Australia's Dr Death still Mr Death after medical suspension appeal lost.

This article was published on the HOPE Australia blog on January 7, 2015.

Australian Medical Board Tribunal dismisses Nitschke’s appeal

Paul Russell debating Philip Nitschke

By Paul Russell, Director of HOPE Australia.

In a media release today from Exit International, suspended doctor, Philip Nitschke, often dubbed ‘Dr Death’, notes that the Northern Territory Health Professional Review Tribunal has rejected his appeal against the suspension of his medical practice certificate by the South Australian Medical Board.

Nitschke was suspended from medical practice in July 2014 after an ABC Western Australia TV interview regarding the death of Perth man, Nigel Brayley drew the ire of suicide prevention organisations. The medical board said it was necessary to suspend Nitschke immediately over the need to ‘protect public health or safety’. Nitschke appealed the suspension on a number of grounds; most notably that he had no professional relationship and therefore no duty of care as a doctor towards Nigel Brayley’s welfare in regards to his decision to commit suicide.

The tribunal appeal hearings, originally to be heard in Adelaide, South Australia, were eventually heard in Darwin, Northern Territory over three days in November after Nitschke successfully argued that the place of his medical registration was the appropriate place for the hearings.

Nitschke says in his press statement that he intends to appeal the suspension decision to the NT Supreme Court claiming that the Tribunal made ‘clear errors in law’.

The suspension itself was made pending the hearing of 12 complaints lodged with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency over the last three years against Nitschke, including one by this author over two years ago in respect to the promotion of suicide apparatus using nitrogen.

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

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

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

What a soap opera.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CBC interviewer fails to ask tough questions on Senate euthanasia bill.

This article was published on the Protection of Conscience Project blog on January 6.

By Sean Murphy, the administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project.

A bill has been introduced in the Canadian Senate by Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth to legalize physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. Bill S-225’s definition of of “assist” is of particular interest. It means “to provide the person with the knowledge or means to commit suicide, or to perform an act with the intent to cause the person’s death.” Consistent with this, an “assisting physician” is one “who provides assistance” to a patient seeking euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

This indicates that indirectly facilitating suicide even by providing information for that purpose is equivalent to more direct forms of assistance, like providing a lethal prescription. Further, it implies that both providing information to facilitate suicide and actually killing someone are of comparable legal or moral significance. Many physicians and health care workers who object to assisted suicide and euthanasia would agree, and, for that reason, would refuse to refer or otherwise help a patient find someone willing to kill him or assist him in committing suicide.

The point was overlooked during an interview of Senator Ruth by Evan Solomon on CBC Television’s Power and Politics (2 December, 2014). After discussing the contents of the bill in general terms and asking Senator Ruth about her reasons for introducing it, Solomon raised the issue of conscientious objection:

Evan Solomon: A doctor might be watching this, and say, you know, “Great piece of legislation. What do you do if, what will you do to me if I don’t want to do this?” 

Senator Ruth: Nothing. No doctor is coerced to do this, no patient is coerced to do this. This is about choice. The choice of doctors who want to assist in it and their protection ...

Solomon failed to ask the tough questions. Among them: 

1. If physicians will not be forced to kill patients, will they, nonetheless, be forced to help patients find someone who will? 
2. Why is it that the bill is about the choice and the protection of doctors who want to help to kill patients, and not about the choice and protection of those who refuse? 
3. When abortion was legalized, politicians and activists promised that no physician would be forced to provide abortions, but refused to include a protection of conscience provision in the law.1 Now the College of Physicians of Ontario is proposing a policy that would compel physicians to provide abortions or help patients obtain them.2 Dr. Marc Gabel, chair of the working group that produced the draft policy, warns that physicians who refuse to do this should get out of family practice.3 As written, the policy could be applied equally to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Why does Senator Ruth think that objecting physicians will not be coerced – if not sooner, then later?

Notes:

1. Murphy, S. “Promises, promises. Canadian law reformers promise tolerance, freedom of conscience:What happens after the law is changed is another story.” Protection of Conscience Project

2. “Ontario physicians to be forced to do what they believe to be wrong: Draft policy demands that objectors provide or refer. Policy would apply to euthanasia, if legalized.” Protection of Conscience Project news release, 10 December, 2014

3. Swan, M. “Catholics doctors who reject abortion told to get out of family medicine.” The Catholic Register, 17 December, 2014. (Accessed 2014-12-19)

Scotland may kill assisted suicide bill in committee.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Edinburgh News is reporting that the Scottish assisted suicide bill may die in the Health and Sport committee. The hearings will begin on January 13.

The group - Doctors for assisted suicide are concerned that too many groups opposing assisted suicide have been invited to present to the government committee. The Edinburgh News reported that: 

Duncan McNeil MSP, the convener of the health and sport committee, said it would consider all evidence placed before it and give it equal weight.

When reading Scotland's assisted suicide bill it is clear that the language of the bill will kill.

Section 1 of the bill says:

It is not a crime (of any kind) to assist a person to commit suicide.

This means that anyone can do it.

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:

Belgian rapist to be euthanized

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on January 3, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Apparently, the Belgian rapist who wanted euthanasia rather than spend life in jail will be snuffed by a doctor forthwith, in a country that rejects the death penalty. From the RTE News story:

Belgian newspaper De Morgen is reporting Frank Van Den Bleeken, who has spent the past 30 years in jail for repeated rape convictions and a rape murder, will be euthanised in prison in the north-western city of Bruges. “Euthanasia will indeed be implemented,” a justice ministry spokeswoman told the Flemish-language newspaper, which gave the date as 11 January . 

“Now the time has come,” the spokeswoman added. Mr Van Den Bleeken had for years requested that the state help him end his life due to what his lawyer Jos Vander Velpen called “unbearable” psychological suffering. He received the all-clear to be allowed do so last September.

Good grief.

I call cases such as this, “cruel and unusual death with dignity.” The irony is sharp enough to shatter bones.

Here’s the lesson: Once the monster breaks its chain, there are no real limits to euthanasia consciousness.

Links to more information:

Depressed mother died by euthanasia in Belgium. Mortier challenges the law.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Mortier's mother died by euthanasia in Belgium

Tom Mortier, a chemistry professor, who lost his depressed mother, Godelieva De Troyer, to euthanasia in April 2012, has challenged the Belgian euthanasia law and the doctor who lethally injected his mother by launching a legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights. 

An article written by Kelsey Harkness and published in the Daily Signal concerns Mortier's case.

Harkness defines the Belgian euthanasia experience by explaining how it has expanded over time. She writes:

Although euthanasia laws originally were designed with terminally ill patients in mind, they have evolved to include persons with mental illness or physical disabilities, those who didn’t or couldn’t consent, and even children. 

In Belgium, where it is now legal for terminally ill children who are in great pain and have parental consent to end their lives, euthanasia results in about one in every 50 deaths.

The article describes Mortier's experience with the euthanasia death of his mother by stating:

Some, such as Tom Mortier, a 38-year-old chemistry professor at Leuven University College in Flanders, say his country has gone too far. 

On April 19, 2012, Mortier’s mother was put to death at age 65 for what doctors called “untreatable depression.” He is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights over the conditions of her death. 

Mortier didn’t find out his mother, Godelieva De Troyer, had been euthanized until he received a phone call the next day asking him to retrieve her body from the morgue. 

“I was completely shocked and traumatized,” Mortier says in an email interview with The Daily Signal.

Godelieva De Troyer

Mortier explains that his mother was living with chronic depression, but her request for euthanasia was based on a relationship break-up.

After her last relationship ended, she broke off contact with me and my children because she was worried that I was the same as my father who committed suicide when I was 5 years old.

Mortier only found out about his mother's euthanasia death, after she died. The doctor who lethally injected De Troyer, Wim Distelmans, is an oncologist who specializes in tumors. The article states:

Mortier says neither Distelmans nor a psychiatrist he consulted to approve the life-ending procedure (also a close friend of Distelmans’) had a previous involvement with his mother’s health. 

In fact, De Troyer’s treating psychiatrist of more than 20 years refused to help her die, maintaining that she did not satisfy the requirements of Belgium law. 

At first Distelmans agreed, and he too declined to help De Troyer end her life.
But after she made a donation of 2,500 euro to Life End Information Forum, an organization he co-founded, Distelmans carried out De Troyer’s request.

Mortier explains that Distelmans, who is also in charge of the government commission that overseas compliance with the euthanasia law, has also received donations from other people before lethally injecting them. Mortier states that Distelmans has a "clear conflict of interest."

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:

A “Death Doula” Loses His Medical License

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on December 31, 2014

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

There is more to this story than a ghoul suicide facilitator losing his medical license.

Lawrence G. Egbert is part of the suicide “counseling” organization, Final Exit Network. The group assists all kinds of people–including the mentally ill–in killing themselves with helium. Now, Egbert has lost his license. From the New York Times story:

State regulators said that Dr. Egbert had acted as what the network calls an exit guide for six people in Maryland from May 2004 to November 2008. “Dr. Egbert reviewed their applications and medical records and recommended accepting them as members,” said the order, which was signed by Christine A. Farrelly, the executive director of the Board of Physicians. “Dr. Egbert attended their suicide rehearsals. He held each member’s hand and talked to him or her.”

Each of the patients died, the state said, of asphyxiation caused by helium inhalation, and Dr. Egbert “removed the hoods and helium tanks” from the places where the five women and one man died. Those patients had been diagnosed with conditions that included Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The Right to Die

This article is written by William Peace and published on his Bad Cripple blog on December 30, 2014.

Dr William Peace

Bill Peace with students

I find the notion that one has the right to die impossible to disentangle. Death is not a right it is a biological inevitability. All humans that are born will die. Death is inevitable. The so called right to die is incorrectly framed. People want to control how their life will end. Superficially, this makes sense but typically people die in a hospital or nursing home after a long physical decline. According to various sources, only 25% of Americans die at home. What the right to die really involves is a primal desire for control. In my opinion the belief a person can control one's death is narcissistic in the extreme. As I have noted many times, we do not live or die in a social vacuum. Our death has meaning that extends well beyond the person that has died or is dying. Our lives are not equally valued, a fact those that advocate for assisted suicide legislation refuse to acknowledge. Bias exists in many forms. For me, the bias I deal with on a daily basis is called ableism. I rarely hear this term. In fact the only place I hear this term is on university campuses. Fred Pelka, in the ABC-Clio Companion to the Disability Rights Movement, defined ableism as follows: 

"Ableism is that set of often contradictory stereotypes about people with disabilities that acts as a barrier to keep them from achieving their full potential as equal citizens in society".

Ableism is deeply ingrained into the fabric of American society. Ableism is everywhere. It is in our language and use of metaphors. It is in the built environment. Ableism surrounds us and is impossible to avoid. I come across the worst sort of ableism and I do not even need set foot outside my door. 

Scotland assisted suicide bill discriminates against people with disabilities.

Kevin Fitzpatrick

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE
Spokesperson - Not Dead Yet UK Campaign.

An online news service has claimed that Scotland is set to introduce the ‘most robust’ assisted suicide legislation yet (Sputnik, Dec 29, 2014). Nonsense.

Scotland’s previous attempts at legalising someone else to intervene in another’s death by causing that dying person’s final end, have been amongst the weakest, most flawed to appear in any legislature.

The current Bill is just as bad as any seen in Scotland previously. It continues to include ‘people with progressive life-shortening conditions’ – thus it exposes pretty nearly every significantly disabled person to the threats inherent in it. It sets a 14 day limit from decision to death: a perilously thin time in which to detect and treat depression. It removes any question of crimes being committed in ‘assisting’ or pressing someone to commit suicide – as long as the assister claims ‘I acted out of compassion’ they will be free of investigation. But saying does not make it so.

The Bill contains all the other flaws of proposed and in other jurisdictions, enacted laws. The simple truth is that we can never legislate in advance for ‘pure compassion’ because there is no such thing, even in well-meaning people who give assistance. It is no more robust than any other law, proposed or already in force. And it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

The lie is that there will be ‘safeguards’. The overwhelming evidence from around the world is that such laws do exactly the opposite of what their proponents claim: it removes choice from patients, placing it in the hands of the minority of doctors who are willing to move from protecting life to furnishing the means to take it.

77% of GPs do not want a change in law, and the profession’s royal colleges all reject the move. Assisted suicide/euthanasia is never a medical decision: it comes when medicine says ‘we have nothing left – there is no more we can do’. Most doctors recognise that a change in law forces them into the position of ‘higher moral judges’ and they know they cannot be that superior just because they are doctors. It risks trampling on their own human rights, not to be involved. It leaves patients who form such suicidal wishes to ‘shop around’ amongst the remainder who are willing. We are left to wonder whether these few can really epitomise ‘higher moral judgment’ in opposition to all their colleagues, whether they really ought to be practising medicine at all.

The Bill’s promoter in the Scottish parliament says the proposal will allow people to ‘[take] control of the end of their own life…demonstrat[ing] compassion and respect for each person's own choice…’. But if the person is a healthy, well-off family man with apparently ‘everything to live for’ the response will be very different to that offered to a significantly disabled person. Why? It is based in the attitude that a disabled life is not worth living. They constantly refer to the loss of bodily functions as the knock-down ‘indignity’ that demands we offer the sufferer the final solution: death. If that were true, there would be a queue miles long of disabled people who manage incontinence daily.

This attitudinal response is fundamentally based on one thing: non-disabled people saying to disabled people ‘Of course we understand you want to die. We would too in your place. So it is our duty to help you to die.’ That is purely and simply, rank discrimination against disabled people.

It should not even require special pleading but that is what we are faced with: hoping that most other non-disabled people will see our disabled lives for what they are, and value us equally first and foremost as human beings like any other. It should go without saying that non-disabled people deciding that disabled people can be candidates for elimination is the worst kind of disability discrimination. It is a moral judgment on the worth of our lives, and it is fatal.

Do not let anyone, doctor or politician hoodwink you into thinking any differently. Just because someone says they are acting out of compassion is no guarantee that they are. And with all the pressures doctors face, on top of the usual gamut of hard decisions daily living throws at them, they are pushed to make such decisions to end lives by the fatal flawed logic that killing the sufferer is the only way to end their suffering. As I said: Nonsense.

Debbie Purdy Dies: Case Echoed I Accuse!

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on December 29, 2014.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Debbie Purdy, who won a landmark legal case in the United Kingdom requiring the public prosecutor to issue guidelines when assisted suicide would be prosecuted, has died in hospice after refusing to eat. She was 51.

Purdy’s case thrust the legalization of assisted suicide onto the front burner in the UK in 2009, where it remains today. Ironically, even though she wasn’t terminally ill at the time–and died now because she stopped eating–UK assisted suicide promoters continue to pretend that legalization is about terminal illness.

Considering Purdy’s case–and the support she received for the right to assisted suicide–it clearly is not. Any such limitation is only the proverbial foot in the door.

I am reminded of the 1941 German pro-euthanasia propaganda movie Ich Klage An! (I Accuse!). As in the Purdy case, the plot involved a woman who contracts progressive MS. As she loses abilities, she wants to die. Her physician husband eventually assists her suicide and is arrested. The movie ends with the character looking into the camera, as if the audience were the judges, declaring:

No! Now, I accuse! I accuse the law which hinders doctors and judges in their task of helping people. I confess . . . I have delivered my wife from her sufferings, following her wishes. My life and the lives of all people who will suffer the same fate as my wife, depends on your verdict. Now, pass your verdict.

The answer the movie-makers wanted was to validate the husband’s act. In essence, that is what the Purdy case was also about.

If you agree that the husband acted properly in I Accuse, stop pretending assisted suicide is about terminal illness and admit it is much more about disability–which is why the disability rights movement remains so opposed as they are the primary targets. It is about allowing killing as an acceptable answer to many causes of suffering, whether terminal or chronic disease, disability, mental illness, or existential despair.

Brittany Maynard story: a suicide contagion.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In an article about the opinion of physicians on assisted suicide, Dr Will Johnstoncomments on the effects of the Brittany Maynard story. Johnston states:

“The social threshold of inhibition against suicide has been steadily eroded by the rhetorical strategy of calling for an endorsement of suicide in hard cases through labeling such endorsement [as] compassionate,” he said. “The Brittany Maynard tragedy is a prime example of this.”

Johnston then comments on how the Maynard story has caused a suicide contagion effect:

“We see how suicide contagion works when the media admire the suicidal person and speak of suicide as a form of heroism,” Johnston said. “I hospitalized a young suicidal patient 10 days ago who told me how he had done an Internet search for suicide drugs after watching the slick video glamorizing Brittany which was produced by the Hemlock Society (now Compassion & Choices).”

The media was irresponsible in how it promoted the Brittany Maynard story.

• Assisted Suicide: Is there a suicide contagion effect?
• Assisted Suicide lobby used Brittany Maynard to dupe people into signing online assisted suicide petition.
• Death with Dignity: really?
• An open letter to Brittany Maynard from Maggie Karner.

Good Grief: Now It’s “Death Doulas”

By Wesley Smith - published on his blog on December 27, 2014

The Hippocratic Oath is one of the last remaining impediments to the complete deprofessionalization of medicine.

Doctors don’t take it much anymore, but the people still embrace its core purpose as anessential protection of their lives and wellbeing.

Now, in the LA Times, a doctor and journalist try to put the Oath out of its misery by taking the primary responsibility for interacting with dying patients away from physicians and handing decision-making over to “death doulas.” From, “The Hippocratic Oath and the Terminally Ill,” by Nora Zamichow and Ken Murray:

If we allow medicine to prolong life, should we also allow it to shorten life for the terminally ill? 

We could, however, skirt the controversy entirely: What if we created another class of medical professionals known as death doulas, who could fill a gap between treatment doctors and hospice workers?

Doctors oppose euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Will Johnston

Politics within the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has created a situation whereby members of the CMA oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide, but the leadership appear to be supporting euthanasia and assisted suicide without the support of the membership.

Dr Will Johnston, the Chair of EPC - BC, is a member of the CMA. Johnston has suggested that the CMA has "pulled a fast one" and wants the CMA to hold a referendum on the issue. Johnston said that the CMA is:

“run by people who want assisted suicide and euthanasia and they are purporting a big change in the views of doctors on this. If they were sincere they would hold a referendum.”

The following letters were published in the National Post on December 24, 2014. 

Dr. Ewan C. Goligher, Toronto.

As a young physician, I find the CMA’s recent change of heart on the ethics of euthanasia disconcerting and disappointing. It remains unclear why, after sustained opposition to euthanasia on ethical grounds, the organization’s stance has so rapidly changed. Were the prior ethical principles misconstrued? Do ethical principles really blow with the winds of prevailing public opinion? 

The CMA must decide whether to advocate for or against euthanasia. In failing to firmly uphold its previously clear ethical position, it is tacitly admitting that euthanasia is potentially ethical and undermining those physicians who will remain firm in their commitment to the incalculable worth of our patients’ lives, even in the face of awful suffering and loss.

Dr. Roy Eappen, Montreal.

I am a physician. My job is to heal when I can and relieve suffering as best I can. My job is not to kill my patients. If it were, how could my patients ever trust me? I am troubled by the latest attempts to legislate doctor-assisted suicide. This could easily be used to rid society of the vulnerable and the handicapped. 

I am a member of the CMA and believe we should be fighting this. The judges won’t have to kill patients if they rule that assisted suicide is legal. Doctors will. Parliament clearly voted against this recently. 

I hope the judges of the Supreme Court rule against this immoral course of action.

Dr Ashe inappropriately promotes assisted suicide after a violent suicide death.

In response to an article published on December 11, 2014 in the Ottawa Citizen.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sympathy for the man who died by suicide, and his family, for the suffering and loss that they experienced should be paramount but Ashe is using this sad death as advocacy for assisted suicide. 

Dr Gerald Ashe has inappropriately used the violent suicide death of his patient in Brockville to promote the legalization of assisted suicide. Ashe, an assisted suicide lobby activist, suggested that if assisted suicide were legal, that his patient would not have died a violent suicide death.

The facts in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal suggest otherwise. The rate of violent suicide deaths in Oregon has increased, not decreased since assisted suicide became legal. Similar to Ashe, the suicide lobby in Oregon claimed that legalizing assisted suicide would reduce the incidence of violent suicide deaths.

Statistics indicate that the suicide rate in Oregon was decreasing during the 1990's but since 2000 the suicide rate has increased faster than the national average. In 2007 the Oregon suicide rate was 35% above the national average and in 2010 it was 41% above the national average. These statistics indicate that legalizing assisted suicide does not reduce the suicide rate but rather leads to a suicide contagion effect.

It is inappropriate and inaccurate to exploit a sad and violent suicide death to promote assisted suicide.

The final seduction: Belgian euthanasia doctors become tourists at Auschwitz

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE
Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition International.
Spokesperson - Not Dead Yet UK Campaign.

(Link to a PDF of the article)

Kevin Fitzpatrick

Belgium’s leading euthanasia practitioner recently conducted a ‘study tour’ of Auschwitz (reported in Der Spiegel Nov 21, 2014). His group of seventy included doctors, psychologists and nurses from Belgium, all in favour of euthanasia; with no-one to challenge their world-view that they are right in taking the lives of other human beings. One is a psychiatrist, deliberating a request for euthanasia by a man with bi-polar disorder who loses thousands gambling during his manic phases. That such a request can be considered at all shows just how far they have travelled already in Belgium under Wim Distelmans.

Since Belgium’s law was introduced in 2002, Distelmans is reportedly responsible for the euthanasia deaths of hundreds of people - a physician who kills people. He is constantly in their media proffering his ‘morally superior’ leadership. He is also co-chairman of the Belgian government's Euthanasia Commission, which has never found even one of the cases presented to them worth investigating. He sees no conflict in regulating himself. Morally superior indeed. Now, as the psychiatrist’s mulling shows, terminal illness is long-past being a restrictive criterion for euthanasia in Belgium. They say they are acting out of ‘unconditional love’.

Although we have no special sense of his worry from the Der Spiegel article, the prospect of visiting Auschwitz apparently makes Distelmans feel uneasy. Maybe it has to do with the fact that a concentration camp survivor who was to accompany the group has called off her trip at the very last minute because she has ‘come down with a cold’. Perhaps the cold is real.

Distelmans promoted his tour of Auschwitz as an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of ‘death with dignity’. Genuine horror at what happened there might help us reflect, he says; but on what? That killing someone by lethal injection in a hospital room is therefore more dignified, perhaps? As a great philosopher once put it:

...I suppose there might be a man who ‘passes brilliantly’ every part of the medical course, and of whom you’d [still] feel that he never ought to be... [in] medical practice…he may make some remarkable diagnoses and cures. And yet…[while] you do not mean that he will never be properly qualified [it is] almost as though his practice in medicine was bound to corrupt him in some way; by which I do not mean he will break down or fail or suffer a decline in his powers. If he develops a sort of cynicism in medicine; or he regards it chiefly as a field in which to show prowess – this would be worse than any failing in brilliance.

The cynicism Rush Rhees speaks of, including the ‘evil of thinking oneself to be God’s agent’ (not in a necessarily religious way), is a deep corruption: of course many practitioners do not want to be involved in making end-of-life decisions for many reasons, religious and moral amongst them, or from the sheer ‘primitive horror of taking another person’s life’.

So it is not what they commonly do that qualifies doctors in any special way to make moral judgements about end-of-life situations. What they commonly do may, in fact, disqualify them, may in fact prove them to be the worst of people to act as judges, if they have become inured to deep consideration of each individual human death, seeing life as a bus to jump off when we please, or when the going really gets too tough.

If that last, most desperate situation can be understood in some ways that does not make their position and responses any the less shallow; a medicalised approach to death is yet emotionally void. Some doctors are cynical, some are self-absorbed, or have fallen into the trap of their god-complex.

Is it really necessary to visit the site of the worst excesses of cruelty and murder to learn something about the depths to which human beings will fall? How is that supposed to actually inform anyone’s deeper views about euthanasia?

The world is beginning, rightly, to question Distelmans’ purpose. As the journalist poses the question: is a physician who practices euthanasia ‘allowed to gaze into the abyss to assure himself of the moral fortitude of his actions... Is that cynical? Absurd?’ Is that what he is doing? His moral fortitude? What could possibly set his moral position above anyone else’s? Being a doctor is simply not enough and may be exactly the opposite, what rules him out of making such moral decisions, because he has become so inured to death, treating it so clinically.

Distelmans’ moral fortitude is my moral disgust, where any possible majesty in human passing from life is buried with his victims, reduced to a sterile, passionless injection of lethal substances – by a doctor convinced of his own moral rectitude – where have we heard this twisted moralizing before? O yes, was it not in this very place, Auschwitz, where doctors played such a huge role not just in practice but in developing the ideology which brought about the very conditions for Menegele , and his type, to practice and to pretend this was medical science, not the worst degradation and unthinkable torture? Pretend, until the last moment when they destroyed all records there and in Berlin, knowing the reality of what they had done.

German ethics committee rejects the legalization of assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The German media has portrayed the decision by the German Ethics Council to reject the legalization of assisted suicide in a confusing manner.

According to Deutche Welle news the German Ethics Council rejected a change in the assisted suicide law, but suggested that in certain circumstances, the principle of confidentiality in the doctor-patient relationship should prevail. The article stated:

A majority of the members of Germany's Ethics Council rejects organized assisted suicide carried out with the help of doctors or other professionals, a statement issued on Friday said. 

Such services should be banned "when they are designed for repeated use and occur in a public context, giving them the apparent status of social normality," the statment said. 

However, although the council supported the view of the German Medical Association that helping a patient to die was not part of a doctor's duties, it said in exceptional circumstances a doctor's decision to assist in the suicide of a terminally ill person should be respected as part of a "confidential doctor-patient relationship" - even if the decision contradicted this principle.

The article then quoted Eugen Brysch, the chairman of the German Foundation for the Protection of Patients, who criticized the interpretation of the ethics body statement he stated:

"Hintze and Reimann have twisted the recommendations of the Ethics Council in their favor," he said, saying that a majority of the council's members rejected the idea that a patient had a right to a doctor's assistance with suicide.

Peter Hintze and Carola Reimann, who are members of the Bundestag, are introducing an assisted suicide bill in the German Bundestag in February.

Rabbi Testifies Against Assisted Suicide Bill to New Jersey Senate Health Committee

This article was published on December 17 by The Yeshiva World News.

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Rabbi Avi Schnall

he “Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act” passed the State Assembly with 41 votes – the minimum needed – last month, and is now up for a full vote on the Senate floor. In the event that it passes the Senate, the decision would fall to Governor Chris Christie on whether to sign or veto the bill.

Sign the petition urging New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to veto the assisted suicide bill.

On Monday, Rabbi Avi Schnall, New Jersey Director of Agudath Israel of America, expressed Torah Jewry’s vehement opposition to the proposed law to the Senate Health Committee members. Rabbi Schnall told the Committee of Agudath Israel’s long history of representing Torah observant Jews in America – and why this battle is particularly important: “Informed by classical Jewish tradition which teaches that all human life is sacred, and possessed of the firm view that laws that undermine the sanctity of human life send a message that is profoundly dangerous for all of society, Agudath Israel’s interest in the issue of legalizing suicide is especially keen.”

In addition to articulating the religious-moral opposition to physician assisted suicide, Agudath Israel’s testimony laid out a clear legal case for the government to ban the practice, and noted that even some that are pro the bill from the medical community oppose the idea of allowing physicians to participate in patients’ decision to end their life.

John Kelly Reports on New Jersey Senate Committee Assisted Suicide Bill Hearing

This article was originally published on the Not Dead Yet blog.

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John Kelly

y John Kelly
New England coordinator - disability rights group Not Dead Yet.

The New Jersey state Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee passed its assisted suicide bill, S382, out of committee on December 15th. Senate President and co-sponsor Steve Sweeney initially said that a full Senate vote would be held on Thursday, the last scheduled full session of the year, but later indicated that the vote would not be called this week. Susan K. Livio of NJ.com reported that “Sweeney said he and other supporters would embark on an ‘educational campaign’ to discuss the matter with colleagues.”

As Dustin Racioppi wrote at NorthJersey.com:

It isn’t known if it has the 21 votes to clear the Senate, though Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has come out in support of the bill. In a statement, he said he believes there “needs to be an honest discussion about this option.”

Speculation is that Sweeney plans to twist some arms – as he may have done in the committee itself – in order to pass a bill and score points against Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who has pledged to veto it.

Sign the petition urging New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to veto the assisted suicide bill.

The good news for the people in the crosshairs is that great disability rights activists showed up to testify against the bill, including reportedly a dozen in wheelchairs. From Philadelphia ADAPT and Not Dead Yet came German Parodi and Alan Holdsworth. German said that when he was unconscious after his spinal cord injury 21 years ago, doctors urged his grandmother to “put him down.” We are so glad she didn’t!

Holdsworth was quoted at the bottom of Racioppi’s article:

“What we have is palliative care for the rich and death for the poor. Is that the road we’re really going down here?” said Alan Holdsworth, a member of the group Not Dead Yet.

Meghan Schrader represented Second Thoughts Massachusetts and the millennial generation (which she says is opposed to assisted suicide 54%-45%) in describing disabled foster kids’ distance from the Brittany Maynard idea of personal “autonomy.” Stephen Mendelsohn drove from Connecticut to call out the incredible me-me-me selfishness of Compassion & Choices, the arch-proponents behind the bill.  Making assisted suicide just another medical treatment option doesn’t only affect the C&C elite, but also thousands of elders and people with disabilities who must deal with a cost-cutting health care system and sometimes face cruel abuse from family members and caregivers.

Opponents of the bill vastly outnumbered proponents, but it appears that Compassion & Choices, who was not present, was privy to the plan settled before the hearing even began: that amid concerns about safeguards and teen suicide, the bill would be passed out of committee “without recommendation.”  That piece of information was revealed by Republican Sen. Bob Singer, who cast his “no” vote.

Two Democrats who voted to pass the bill out of committee, Chair Sen. Joseph Vitale and Sen. Robert Gordon, said they would vote against the bill on the floor.

Fortunately, the strong turn out of disability rights advocates opposing the bill gave everyone a chance to see how we live with dignity while we fight the insultingly named “death with dignity” bills.  The C&C zealots don’t care about assisted suicide deaths due to mistakes, coercion and abuse, which they seem to consider as acceptable collateral damage.  But none of us are expendable.  We’re Not Dead Yet and nothing about us without us!

More information:

• New Jersey Senate will vote on assisted suicide bill.