What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill: The Connection between Lethal Injection and Assisted Suicide

This article was originally published on May 21 by Consistent Life.

by Jacqueline H. Abernathy, Ph.D., MSSW

Jacqueline Abernathy

In a recent episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, comedian and host John Oliver offered a scathing (albeit profane) rebuke of lethal injection as a means of execution in U.S. states with capital punishment. He detailed the issues with the drugs employed and how ineffective they are at killing: essentially torturing the condemned with a prolonged death intended to make the process appear more palatable for everyone else. With each point he made, he always came back to his premise: the lethal means are irrelevant because capital punishment is simply wrong.

I agree completely.

But then he said something quite disturbing: He claimed that assisted suicide is somehow different because terminally ill people are easier to kill.

I’ll give you a moment to try to reconcile that with his larger point. That moment is over, because it doesn’t matter how much time you have. One simply cannot reconcile the two.

Lethal injection supplies the same class of drugs as assisted suicide does. It uses the same means toward the same end: premature and imposed death. How then is killing an ill person any different from killing anyone else?

Since he brought it up, let’s clear up the confusion about how assisted suicide works. He detailed how lethal injections are inhumane, but what distinguishes assisted suicide from traditional euthanasia is that traditional euthanasia is a lethal injection whereas assisted suicide is self-administered oral ingestion of these same drugs. Hence the drugs used in assisted suicide — which have included pentobarbital, the same one that has been used in lethal injection — are an okay option when self-administered by someone who’s dying; just not for those sentenced to death. Because it’s faster or more effective at killing, says Oliver. Only there is one big problem: it’s not.

Oliver mentioned assisted suicide only to demonstrate that it supposedly offers a more humane alternative to lethal injection, which he decried as barbaric and cruel. The show presented harrowing details about how the condemned may remain conscious during their executions since the drug responsible for inducing a coma can often fail. He explained how limited availability of certain lethal drugs can inspire the use of creative alternatives with horrific consequences. Finally, he lamented how long and torturous the process was, lasting not just a few minutes as intended but in one case, nearly two hours.

What Oliver apparently does not know is that every one of his points also apply to assisted suicide.

John Oliver

I can concede the logic that ill people are more fragile than healthy ones, but it doesn’t take a medical degree to know that intravenous delivery of any drug is more effective than oral intake.

Reports indicate that some people who choose assisted suicide vomit their bitter lethal dose before it can be absorbed, which is why anti-nausea drugs often accompany the barbiturate overdose. People do sometimes regain consciousness just like during an execution. Just as drug makers don’t want to be involved in executions, many of them have also inflated their prices to discourage use in assisted suicide. This practice leads many people to choose cheaper drugs with consequences akin to those experienced when the state looks for more readily-available drugs for lethal injections. In both cases, death takes far longer. And while I cringe that executions have taken up to 2 hours, assisted suicide can take up to 4 days.

Oliver mentioned assisted suicide only to make his point, while failing to recognize assisted suicide’s own inhumanity. He also mentioned alternatives to lethal injection like opioid overdose and the problems associated with that. His goal was not to defend any means of killing in executions, as he always circled back to his premise: there is no right way to do a wrong thing. So how then is assisted suicide not also a very wrong thing?

Oliver’s obliviousness is typical of the mental gymnastics required for justifying other forms of legal violence: that the violence he supports is not comparable to what he condemns. So let’s make it comparable. Would he withdraw his opposition to lethal injection if the death row inmates were as ill as those who choose assisted suicide?

The answer is clearly no. It doesn’t become okay to kill a person simply because they’re sick and therefore easier to kill. This suggests a double standard between ill people and inmates, when we actually have mechanisms to treat terminally ill inmates with dignity. This is called compassionate release, and exists at the federal level and in most U.S. states.

There’s hope that the horror stories Oliver highlighted will result in judges ruling that lethal injection is unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment. But explain this: how is what deemed to be inhumane for convicted murderers somehow acceptable for the ill and dying? It clearly isn’t. Oliver was right when he said humane society doesn’t purposefully kill. Yet medical fragility is an exception? If anything, a humane society treats those more vulnerable with greater care rather than using their illness to justify their violent and unnatural end.

Oliver said it best when he concluded: “there is no perfect way for the government to kill people.” What he fails to mention is that there’s also no perfect way for people to kill themselves. I hope John Oliver will rethink his defense of violence toward the terminally ill and extend to them the same concern he has for human beings sentenced to die by execution. Assisted suicide is just as macabre as lethal injection, but less effective at killing. Just as in capital punishment, the means are irrelevant. Killing humans is wrong even if the human is terminally ill. Even if that human is yourself.

A Tale of Two Visions: Euthanasia and Palliative Care.

This article was published by the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia on August 31, 2018.

Of 32 non-profit Palliative Care centres scattered around the province of Quebec, even under intense economic and political pressure, only 6 currently allow euthanasia within their walls.

Doctors who promote euthanasia consider this low participation rate as a barrier to the fulfillment of patients’ wishes. Many of them, despite self-identifying as Palliative Care physicians, see no problems with cohabitation: they claim to do both Palliative Care and euthanasia; they promise they will always continue Palliative Care as long as the patient obstinately maintains his or her will to live; and when that patient finally becomes reasonable they will – in perfect “continuity of care” — perform the euthanasia which they believed to be indicated all along.

Naturally there are many who would resent and dispute such a characterization of their methods and intent. However, in this case, truth is in the eye of the beholder; and in the view of a typical non-suicidal patient, any doctor or institution practicing euthanasia becomes a threatening presence stimulating feelings of anxiety, which arguably nullify the whole benefit of Palliative Care.

At the best of times, non-suicidal patients (and their families) often harbour fears that doctors intend to do them harm. Only with the greatest effort do doctors gain the trust of patients, which is one of many reasons why, throughout the history of medicine, doctors have relied on an unambiguous promise that they would never harm patients.

Euthanasia proponents, of course, reverse this logic: How, they ask, might a (suicidal) patient trust a doctor who has promised that he would never be willing to end suffering by ending life?

Clearly, then, we are talking about two distinct services and two distinct clienteles, mutually exclusive to the point where a doctor associated with one will naturally be disqualified in the perception of a patient who desires the other.

But where will these services be offered? Euthanasia advocates have a simple answer to this question: everywhere. We will simply take our proposed service, they say, and install it in the homes of others, like a loudly sizzling hamburger stand, suddenly introduced in one corner of a contemplative vegetarian restaurant. The juxtaposition is absurd, of course, but the suggestion also betrays astounding arrogance, founded in a deep ignorance of past social evolution as it is reflected in existing infrastructure.

Palliative Care centres were not always there; Palliative Care only truly began in the 70’s. Nor did the picturesque pastoral “homes”, that we recognize today, spring out fully formed in the blink of an eye. They are the fruit of evolution, imagination, dedication, perseverance and experimentation. In the early days Dr. Balfour Mount and others succeeded in carving out little units in prestigious hospitals where pilot programs were initiated. At that time, there was no question of combining them with euthanasia, because that was still an unheard-of barbarism in the medical culture of the day. But the exclusivity of Palliative Care did not end there.

The whole idea of Palliative Care lay in its differentiation from contemporary models of medicine. And the self-selected staff who gravitated to this new practice were fierce in their loyalty to the ideal, and remain so, in many cases, to this day. Palliative Care is not a technique; it begins as a state of mind. To oblige the staff of existing Palliative Care facilities to offer care in any other mode – let alone that of euthanasia – is to erase, by stealth, from within, the very existence of Palliative Care.

But today, Palliative Care is not something insubstantial, to be cavalierly brushed aside or co-opted into new administrative improvisations. Each of the existing centres embodies the unpaid work of countless real individuals. The buildings were constructed through voluntary contributions of funds, and often of land. In the usual model, fifty to sixty percent of operating budgets are financed through charity. They typically depend on volunteers at every level, from kitchen help, through basic care, to administrative functions. Salaried workers, nurses and others, are working at the pay scales reserved for “private” facilities, which are significantly lower than those enjoyed by similarly qualified staff elsewhere. Key professionals actually migrate from other locations and specialties, in order to enable and share in the professional culture which is unique, not only to this form of practice, but to each individual institution. In short: over a forty-year period, within the confines of a public medical monopoly, certain imaginative individuals and groups have succeeded in creating something truly new and distinctive, financed by charitable donation and supported by armies of volunteers having deep roots in the surrounding communities. To suggest that the nature of care practised in such facilities should be open to legislative or bureaucratic intrusion, beyond minimal oversight, is an insult to the notion of selfless creativity in community service.

No, therefore, euthanasia proponents who would cleverly disguise themselves as Palliative Care specialists have no business whatsoever in such facilities. Crudely articulated: these new enthusiasts of the lethal mode have not yet paid their dues. Let them justify themselves. Let them search for freely given funds. Let them build their clinics stone by stone. Let them show a little respect for differences in medical thought and method; a little humility before the achievements of an authentic labour of love.

In no case should they be allowed, like the famous cuckoo bird, to lay their eggs in the nests of others, and to murder the offspring – in this case the medical brainchildren — of their hosts.

Make euthanasia unimaginable.

Sincerely,

Catherine Ferrier
President

456 patients killed in a British hospital

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I

Kevin Yuill

n his article: The scandal of under valuing human life, that was published by Spiked on June 28, 2018; Kevin Yuill the author of: Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation examines the attitudes that precipitated the mass killing "life shortening" of patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire between 1989 - 2000.

Yuill correctly points out that if assisted suicide or euthanasia were legal that, similar to Gosport, killing would become more mainstream and simply accepted. Yuill writes:

Writing in The Times, Dominic Lawson says there is something obscene about the ‘shortening’ of the lives of more than 450 patients who were staying in Gosport War Memorial Hospital. He is right. 

The Gosport scandal concerns the ‘shortening’ of 456 patients’ lives through the excessive use of painkillers at the hospital in Hampshire between 1989 and 2000. An inquiry, the Gosport Independent Panel, says such ‘life-shortening’ had become virtually routine. 

The use of the word shortening is striking. We might say that Jack the Ripper ‘shortened the lives’ of prostitutes in the East End of London. In fact, if we employ the rather ludicrous measurement of time left – QALYs, or quality-of-life years, as some experts say when referring to care for the elderly in particular – then the doctors who presided over the regime of ‘shortening’ lives in Gosport undoubtedly stole more time than the Ripper could ever have managed. 

Even the term ‘patients’ in this discussion masks the real people involved, with their experiences, lives, loves, families, and, yes, hopes. The report into the scandal anonymised mothers, fathers, grandmothers, brave veterans, beloved teachers, aunts and uncles, friends and rivals, reporting as if they were victims of some foreign disaster rather than having been purposefully killed.

Yuill then explains that sometimes heavy sedation is required to prevent suffering:

There are, admittedly, some situations – now thankfully rare – when a doctor must heavily sedate patients to prevent suffering in the last hours of life. But Gosport wasn’t like this. It appears that the killings took place because the people involved were ‘inconvenient’. This was revealed in a meeting between members of staff about an annoying patient, where the following alarming exchange took place: ‘We agreed that if he wasn’t careful he would “talk himself on to a syringe driver”.’ According to the report, that patient, who was able to walk, talk and dress himself, did have a syringe driver and died the next day. Many others were also seemingly despatched for being irritating. Fifty-five per cent of those who were given lethal doses of diamorphine were not in pain. In 29 per cent of cases, the notes give no justification at all for the lethal dose.

Yuill then challenges the assisted suicide lobby and their cultural engineering:

Much more than an event like the Grenfell disaster, the treatment of these individuals indicates how far a moral crisis besets this country. As expressed all too clearly in our language, human lives are no longer sacred. Another euphemism beloved by people like Polly Toynbee, who summoned her mother from the grave yet again to argue for legalised assisted suicide, is ‘choice’. Everyone wants to have choice. ‘Compassion and Choices’ is the new, improved name for the Euthanasia Society of America. British lobbyists Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) want to ‘allow a dying person the choice to control their death’. 

Let’s leave aside the fetishising of the moment of death when people seem to want their favourite music playing (hint: you won’t hear the end of the song). It is actually this misuse of the concept of ‘choice’ that led to the monstrous events in Gosport. The ‘choice’ referred to by pro-assisted dying organisations is actually suicide. But by calling it a choice, we remove all moral responsibility from the action. The culture of assisted dying reduces the most profound decision a human can make – whether to shuffle off this mortal coil – to a medicalised menu selection. The decision to execute a human being in the United States – even a horrific rapist/murderer – is at least attended with ritual and ceremony, as if something of huge moral importance is occurring. With assisted dying, suicide is given as a treatment option in a pamphlet. The message is ‘we won’t judge’ – that is, ‘we don’t care if you live or die’. 

If such an ‘option’ is offered so casually to individuals, why would it be surprising that a doctor should treat human lives just as casually? If the act of suicide carries no real moral responsibility for the individual, why would killing a patient – or ‘shortening a life’ – carry any special moral responsibility for a doctor? We make it easy to wink and, as the Gosport report notes, tell the nurses to ‘Make the patient comfortable. I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.’ 

Elderly people already find themselves resented for inconveniently continuing to exist, for voting for Brexit, for blocking beds, for taking up the time of harried NHS staff. Assisted suicide is always preferred for those who have little time left. In the country that has tolerated assisted death the longest – the Netherlands – plans are afoot to extend assisted death to all those over 70 who are ‘tired of life’. How many lonely elderly Dutch people will be despatched in a similar fashion to the patients at Gosport? 

Hopefully someone will be found responsible for the crimes that took place in Gosport. But it is really an entire culture that supports assisted dying, that believes that life and death are nothing but menu selections, that must be changed if we are to avoid future scandals like this one.

Sadly, the instances of killing, rather than caring, or intentional overdose is not rare. Attitudes that led to the killing "life shortening" of 456 patients at Gosport are linked to a culture that accepts these actions. A Netherlands study found that 431 people were killed without request in 2015 and a study from Flanders Belgium found that more than 1000 people were killed without request in 2013.

Legalizing lethal injection (upon request) creates more social acceptance of doctors killing their patients, even without request.

Will assisted suicide always provide a quick and gentle death?

This article was originally published in BioEdge, on October 7, 2017

By Michael Cook

The gold standard for human experimentation is a randomly-assigned double-blind placebo-controlled study. Unfortunately for researchers, organising such a study to assess the effectiveness of the lethal medications used for executions in the United States and for physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has significant ethical issues. They need to rely upon historical data.

In the latest issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Sean Riley, an end-of-life researcher currently studying in the Netherlands, reviews the patchy record of the drugs used in executions and PAS. He summarizes his findings as follows:

The pervasive belief that these, or any, noxious drugs are guaranteed to provide for a peaceful and painless death must be dispelled; modern medicine cannot yet achieve this. Certainly some, if not most, executions and suicides have been complication-free, but this notion has allowed much of the general public to write them off as humane, and turn a blind eye to any potential problems. Executions or PAS have never been as clean as they appear, even with the US’s medicalization efforts during the 1980s.

He discusses several issues:

Supplier boycotts. Under pressure from anti-death penalty activists, pharmaceutical companies refused to supply prisons with lethal medications. Efforts to circumvent this by going to shady middlemen eventually failed. Most states have ceased to import the key ingredients needed for executions.

Price gouging for PAS drugs. Because of the drought of lethal medications for executions, the price of secobarbital or pentobarbital for PAS has skyrocketed. “Before 2012, patients would pay about $500 for a sufficient lethal dose of the drug, but by 2016, prices had inflated to figures upwards of $25,000.”

Compounding pharmacies. Faced with the huge cost of assisted suicide, prisons and patients began to turn to compounding pharmacies where pharmacists create the drugs from raw materials. “As the past 3 or so years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of compounded drugs,” writes Riley. “There has been a corresponding rise in ‘botched’ executions, though the secrecy laws have neutered most attempts to link failed executions to compounded drugs.”

The drugs made in compounding pharmacies risk being too powerful, not powerful enough, or contaminated. In Massachusetts a former pharmacist is currently on trial for supplying contaminated drugs which caused a nationwide outbreak of meningitis. Prosecutors told the court that he had used expired ingredients, falsified documents, neglected cleaning, failed to properly sterilize the drugs, shipped products before they were tested and ignored mould and bacteria in manufacturing areas. So buying from small firms has its issues.

Last-minute complications. It is difficult to define what a “botched execution” is, but the last moments of some prisoners were clearly agonizing. And for complications with PAS, there is a lack of clear data. “According to data published by Oregon, 5% of patients experienced difficulties, such as regurgitation or seizures, after ingestion of the medication, since the inception of the law in 1997,” says Riley. However, in only 51% of the cases were the details reported. And “there are six reported instances where patients ingested the lethal medications, went unconscious, and awoke sometimes days later.” This is not a feature of assisted dying which supporters speak much about.

Riley concludes that “The processes of death will always, to some extent, be a mystery. For now, whether a death is peaceful and painless can only be assumed.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. This article was originally published in BioEdge, which he also edits.

Killing by lethal injection. A psychological torment.

This article was published by Living With Dignity Quebec on April 18, 2017.

Who said that medical aid in dying is not killing? When one uses the right words, logic and common sense do the rest:

Medical aid in dying = lethal injection = euthanasia = killing = psychological torment for executioners & psychological torment for doctors.

Conclusion:

Killing (medical aid in dying / euthanasia / assisted suicide) is not a health care.

"Unlike the “kill or be killed” mindset in war or other forms of self-defense, carrying out executions felt very much like participating in premeditated and rehearsed murder. Either from religious training (“thou shall not kill”) or established societal norms, every person knows that taking a human life is one of our culture’s most serious offenses. It exacts severe mental trauma - even when done under the auspices of state law." (Link)

Dr. Ault, former commissioner of the Georgia, Mississippi and Colorado Departments of Corrections.

Canadian doctors are struggling with euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Jeff Blackmer, the former ethicist and current Vice President for medical professionalism with the Canadian Medical Association told Ryan Turnitty from Metro news that Canadian doctors are struggling with participating in "assisted dying" procedures.

doctors have been telling his group that they struggle with taking part in assisted-death procedures. 

He said physicians who have agreed to help a patient they knew well may find it difficult to help subsequent patients. 

“They will say, it was just too difficult and too traumatizing physiologically and it is not something I will go through again,” he said. “They really struggle with it, and for some of those that is the only one they will do.”

Blackmer said some of Canada's physicians are entirely ruling out providing end-of-life assistance to future patients. 

“In some provinces where they have a list of providers where they may be willing to participate, I know from speaking to colleagues that some of those lists are getting shorter.”

Note: When Blackmer says end-of-life assistance, he actually means lethal injection. 

Blackmer says he has not received reports of doctors being pressured to do euthanasia.

The reality is that killing another human being, even by request, is innately wrong and dangerous. People should be concerned about doctors who do not have a problem with killing their patients.

Promoting assisted suicide: A form of coercion.

The Victoria Times Colonist printed this excellent letter on January 19 by Paul Jungwirth

Noreen Campbell chose to end her life by means of physician-assisted suicide, as was her right under Canada’s new law. 

Since that law was passed, more than 744 people have also chosen to end their life this way. 

But apparently Campbell’s dying wish was that even more people would avail themselves of this new right. 

She wanted her story about ending her life to “open the door for others” and “draw attention to the gaps she saw in the process,” because, as a member of the assisted-suicide advocacy group Dying with Dignity, she felt the law doesn’t go far enough. 

The ease with which she embraces killing as a good solution to suffering is simply appalling. 

Her opinions about why people should go the same route as she did contributes nothing new to this discussion — it’s all about fearmongering and undermining people’s expectations about what palliative care can achieve. 

According to her, taking a lethal injection is preferable to the alternatives, and promoting this idea is an insidious form of coercion that will only result in more needless premature deaths, and an increasingly callous approach to people who might be suffering near the end of life. 

Paul Jungwirth 

Burnaby BC

Previous article on this topic: How many people have died by euthanasia in Canada?

Woman dies by euthanasia, may only have had a bladder infection.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I was contacted by a person, whose Aunt died by euthanasia, even though she may have only had a bladder infection. The person emailed me the following letter explaining what happened, outlining how the supposed safeguards in Canada's euthanasia law are ineffective and ignored by euthanasia doctors who are deciding who lives and who dies. 

The letter is edited for privacy:

My Aunt ... was just Euthanized today Nov 9, 2016 by Lethal injection at ... Retirement Home ... in BC. We were called to a meeting at ... Hospice on Nov 7, 2016 to be told for the first time that our ... Aunt had requested to be Euthanized. We were told it would take at least 10 days. My sister and I argued that our Aunt appears to only have a severe Bladder infection. The Hospice Doctor said he would look into having her urine tested for this before they proceed with Euthanasia. 

The same day we were sent over to our Aunts apartment to witness the doctor (that is going to give our Aunt the Lethal injection) having our Aunt sign the document to give her the permission to do the euthansia. After the Doctor read out the document to My Aunt; the doctor went and got a woman that works in the kitchen to initial all the questions for my Aunt. The Doctor brought two people to be witnesses into the room that had been witnesses for other Euthanizations. 

When we mentioned the urine tests we had asked to be done; the euthanizing Doctor said it would make no difference because my Aunt has already signed permission for her euthanasia. The euthanizing Doctor said she is going to put a rush on the Euthanasia. To my even more shock the Doctor gave My Aunt the lethal injection today. It all took less than three days from start to finish. The Doctor did the three Doctor visits to my Aunt in three consecutive days. I am so upset. 

This was so wrong ... name withheld.

This letter indicates that the euthanasia doctor was not concerned that the woman may only have had a bladder infection and the legally suggested 10 day waiting period was simply ignored so that the lethal injection occurred within 3 days before the woman could change her mind.

Sadly this letter proves that EPC's assessment of euthanasia Bill C-14 was correct. 

Bill C-14 required a 10 day waiting period unless the doctor waived the waiting period, meaning it was a false safeguard. 

Bill C-14 required the person's "natural death to be reasonably foreseeable" but at the same time the bill stated that the doctor or nurse practitioner who does the lethal injection must only be "of the opinion" that the person fits the criteria of the law. 

In other words, the law provided legal cover when a physician or nurse practitioner mistakenly kills someone.

The Aunt is dead and now it is too late to suggest that after 10 days her bladder infection may have cleared up and her request for lethal injection may have passed.

For more information read: New assisted dying law will claim unintended victims.

We all have a role to stop euthanasia. But the task is monumental. Be ready.

By Charles Lewis

Over the past few years many of us have written and spoken about the evils of euthanasia. Part of me always has wondered why this was such tough sell. After all, our basic instincts tell us that those who are hurt and sick should be cared for.

There is nothing radical in this. Even in war enemy combatants will often tend to the enemy's wounded out of a sense of some basic decency.

Those healing instincts are born of morality. It does not have to be religious morality but some code that is ingrained that, like a compass, always points in the same direction.

So perhaps the problem is that we are becoming immoral. Whatever foundation was there is crumbling under the weight of cynicism.

A moral society assumes certain things: When we talk to each other we are more or less speaking the same language based on the same basic ethos of our community. Anyone who has tried in the past few years to argue against euthanasia, even among religious people, will know that this commonality is fading fast.

In most of the discussions I had ended I ended up feeling as if I was speaking in a strange tongue. This was not a case of simple disagreement but something far beyond that. It was as if two separate conversations were going on with nothing linking the participants except animosity and confusion.

In other words it was two people coming from different cultures without either side being able to relate to the other.

For those of us of a certain age and persuasion it is akin to feeling lost. I ask myself all the time how did we slip so far into an abyss in which basic morality, a clear definition of what is right and what is wrong, has become so muddled.

When I was growing up, in the 1950s and 60s, there seemed to be some things that were considered wrong: these were premises agreed on by people who were Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and even those thoroughly secular.

The idea of killing someone who was sick would have seemed barbaric. All these were seen as failures against the common good. There was a sense of a community standard that everyone had a stake in. No doubt this could turn judgmental and possibly even cruel but those attitudes were the extreme.

My own view it is the decline of religion and a belief in God. That cannot be the only answer, however.

We grew up in Brooklyn. Their history was typical of the people I grew up with. Our grandparents and parents lived through the Depression. Our fathers fought in the Second World War. In the 1950s they were happy to be alive and enjoyed a success that in the midst of the 1930s or at the height of the war were impossible to imagine.

Those experiences forged comradery. People were pro-life, in the broadest sense of the term because they knew what misery looked like especially those who survived the war. Everywhere there were European refugees; many with numbers on their arms who were simply thankful to not have the state classify them as subhuman and unworthy. And many families, like mine, had relatives that did not come back from the war, a constant reminder of sacrifice for all.

Now we have a society, in general, that has little time for religion. It sees morality as artificial and a hindrance to freedom. We live in a culture that has more gadgets that is causing isolation. We are bombarded with tons of information that is essentially useless for leading a good, moral life.

Try to be serious and someone makes a joke because being serious gets in the way of fun.

Of course, there are many people who are the exception to what I have described and thank God for them.

For those of us who believe the battle against euthanasia is not over, as I do, I write this as a reminder of what we are up against. It is not just a matter of disagreement over an issue. If only it were so.

We can still stop people from being abandoned to death by assisted suicide and euthanasia. We must see each person who opts for the needle as a personal defeat. Nothing is in isolation. A man who is killed with the help of a physician will have sent a message to friends and family that medical murder is fine.

We all have a role to stop this. But the task is monumental. Be ready. Otherwise you will be speaking into the wind.

Charles Lewis is an anti-euthanasia speaker and writer. He writes a column twice a month for Toronto’s Catholic Register newspaper.

Assisted Dying: What can we learn from places where it is legal.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Baroness Ilora Finlay

Professor Ilora Finlay wrote an excellent article that was published in the Guardian today titled: Assisted Dying: What can the UK learn from places where it is legal.

Last year the British parliament overwhelmingly defeated an assisted suicide bill. Finlay responded to the push to legalize assisted suicide with this article. 

Finlay first analyzes the Oregon experience with assisted suicide. She writes:

In 1997 the US state of Oregon licensed doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally-ill patients who met certain conditions – that they had less than six months to live, had mental capacity and were acting voluntarily. 

Up to 2013 there was a steady overall upward trend in the numbers of such assisted suicide deaths. But from 2013 there has been a marked upturn. The two years 2014 and 2015 saw an 80% increase in deaths of this nature: there are now more than eight times the number than when the law came into force. 

There are other concerns too. There is “doctor shopping”, whereby people whose doctors won’t participate in assisted dying (and two out of three won’t) seek lethal drugs from other doctors who are willing but have never met them before and know nothing about them beyond case notes. One such doctor issued no less than 27 prescriptions for lethal drugs in 2015 alone. 

Prognosis of terminal illness is fraught with difficulty. The reports from Oregon illustrate this. They show that some people who had been supplied with lethal drugs on the basis of a prognosis of six months or less lived for up to three years before taking them. How long they might otherwise have lived is anybody’s guess.

Baroness Finlay then looks at the experience with assisted dying in the Netherlands.

What of the Netherlands? Their 2002 legislation also permits physician-administered euthanasia – where a doctor injects lethal drugs (coma-inducing drugs plus, often, a paralysing agent to cause death by asphyxia). The Netherlands’ assisted death rate also rose modestly at first before turning sharply upwards. Last year euthanasia or assisted dying accounted for one in 26 of all deaths in the Netherlands: that’s the equivalent of over 20,000 deaths annually in the UK. 

The Dutch official reports also reveal legislative drift. Increasing numbers of people were euthanised last year because of psychiatric illness (56 cases) or dementia (109 cases). In 2015 euthanasia was administered to a young woman suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia nervosa who had been sexually abused as a child. Dutch campaigners want to make suicide drugs available to people who aren’t ill at all, just tired of life.

Dutch legislators simply didn’t envisage this in 2001 when they enacted the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act – a title that is at least upfront and honest and avoids the sugar-coated euphemisms (like assisted dying) that are used here to cloak the realities.

Professor Finlay finishes by stating:

... Campaigners in the UK claim they only want Oregon-style physician-assisted dying for the terminally ill. But such criteria are purely arbitrary and contain within themselves the seeds of their own expansion. ... The limited criteria we are seeing look more like an unpacking of assisted dying in an attempt to get it through the door of a skeptical parliament. If we are wise, we will learn from the experience of others rather than from our own mistakes.

A longer version of this article was published by the NHS.

Ilora Finlay is professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff University and has taught end-of-life care internationally. She is a crossbench Peer in the House of Lords; her private member’s Access to Palliative Care Bill is before parliament. She co-chairs the independent think-tank Living and Dying Well.

First euthanasia death in Québec.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

This is a very sad announcement. According to the media, Québec had its first euthanasia death in the the national capital region. Québec has defined euthanasia as a form of healthcare. 

The article by Simon Boivin that was published in LaPresse reported (google translated):

"There was a request that was made and where end of life care was provided, have gone to the end," says Annie Ouellet, spokesperson CIUSSS Capitale-Nationale. "And there is a second application that is being evaluated." 

In the case of the patient to whom the protocol was applied in full, the assisted dying has not been given at home, but in an establishment of CIUSSS, added the spokesman.

...The person must be of age, able to consent to care, suffering from a serious and incurable illness and experiencing constant and unbearable physical and psychological suffering.

Only a doctor has the right to inject a lethal dose to a patient, after having obtained the independent opinion of a second doctor in meeting the conditions to be met.A doctor can refuse to offer assistance to die, but the institution that hiring should meet the demand of the patient.

EPC urges the doctors to treat patients with excellent pain and symptom management and not lethal injection.

On December 1, Québec Superior Court Justice Michel Pinsonneault correctly prevented the Québec euthanasia law from coming into effect until the federal government amended the Criminal Code provisions prohibiting euthanasia. On December 22, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the Pinsoneault decision.

Canada has a disturbing constitutional situation. The federal Criminal Code prohibits euthanasia and Québec is being allowed to ignore the law.

Québec euthanasia kit offers no effective oversight over life and death.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

According to an article written by Sharon Kirkey and published by postmedia, the Québec government will distribute euthanasia kits with step by step instructions for killing patients. The Québec government is following a similar protocol to the Netherlands euthanasia law.

After several years of language games, it is clear that the Québec government has given physicians the right, in law, to kill their patients by lethal injection. The article states:

Modelled on a formula used in the Netherlands, the Quebec protocol calls for a three-phase approach to assisted death via lethal injection. 

First, a benzodiazepine, a of sedative, would be injected to help control anxiety and "help calm the patient," Robert said. 

Next, a barbiturate drug would be injected to induce a coma. The third step would be a neuromuscular block, a derivative of curare that acts on the respiratory muscles to cause "cardiorespiratory arrest."

Euthanasia is about life and death. Errors or abuse of the law results in death.

Under the Québec euthanasia law, doctors will be sent euthanasia kits where the only actual oversight is a report that is sent-in after the death of the person by the doctor who lethally injected that person. Since the doctor who lethal injects a person is also the one who reports the death, the oversight is not only easily abused but it is impossible to prove that the "safeguards" in the law are being followed.

Clearly the system will allow abuse or maybe the Québec government is naive in thinking that doctors will never abuse their new found power over life and death.

The Québec euthanasia law gives doctors the right in law to lethally inject their patients for physical or psychological reasons.

Wesley Smith: France debates slow euthanasia.

This article was published on Wesley Smith's blog on June 16, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Sigh. If the euthanasia pushers can’t get people dead one way, they try another.

The French Senate is debating legalizing terminal sedation for the terminally ill who want it. From the Yahoo story:

France’s debate over end-of-life care goes to the Senate, with a bill that would allow doctors to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death comes, but stops short of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

Euthanasia is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, and recent polls show a large majority of French people favor legalization. But French lawmakers haven’t been willing to go quite that far, in a debate that is arising at the same time as the wrenching family dispute surrounding Vincent Lambert, a Frenchman in a coma since a car accident seven years ago.

But terminal sedation is “that far,” just via a slower process than lethal injection, as this part of the story makes clear:

The new bill would give people “the right to deep, continuous sedation until death.” Some doctors say it can mean patients are sedated for weeks, and that euthanasia may be more humane.

That’s killing by slow motion because it involves putting a patient into a coma and depriving them of food and fluids so they dehydrate to death.

Pushing terminal sedation is egregious for another reason: It confuses people as to whether the legitimate pain controlling technique–palliative sedation–is killing by another name.

It isn’t. And these are important distinctions:

• Palliative sedation is only applied if necessary to alleviate suffering, which is rare.
• Terminal sedation is applied even if unconsciousness is not needed to alleviate suffering.
• The purpose of palliative sedation is to relieve suffering.
• In terminal sedation, the point is to end life.
• In palliative sedation, death is caused by the disease or injury.
• In terminal sedation, death is usually by dehydration or starvation.
• In palliative sedation, the level of consciousness may vary, with focus on allowing as much awareness as possible.
• In terminal sedation, the patient is rendered unconscious.

Here is a link to a more extended article I wrote distinguishing the unethical terminal sedation, from the wholly ethical palliative sedation.

Also, readers may recall that the UK’s Liverpool Care Pathway descended into this kind of back door euthanasia.

This is another example of euthanasia’s corrupting impact. Advocates constantly blur crucial moral distinctions and redefine terms toward the end of opening the door to–or expanding categories for–medicalized killing.

Killing by any other name would smell as fetid.

• Deep sedation: France is in danger of buying a deadly illusion.
• The proper use of palliative sedation is not euthanasia.

Czech nurse kills 6 patients to decrease her workload.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Vera Maresova

A nurse in the Czech Republic has admitted to killing 6 people with a massive dose of potassium in order to decrease her workload.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Vera Maresova, 50, confessed to killing five women and one man over a four-year period at a hospital in Rumburk in the Czech Republic.

The Daily Mail article stated:

Dubbed 'Nurse Death' by local media, Maresova was initially arrested over the death of a 70-year-old woman last August, but has now admitted killing five more people between 2010 and 2014 following a police investigation. 

According to the prosecution, Maresova injected the potassium straight into the blood stream of her six elderly patients, which caused them to suffer heart failure and eventually death. 

All of her victims were already in the intensive care unit at the hospital and it is believed Maresova thought their deaths would simply be attributed to natural causes.

Rumburk Hospital

According to the Daily Mail Prosecutor Frantisek Stibor said:

'She is not insane and knew exactly what she was doing. Therefore she is fit to stand trial. 

'She used her knowledge of medicine to cause malfunctions in heart rhythms which led to heart failure and death.' 

The first murder was in January 2010 and was followed by another at the end of 2011. 

In April 2012 she killed her third victim and three more between February and June 2014.

Maresova confessed to her crimes and will likely live the rest of her life in jail.

Maresova would not likely have been prosecuted in Belgium, where euthanasia was legalized in 2002.

A Belgian study in 2007 on the role of nurses in physician-assisted death found that of the 120 euthanasia deaths that nurses were involved in 14 nurses admitted to lethally injecting the patient. Belgian law does not permit nurses to do this. 

There have been no attempted prosecutions in Belgium for abuse of the euthanasia law.

Assisted dying would turn doctor's into executioners.

A majority of Britons may support the Bill, but that's also true of the death penalty

I was going through past articles from and I came across this article that was originally published in the Independent on July 18, 2014. Alex Schadenberg

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

Clayton Lockett’s death by lethal injection earlier this year in Oklahoma brought a storm of criticism of Oklahoma’s death penalty procedures. Lockett mumbled, writhed, blinked his eyes and licked his lips throughout the procedure and took over 30 minutes to die. The Los Angeles Times observed: “The Oklahoma case is sure to be cited as strong evidence that state prison authorities cannot be trusted to capably administer lethal injections.”

But today the House of Lords is debating whether to invest British doctors with the same powers as the Oklahoma state prison authorities. Doctors will effectively become executioners if Lord Falconer’s Bill becomes law.

Why do liberals who, like me, think that capital punishment is unacceptable in a civilized society rush to support Falconer’s Bill? Beyond simply the method of dispatching people, there are many other similarities. If the premeditated killing of a human being by the state, even for the best possible reasons, is wrong, assisted dying is wrong.

Of course, there are important differences between assisted dying and capital punishment. But the similarities bear scrutiny in relation to today’s debate.

Euthanasia of newborns with disabilities and infanticide.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Udo Schuklenk, who was the chair of the one-sided Royal Society of Canada: End of Life Decision Making panel, is now proselytizing his philosophy (or Peter Singer's philosophy) promoting euthanasia of newborns and infanticide. Schuklenk uses quality-of-life arguments to support his eugenic philosophy to encourage the killing of newborns with disabilities.

In an article published in The Journal of Thoracie and Cardiovascular Surgery, titled: Physicians can justifiably euthanize certain severely impaired neonates, Schuklenk argues that some lives are not worth living and that parents should have the right to decide to end the lives of newborns with disabilities. Schuklenk states:

A quality-of-life ethic requires us to focus on a neonate's current and future quality of life as relevant decision-making criteria. We would ask questions such as: Does this baby have capacity for development to an extent that will allow him or her to have a life and not merely be alive? If we reach the conclusion that it would not, we would have reason to conclude that his life is not worth living.

Schuklenk argues that based on a Quality-of-Life Ethic euthanasia of newborns or infanticide is a moral option and in some cases it should be demanded. Schuklenk states:

A quality-of-life proponent could just as well argue that respect for human dignity demands that the infant's life be terminated on compassionate grounds.

No dignity in a syringe full of poison.

The following letter was published by The Star newspaper in South Africa (Link).

Eusebius McKaiser’s column headlined “Put my dignity first, kindly” (see related articles below) supports euthanasia, particularly in the aftermath of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s recent declaration favouring assisted suicide or euthanasia to ensure death with dignity.

Of course everyone wants to die with dignity. But I cannot understand what is dignified about a doctor terminating (aka killing) a patient’s life, even at the patient’s request.

The point is, quite apart from the serious moral issues involved, such drastic action is unnecessary. I assist in a unit where many patients die from terminal disease, yet they are all counselled, cared for and appropriately medicated, so that their last days are as serene and peaceful as possible. Isn’t that dying with dignity?

It is true that many do die undignified deaths, at home or in hospital. But that only reflects failure to access the care available, such as the involvement of hospice, adequate sedation, good counselling and many other strategies to effectively reduce suffering and preserve dignity.

Please, Archbishop Tutu and Eusebius McKaiser, when you come to the end of life’s road, don’t look for a doctor with a syringe full of lethal poison. There is no dignity in that.

Look instead for a doctor who knows how to fulfil his responsibilities to his patients, and provide a peaceful environment that allows life to slip serenely away. That is the death with dignity you are looking for.

Dr Terry Gilpin
Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal

Capital Punishment, Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.

This article was written by Wesley Smith and published on his blog on July 24 under the title: Another Cruel and Unusual Death with Dignity.

By Wesley Smith

The drugs that are used in lethal injection executions are also used in assisted suicide/euthanasia.

Yet, we are told with regard to the former lethal use, that they cause pain and suffering–but with the latter use, it is peaceful, calm “death with dignity.”

Another execution using lethal injection has gone wrong. From the FNN story:

A so-called botched execution in Arizona is reigniting the debate over the death penalty and how lethal injections are administered. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ordered a review of the state’s execution process after a convicted double murderer gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half before his death Wednesday.

Studies have shown that euthanasia and assisted suicide killings can also take much time and cause adverse side effects – other than death, I mean–such as vomiting and seizures.

But that fact interferes with the death with dignity narrative, while promoting these problems furthers the cruel and unusual punishment meme.

Which is why I calls stories like this, “cruel and unusual death with dignity.”

Québec - Medical aid in dying: Court challenge.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Montreal, July 17, 2014 – As announced when Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, was adopted, the citizen movement Living with Dignity (LWD) and the Physicians’ Alliance against Euthanasia (the Alliance), representing together over 650 physicians and 17,000 citizens, have today filed a lawsuit before the Superior Court of Quebec in the District of Montreal. The lawsuit requests that the Court declare invalid all the provisions of An Act respecting end-of-life care that deal with “medical aid in dying”, a euphemism used to describe euthanasia. This Act not only allows certain patients to demand that a physician provoke their death, but also grants physicians the right to cause the death of these patients by the administration of a lethal substance.

The Alliance and LWD are challenging the constitutionality of those provisions in the Act which are aimed at decriminalizing euthanasia under the euphemism “medical aid in dying”. Euthanasia constitutes a culpable homicide under the Criminal Code. It is a subject-matter which is at the core of the exclusive federal legislative power in relation to criminal law and Quebec therefore does not have the power to adopt these provisions.

In addition, the impugned provisions unjustifiably infringe the rights to life and to security of patients guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. They further infringe the right to the safeguard of the dignity of the person, which is also protected by the Quebec Charter.

In view of the gravity of the situation and the urgent need to protect all vulnerable persons in Quebec, the Alliance and LWD request an accelerated management of the case in order to obtain a judgement before the expected coming into force of the Act on December 10, 2015.

-30-

Sources: The citizen network Living with Dignity and the Physicians’ Alliance against euthanasia.

For more information or to organize an interview, please contact: 

Nicolas Steenhout 

Director General, Living with Dignity 

info@vivredignite.org 

438-931-1233

Desmond Tutu confuses assisted dying with switching off life support.

This article was written by Renee Joubert, and published by Euthanasia Free New Zealand.

The “Falconer Assisted Dying Bill” will receive it’s second reading in the UK House of Lords on Thursday. It proposes legalising physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill who has been given 6 months or less to live.

Bishop Desmond Tutu has allegedly voiced his support for “assisted dying”, with reference to the terminal illness of his friend Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, during 2013.

According to CNN (27 June 2013) and News 24 (4 July 2013), the 94-year-old Nelson Mandela was in a persistent vegetative state and on life support to help him breathe. Medical staff advised his family that the machines should be switched off. Mandela eventually died on 5 December 2013. It seems that the delay could have been caused, at least in part, by a family dispute.

Some subsequent news reports published elsewhere, such as this one by 3News, claimed only that Mandela had been suffering from a recurring lung infection and that he had been “receiving intensive care at home” since 1 September.

Interesting that Bishop Desmond Tutu now admits publicly that Mandela was indeed on life support and that “prolonging his life was an affront to his dignity”, according to an article on BBC.com.

“I think when you need machines to help you breathe, then you have to ask questions about the quality of life being experienced and about the way money is being spent.”