expanded on them:

But Springer says she’s not opposed to Final Exit’s mission, just how they’re delivering the message. 

“I visited the website and it’s populated by elderly folks who are at the end of a very long life and are in pain,” she said. “That’s a whole different issue to me.”

Let me translate – Springer has just shrugged off any concern about any group that encourages and facilitates the suicides of “elderly folks” because it’s “different” than what she deals with.

As of 2010, neither the American Association of Suicidology nor the International Association of Suicide Prevention had any position on assisted suicide. That’s what they claimed anyway. It’s a lie. When suicide prevention organizations take “no position” on assisted suicide, they have actually taken a position to maintain silence regarding some types of people who commit suicide while speaking out about how to reduce the risk of suicide in the rest of the population. The no-position is a decision to cede authority to pro-assisted suicide advocates and activists to redefine terminology, gain acceptance and even approval for assisting the suicides of old, ill and disabled people. While suicide prevention organizations hide under their desks and refuse to talk about suicides of old, ill and disabled people as preventable tragedies, assisted suicide organizations are rearranging the playing fields and the laws. Soon, what suicide prevention organizations think about our suicides will be irrelevant.

Suicide prevention organizations probably hope that no one will remember their silence and abandonment in doing what they claim is their job. So the next time you hear, see or read a suicide prevention professional, tune out their timely propaganda and self-promotion and remember their silence at times when speaking out might have counted for something.
I promise that disability activists will remember.

We will never forget.