Connecticut assisted suicide bill is likely dead.

Stephen Mendelsohn from
Second Thoughts Connecticut

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

For the past three years, the assisted suicide lobby in Connecticut has introduced an assisted suicide bill, paid lobbyists to promote the bill, and then a coalition of people opposing assisted suicide successfully defeat the bill.

Disability right group, Second Thoughts Connecticut, in coalition with other groups working in a unified manner, such as the Family Institute of Connecticut, have defeated the assisted suicide bills in Connecticut three years in a row.

An article by Daniela Altimari in the Hartford Courant states that assisted suicide bill - HB 7015 has likely died in committee again. The article quotes Michael Culhane who explaines how the bill was defeated:

Opponents have been counting votes since the bill was drafted in February and knew support was weak, he said. 

Culhane said the measure's failure to move forward was due to a large and diverse coalition that worked together to persuade legislators that the bill was bad public policy. 

It was a collective effort that produced the results that were announced today.

Stephen Mendelsohn, from Second Thoughts Connecticut, stated:

"We would urge the General Assembly to focus on improving hospice, palliative care and home care ... rather than continue to waste time on an issue that has now been rejected three years in a row without a committee vote,'' said Stephen Mendelsohn, a disability rights activist with the group Second Thoughts Connecticut. "Three strikes and you are out."

Assisted suicide bills, such as the Connecticut bill, are defeated when a unified coalition of people from differing perspectives and political ideologies work together for the sole purpose of protecting people from assisted suicide.

Thank you to the coalition leaders in Connecticut who successfully worked together again.

• Assisted suicide would be fraught with problems and abuses.
• Maggie Karner: Assisted suicide would undermine my cancer battle.
• Assisted suicide opponents meet in Connecticut.

Irish Symposium: Saving Lives NOT Causing Deaths - Dublin - June 6, 2015.

RDS Center

Hope Ireland and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) - International have organized an International Conference on euthanasia and assisted suicide at the RDS Center in Dublin Ireland on June 6, 2015.

Everyone deserves justice, fairness - never more so than when they are facing death.

Speakers include: Alex Schadenberg (EPC - Canada), Paul Russell (HOPE - Australia), Henk Reitsma (Netherlands), Caroline Roux (France), Tom Mortier (Belgium), Amy Hasbrouck (Not Dead Yet - Canada), Dr. Kevin Fitzpatrick (Ireland) – others to be announced.

To register please go online to: www.hopeire.com or send your details to Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick by email at: kevin@hopeire.com or by calling: 00 353 (0)857474607.

Attendance is free for the one-day conference. 

The RDS building, chosen both for its location and its ease of access.

The venue can accommodate up to 120 people, so places are limited. Please sign up early. Registration is possible online, by phone or mail and, if places remain, on the day.

The law in Ireland protects dying people from fear, suggestion, coercion and abuse. Removing legal protections is dangerous and will quickly lead to people who are not terminally ill dying under these laws.

Hope Ireland is a new organisation to combat moves to legalise euthanasia/assisted suicide.

Send donations to:
Hope (Ireland)
120-121 Baggot Street Lower,
Dublin 2

California: Vote NO on assisted suicide bill SB 128

Margret Dore

By Margaret Dore

To read my legal/policy analysis against SB 128, (click here). To view supporting documentation, (click here).

Key points include:

People "eligible" for assisted suicide/euthanasia may have years, even decades, to live, i.e., if they don't die of assisted suicide/euthanasia under SB 128. The bill encourages people with years to live to throw away their lives.

The thrust of SB 128 is to protect doctors and other participants in a patient's death, including family members - not patients. This is done in three ways:

1. Taking the teeth out of patient protections;
2. Requiring the death certificate, which is the official cause of death, to reflect a natural death; and
3. A near complete lack of transparency - in Oregon, similar confidentiality provisions preclude disclosure to law enforcement

The bottom line, patient choice and control is not assured. SB 128 is, instead, a recipe for patient abuse. Other problems include steerage to suicide by healthcare providers and the risk of suicide contagion.

Margaret Dore
Law Offices of Margaret K. Dore, P.S.
Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation
www.margaretdore.com
www.choiceillusion.org

1001 4th Avenue, Suite 4400
Seattle, WA 98154

Physician-assisted suicide is a social contagion.

The following article was published in the Washington Times on April 6, 2014.

Ryan Anderson

By Ryan T. Anderson

In 2012, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, campaigned against physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts. She pointed out that most people wish for a good death “surrounded by loved ones, perhaps with a doctor and/or clergyman at our bedside.” But with physician-assisted suicide, you get “a prescription for up to 100 capsules, dispensed by a pharmacist, taken without medical supervision, followed by death, perhaps alone. That seems harsh and extreme to me.”

Indeed it is.

Yet today, at least 18 states are considering allowing physician-assisted suicide. The media frame the debate as one about individual autonomy, especially in the face of devastating illnesses that rightly capture our empathy.

But the merciful thing would be to expect doctors to do no harm and ease the pain of those who suffer and to support families and ministries in providing that care.

Allowing physicians to help patients kill themselves changes the practice of medicine and our entire culture. Our laws impact society as a whole — not just a small handful of afflicted individuals. The question is: Will our law and public policy shape our culture to view the elderly and the disabled as burdens to be disposed of, or as people to be loved and cared for?

Human life doesn’t need to be extended by every medical means possible, but a person should never be intentionally killed. Doctors may help their patients to die a dignified death from natural causes, but they should not kill their patients or help them to kill themselves.

Physician-assisted suicide is bad policy for four reasons:

1. Physician-assisted suicide endangers the weak and the marginalized. Safeguards purporting to minimize this risk have proved to be inadequate. Over time, they are often watered down or eliminated. In the Netherlands, several government-sponsored surveys have disclosed that doctors have intentionally administered lethal injections to thousands of patients without a request. They have also failed to report thousands of cases to the authorities.

2. Physician-assisted suicide changes the culture in which medicine is practiced. It corrupts the profession of medicine by permitting the tools of healing to be used as techniques for killing. Physician-assisted suicide fundamentally distorts the doctor-patient relationship because it reduces patients’ trust of doctors and doctors’ undivided commitment to the life and health of their patients. Physician-assisted suicide offers a cheap, quick fix in a world of increasingly scarce health care resources, thus creating perverse incentives for insurance providers and health care financing.

3. Physician-assisted suicide would harm our entire culture, especially our family and intergenerational obligations. The temptation to view elderly or disabled family members as burdens will increase, as will the temptation for those family members to internalize this attitude and view themselves as burdens. Physician-assisted suicide undermines social solidarity and true compassion.

4. Physician-assisted suicide violates human dignity and denies equality before the law. A just legal system respects human dignity in everyone. It takes all reasonable steps to prevent the innocent, of any age or condition, from being devalued and killed. Classifying a subgroup of people as legally eligible to be killed violates our nation’s commitment to equality-by allowing lives to be judged as no longer “worth living.”

Instead of embracing physician-assisted suicide, we should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. People seeking physician-assisted suicide typically suffer from depression or other mental illnesses, as well as simply from loneliness. We must respond with appropriate care and human presence.

For those in physical pain, pain management and other palliative medicine can manage their symptoms effectively. For those facing imminent death, hospice care and fellowship can accompany them in their last days. Anything less falls short of what human dignity requires.

Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill. Citizens and policymakers need to resist the push by pressure groups, academic elites, and the media to sanction physician-assisted suicide.

• Always care, Never Kill.

• Ryan T. Anderson Phd is the William E. Simon Fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center.

The effects of depression on the body

This article was printed with permission from healthline.

We all feel sad or anxious at times. It’s a normal part of life. However, clinical depression does interfere with your ability to function. Depression affects how you feel and can also cause changes throughout your body. Major depression is a serious medical condition that has a dramatic effect on your quality of life.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 6.7 percent of adults in the United States have depression. People with depression often develop other health issues as well. Major depression is also called major depressive illness or clinical depression.

Central Nervous System.

Depression can cause a lot of symptoms, many of which are easy to dismiss or ignore. It may be especially difficult to detect in children, who can’t articulate their symptoms, or in older adults, who may blame their symptoms on aging.

Symptoms of depression include overwhelming sadness, grief, and a sense of guilt. People with depression often complain about feeling tired all the time. They also tend to have trouble sleeping. Other symptoms include irritability, anger, and loss of interest in things that used to bring pleasure, including sex. It may be described as a feeling of emptiness or hopelessness. Some people may find it difficult to put these feelings into words. Frequent episodes of crying may be a sign of depression, but not everyone who is depressed cries.

Other symptoms include inability to concentrate, memory problems, and difficulty making decisions. People with depression may have trouble maintaining a normal work schedule or fulfill social obligations.

Some people who are depressed may use alcohol or drugs. They may become reckless or abusive. A depressed person may consciously avoid talking about it or try to mask the problem. People suffering from depression may be preoccupied with thoughts of death or hurting themselves. There’s an increased risk of suicide.

Children get depressed, too. Signs include clinginess, worry, and unwillingness to attend school. Children may be excessively irritable and negative.

Depression can cause headaches, chronic body aches, and pain that may not respond to medication.

Digestive System.

Depression can affect the appetite. Some people cope by overeating or binging. This can lead to weight and obesity-related illnesses like type 2 diabetes. Others lose their appetite or fail to eat nutritious food. Eating problems can lead to stomachaches, cramps, constipation, or malnutrition. Symptoms may not improve with medication.

Depression and stress are closely related. Stress hormones speed heart rate and make blood vessels tighten, putting your body in a prolonged state of emergency. Over time, this can lead to heart disease.

Cardiovascular and Immune Systems

According to Harvard Medical School, patients who are depressed when hospitalized for a heart condition are two to five times likelier to have severe chest pain, heart attack, or stroke, in the next year. Recurrence of cardiovascular problems is linked more closely to depression than to smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Untreated, depression raises the risk of dying after a heart attack. Heart disease is also a trigger for depression.

Depression and stress may have a negative impact on the immune system, making you more vulnerable to infections and diseases.

• Aging and depression. (n.d.). American Psychological Association. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/aging-depression.aspx
• Depression and chronic pain. (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression-and-chronic-pain/index.shtml
• Depression and heart disease: Mind and mood affect the heart. (2006, February). Harvard Health Publications, Harvard Medical School. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/depression_and_heart_disease
• Leonard, B. (2000, January 1). Stress, depression and the activation of the immune system. World J Biol Psychiatry. 1 (1), 17-25. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12607229
• Muskin, P. (n.d.). How does depression affect someone's physical health and well-being?.Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia Psychiatry. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from: http://asp.cumc.columbia.edu/psych/asktheexperts/ask_the_experts_inquiry.asp?SI=72
• What is depression?. (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml - part7

There’s always hope - brain tumour treatment breakthrough

This article was published on the HOPE Australia website on April 1, 2015.

To discourage or deny hope must be one of the cruelest things any one person can do to another.

Paul Russell

By Paul Russell, the director of HOPE Australia.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide enthusiasts peddle a wide range of slogans to further their goals and to influence the public towards the thought that perhaps being legally able to help someone to die or to kill them is a benefit both to the individual and to society at large.

That they should ‘sloganise’ their campaigns is entirely unremarkable; it’s what every organisation pushing for some change or some recognition would do. That their slogans are paper-thin veneers over precisely the opposite outcome is where the danger really lies.

Take for example the slogan of ‘choice’. This modern concept of ‘choice’ is closely aligned to autonomy – our right to self-determination and self-direction. Its use is beguiling precisely because ‘choice’ in general terms is prized as an integral part of freedom broadly understood.

However, in the context of euthanasia or assisted suicide, the ‘choice’ to be made dead is not really a choice at all; it is the end of choice precisely because it excludes all other possibilities in such a definite and irredeemable fashion. It excludes any and all other choices.

How many times have we heard stories of people who have ‘defied-the-odds’ and outlived a difficult prognosis by months and years and even experiencing remission to return to a full ‘normal’ life? There have even been cases of misdiagnosis resulting tragically in assisted suicide. Making the ‘choice’ to be dead denies any other possibility and extinguishes both life and hope.

Brittany Maynard had glioblastoma multiforme; a debilitating brain tumour that, in its final stages, grows at an alarming rate interfering with brain function and ultimately resulting in death. Medscape online notes that, ‘No current treatment is curative’.

Maynard ended her life using Oregon’s assisted suicide laws on the 1st of November last year. Maynard became the poster girl for the assisted suicide movement in the USA and even post-death is being used to promote assisted suicide across the Union and especially in her home state of California.

The use of people like Brittany Maynard to promote a cause like this is deeply disturbing. We will never know, at the end, how free a decision it was for her to suicide given the likelihood that her public profile and her announced intention to die at the end of October last sets a trajectory and an expectation.

The cancer treatment story begins at 13:30 on the youtube video.

What we can now say most clearly is that she did have other choices which she excluded by her death and which, according to the a US CBS Network Sixty Minutes report on the March 29, 2015, could possibly have included remission. 

In an extensive and beautifully constructed report, 60 Minutes’ anchor, Scott Pelley and a camera crew followed patients in a stage 1 immunotherapy trial on patients with glioblastoma reporting that the introduction of a variant of the polio virus into the tumour cells is acting to trigger the body’s immune system into attacking the tumour which, in early cases, has seen the tumour disappear completely over time.

Even Duke University’s head of the trial, in the report, says he is edging closer to the possibility of using the word ‘cure’.

While yet in the early stages of the trial process, tests on many other forms of cancer are returning favourable results.

This is great news. But as with all such medical breakthroughs, its announcement will come as ‘too late’ for some and will no doubt bring widely mixed emotions to those who have lost loved ones to this same form of tumour. Whether Brittany Maynard may have been able to access this trial is pure conjecture.

This breakthrough ultimately says to the euthanasia and assisted suicide argument that changing the law based on one individual’s circumstances at one solitary point in history is a denial of hope. It serves to highlight that the pro euthanasia and assisted suicide movement, in many subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, is saying that this person (Maynard) and these persons (extending the individual to a category of persons) have no hope and, because of their circumstances, aren’t actually entitled to have any hope.

It’s not really about ‘choice’. It never was and never will be so. It’s really about the denial of life and of hope by the reduction of the human person to simply an object of pity and a victim of circumstance.

Hope, on the otherhand, can be a sustaining force even in the most difficult of circumstances. In the Sixty Minutes report they follow a mother of two who is hanging on to the hope that she will see her sons graduate, marry and then have her grandchildren. But even in seemingly bleak circumstances the hope of seeing another sunrise or another visit from a friend or loved one cannot be underestimated as a force to sustain equilibrium, joy and life.

To discourage or deny hope must be one of the cruelest things any one person can do to another short of killing them. Sugar coating it with the false mantra of choice makes it doubly so.

Please take the time to view the CBS two part video by clicking HERE.

Physician-Assisted Suicide: Improving the Debate

This article was first published on the Ethikapolitika website

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is in the news … again.

John Keown

By John Keown

The Washington Post reported on Valentine’s day that since the death of her husband, Diane Rehm, the NPR talk show host, is emerging as a “key force” in the “right to die” debate. The Post relates that she is addressing fundraising dinners for “Compassion and Choices,” a pro-PAS pressure-group. The Post quotes her as saying:

As strongly as I feel, I don’t want to use the program to proselytize my feelings … But I do want to have more and more discussion about it because I feel it’s so important.

She is right. It is important. And it is worthy of more discussion, not least because more discussion, if fair and balanced, allows opponents of PAS to refute the superficially attractive arguments of pressure-groups like “Compassion and Choices”—arguments that have, with very few exceptions, been rejected by legislatures, expert committees, courts, professional healthcare associations, and disability groups around the world.

What are the main arguments for changing the law to allow doctors, at the patient’s request, to write a lethal prescription (PAS) or to administer a lethal injection (voluntary, active euthanasia, or VAE)? In Debating Euthanasia, a book in which I debate a leading advocate of PAS and VAE, I considered ten arguments for relaxing the law. To illustrate their weakness, let us consider just three of the most popular arguments.

First: choice. Doesn’t respect for autonomy mean that patients have a right to be assisted in suicide, or to be given a lethal injection, if they make a truly autonomous request?

No. Respect for autonomy is important. We have, for example, a right to refuse treatment. We might judge that some treatments would not offer us a reasonable hope of benefit, or that others would be too burdensome to us. But respect for autonomy is not absolute. It has limits. One limit is on choices that seriously undermine the individual’s worth or well-being. We do not, for example, allow people to sell themselves into slavery. (And while one can sometimes escape from slavery, there is no return from death.) Nor do we allow people to take hard drugs. Even driving without a seatbelt is generally prohibited. It is often countered that suicide has been widely decriminalized. This is true, but the aim of decriminalization was, by removing the threat and stigma of punishment, to encourage suicidal people to seek psychiatric help. It was not to condone suicide, which is precisely why the prohibition on assisting suicide was retained.

Moreover, if the law were relaxed, how many requests for PAS or VAE would be truly autonomous, truly free, informed and considered, and how many the result of depression, or a sense of being worthless or a burden, or pressure from relatives, or inability to afford medical treatment?

Shocking! New Hampshire State representative offers euthanasia as a solution to the state budget.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

New Hampshire State representative, Michael Cahill (Dem) offered euthanasia as a solution during the budget debate last week. Cahill stated:

"Since we are refusing to raise revenues to fund services for the disabled, for example, have you looked at euthanasia?"

The chair responded:

"The member is out-of-order. The question is not appropriate. The member will be seated."

Cahill may be making a point related to budget cuts. Watch the youtube video below. 

In September 2008, Baroness Warnock, (UK) stated that people with dementia had a duty to die.

In the book, Freedom to Die, (1998) Derek Humphry, co-founder of the Hemlock Society, now known as Compassion & Choices, and Mary Clement stated (page 313):

 “In the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice.”

Legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide will be abused and will lead to a duty to die for people at the most vulnerable time of their life.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide is not about caring, it is about killing.

Always Care, Never Kill: How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality

This research article was published by the Heritage Foundation on March 24, 2015.

Ryan Anderson

By Ryan T Anderson PhD

Abstract

Allowing physician-assisted suicide would be a grave mistake for four reasons. First, it would endanger the weak and vulnerable. Second, it would corrupt the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship. Third, it would compromise the family and intergenerational commitments. And fourth, it would betray human dignity and equality before the law. Instead of helping people to kill themselves, we should offer them appropriate medical care and human presence. We should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill.

The Hippocratic Oath proclaims: “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”[1] This is an essential precept for a flourishing civil society. No one, especially a doctor, should be permitted to kill intentionally, or assist in killing intentionally, an innocent neighbor.

Human life need not be extended by every medical means possible, but a person should never be intentionally killed. Doctors may help their patients to die a dignified death from natural causes, but they should not kill their patients or help them to kill themselves. This is the reality that such euphemisms as “death with dignity” and “aid in dying” seek to conceal.

In 2015, at least 18 state legislatures and the District of Columbia are considering whether to allow physician-assisted suicide (PAS).[2] Legalizing physician-assisted suicide, however, would be a grave mistake because it would:

• Endanger the weak and vulnerable,
• Corrupt the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship,
• Compromise the family and intergenerational commitments, and
• Betray human dignity and equality before the law.

First, PAS endangers the weak and marginalized in society. Where it has been allowed, safeguards purporting to minimize this risk have proved to be inadequate and have often been watered down or eliminated over time. People who deserve society’s assistance are instead offered accelerated death.

Second, PAS changes the culture in which medicine is practiced. It corrupts the profession of medicine by permitting the tools of healing to be used as techniques for killing. By the same token, PAS threatens to fundamentally distort the doctor–patient relationship because it reduces patients’ trust of doctors and doctors’ undivided commitment to the life and health of their patients. Moreover, the option of PAS would provide perverse incentives for insurance providers and the public and private financing of health care. Physician-assisted suicide offers a cheap, quick fix in a world of increasingly scarce health care resources.

Third, PAS would harm our entire culture, especially our family and intergenerational obligations. The temptation to view elderly or disabled family members as burdens will increase, as will the temptation for those family members to internalize this attitude and view themselves as burdens. Physician-assisted suicide undermines social solidarity and true compassion.

Fourth, PAS’s most profound injustice is that it violates human dignity and denies equality before the law. Every human being has intrinsic dignity and immeasurable worth. For our legal system to be coherent and just, the law must respect this dignity in everyone. It does so by taking all reasonable steps to prevent the innocent, of any age or condition, from being devalued and killed. Classifying a subgroup of people as legally eligible to be killed violates our nation’s commitment to equality before the law—showing profound disrespect for and callousness to those who will be judged to have lives no longer “worth living,” not least the frail elderly, the demented, and the disabled. No natural right to PAS exists, and arguments for such a right are incoherent: A legal system that allows assisted suicide abandons the natural right to life of all its citizens.

Instead of embracing PAS, we should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. People seeking PAS typically suffer from depression or other mental illnesses, as well as simply from loneliness. Instead of helping them to kill themselves, we should offer them appropriate medical care and human presence. For those in physical pain, pain management and other palliative medicine can manage their symptoms effectively. For those for whom death is imminent, hospice care and fellowship can accompany them in their last days. Anything less falls short of what human dignity requires. The real challenge facing society is to make quality end-of-life care available to all.

Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill. They properly seek to alleviate suffering, and it is reasonable to withhold or withdraw medical interventions that are not worthwhile. However, to judge that a patient’s life is not worthwhile and deliberately hasten his or her end is another thing altogether.

Citizens and policymakers need to resist the push by pressure groups, academic elites, and the media to sanction PAS. Recent experience with PAS both in the United States and in Europe suggests how problematic it is.

Endangering the Weak and Marginalized

To understand how PAS endangers the weak and marginalized, one must understand what PAS entails and where it leads. With PAS, a doctor prescribes the deadly drug, but the patient self-administers it. While most activists in the United States publicly call only for PAS, they have historically advocated not only PAS, but also euthanasia: the intentional killing of the patient by a doctor.

This is not surprising: The arguments for PAS are equally arguments for euthanasia. Neil Gorsuch, currently a federal judge, points out that some contemporary activists fault the movement for not being honest about where its arguments lead. He notes that legal theorist and New York University School of Law Professor Richard Epstein “has charged his fellow assisted suicide advocates who fail to endorse the legalization of euthanasia openly and explicitly with a ‘certain lack of courage.’”[3]

The logic of assisted suicide leads to euthanasia because if “compassion” demands that some patients be helped to kill themselves, it makes little sense to claim that only those who are capable of self-administering the deadly drugs be given this option. Should not those who are too disabled to kill themselves have their suffering ended by a lethal injection?

And what of those who are too disabled to request that their suffering be ended, such as infants or the demented? Why should they be denied the “benefit” of a hastened death? Does not “compassion” provide an even more compelling reason for a doctor to provide this release from suffering and indignity?[4] As Professor John Keown points out:

If compassion justified us in giving a lethal prescription to a terminally ill patient on request to end their suffering, it would equally justify us in giving them a lethal injection, particularly if they were physically unable to commit suicide. It would also justify us in giving a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient who was incapable of making a request.[5]

Judge Gorsuch notes that for the Dutch, “it is the physician’s assessment of the patient’s quality of life as ‘degrading’ or ‘deteriorating’ or ‘hopeless’ that stands as the ultimate justification for killing.”[6]

Although the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in two unanimous decisions that there is no constitutional right to PAS, three states permit it by statute: Oregon, Washington, and Vermont.[7] Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are allowed in three European countries—the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg—and Switzerland allows assisted suicide.[8]

The evidence from these jurisdictions, particularly the Netherlands, which has over 30 years of experience, suggests that safeguards to ensure effective control have proved inadequate. In the Netherlands, several official, government-sponsored surveys have disclosed both that in thousands of cases, doctors have intentionally administered lethal injections to patients without a request and that in thousands of cases, they have failed to report cases to the authorities.[9]

The Cruelty of Terri Schiavo’s Death.

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on March 31, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

During the Terri Schiavo debacle, I would often debate bioethicists and others who claimed that Terri’s death would be gentle. 

These advocates either intentionally or ignorantly conflated two different circumstances.

1. The first, taking food and water from someone whose body readily assimilated sustenance. That is an agonizing death. 
2. The second, people dying naturally whose bodies are shutting down. In such circumstances, people stop eating and drinking on their own as part of the process of passing on. That does not cause suffering, and indeed, it is medically inappropriate–and can be cruel–to force sustenance into their bodies.

Terri was a number 1, and the advocates pretended she was a number 2.

Now Terri’s brother frankly discusses the terrible circumstances of his sister’s slow death by dehydration. He had an artist depict what she actually looked like. From, “I Will Never Forget the Look of Horror…” 

These are the hard facts my family and I will have to live with for the rest of my life:  

After almost two weeks without food or water, my sister’s lips were horribly cracked, to the point where they were blistering.  

Her skin became jaundiced with areas that turned different shades of blue. Her skin became markedly dehydrated from the lack of water. Terri’s breathing became rapid and uncontrollable, as if she was outside sprinting.  

Her moaning, at times, was raucous, which indicated to us the insufferable pain she was experiencing. Terri’s face became skeletal, with blood pooling in her deeply sunken eyes and her teeth protruding forward.  

Even as I write this, I can never properly describe the nightmare of having to watch my sister have to die this way. What will be forever seared in my memory is the look of utter horror on my sister’s face when my family visited her just after she died. 

The process Bobby describes is exactly what the late, pro-dehydration neurologist Dr. Ron Cranford testified happens to those being dehydrated in the Robert Wendland case. From my, “A Painless Death?” in the Weekly Standard quoting a court transcript: 

Directives from Supreme Court must be enforced.

This article was published by Advocate Daily on March 31, 2015.

Hugh Scher

Many Canadians do not recognize the full extent to which existing rules around end-of-life decision-making are not serving as appropriate barriers to inappropriate conduct, says Toronto health and human rights lawyer Hugh Scher.

Concerning cases around end-of-life care decisions continue to crop up across Canada, says Scher, noting it is unclear whether directives from prior court rulings are being respected and enforced.

In one recent case, a Toronto physician and hospital were sued by a family who alleged a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order was unilaterally placed on an elderly patient at Toronto East General Hospital against their wishes, reports the Toronto Star.

The Star reports the statement of claim, which seeks $1.2 million in damages for four of Canh Luong’s family members, alleges Dr. Alvin Chang and Toronto East General committed “wrongful death, abuse of power, negligence and breach of fiduciary duties.”

The statement of claim, says the Star, alleges Chang was negligent in preferring “his own opinion over that of the plaintiffs with respect to the code status of Luong,” for failing to consult them before making the change, and for failing “to provide Luong with the necessaries of life.”

Scher, who is not involved in the Luong case but who has been involved in other such cases, says clear rules and meaningful consequences for those who go against the established guidelines are needed.

“If we are not able to stop the most basic abuses relative to DNR orders or end-of-life care measures now, expanding those practices presents serious dangers,” says Scher. “The Supreme Court of Canada made it clear in Rasouli that doctors should not be acting unilaterally with regard to the withholding and withdrawal of treatment including end-of-life decision-making measures and that consent to treatment or refusing treatment – particularly where it forms part of an ongoing treatment plan – is required from the patient or substitute decision-maker.”

Scher says, 

“Doctors who act against that consent or without it are acting without lawful authority and in my view, are running afoul of the law as established by the Supreme Court of Canada.”

In Carter, released in February, the Supreme Court struck down the ban on doctor-assisted suicide in specific cases. The court gave the federal government 12 months to craft legislation to respond to the ruling, with the ban on doctor-assisted suicide standing until then.

The Carter decision risks creating a culture of permissiveness with regard to all end-of-life matters, says Scher, and real consequences are required for those that break or ignore the law. Without them, all Canadians are put at serious risk in health care settings across the country, Scher states.

For more information contact:

Hugh Scher, EPC legal counsel (Toronto): 416-816-6115 or hugh@sdlaw.ca

Scher, has acted as counsel to The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in several high-profile end-of-life files including Rasouli v. Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 2011 ONCA 482 (CanLII); Cuthbertson v. Rasouli, 2013 SCC 53, [2013] 3 S.C.R. 341; Bentley v. Maplewood Seniors Care Society, 2014 BCSC 165 (CanLII); Bentley v. Maplewood Seniors Care Society 2015 BCCA 91; Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2012 BCSC 886 (CanLII); Carter v. Canada (Attorney General) 2013 BCCA 435 (CanLII); and Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5.

• Clear rules and consequences needed concerning right to receive food and water.
• Appeal dismissed in BC normal feeding case.
• BC Supreme court sides with nursing home in spoon feeding case.
• BC Supreme court decides that normal feeding is basic personal care.

The 2015 HOPE International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

The Fourth International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide is hosted by HOPE Australia on May 22 - 23, 2015 at the Rydges Hotel South Park in Adelaide South Australia.

Register for the 2015 HOPE International Symposium.

The 2015 HOPE International Symposium is hosted by HOPE Australia, and co-sponsored by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition - International, Euthanasia-Free New Zealand, the disability rights group - Lives Worth Living, and Doctors Opposed to Euthanasia.

Renee Joubert

The speakers include:

• Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) and Chair, EPC - International,
• Paul Russell, Director, HOPE Australia and Vice Chair, EPC - International,
• Renee Joubert, Director, Euthanasia-Free New Zealand,
• Craig Wallace, Convenor, Lives Worth Living, a network of people with disabilities,
• Nic Steenhout, Director, Vivre dans la dignité Quebec.

• 

  Nic Steenhout

  Henk Reitsma, Board member, EPC - International and an expert on the Netherlands Euthanasia statistics.
• Tom Mortier, Chemistry professor in Belgium. His depresed mother died by euthanasia in 2012. 
• Professor Theo Boer, former member of a Dutch Euthanasia Regional Review Committee.
• Nancy Elliott, Board member, EPC - International and a past three term New Hampshire state representative.
• Sue Hanson, co-chair NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation - Palliative Care Network
• Dr Paul Dunne, a leading Palliative Care Medical Specialist in Australia.
• Brendan Malone, from New Zealand, is a dynamic speaker on youth, culture and media.

This is the first International Symposium hosted in the southern hemisphere by EPC - International. Previous symposia were held in Toronto, Washington, Vancouver, Edinburgh.

Register for the 2015 HOPE International Symposium.

Clear rules and consequences needed concerning the right to receive food and water.

This article was published by Advocate Daily on March 30, 2015.

Hugh Scher

Top British Columbia courts have made it clear that oral nutrition should not be considered health care or medical treatment and instead be seen as basic personal care and support. But, how the directive will be applied and enforced across Canada remains to be seen, says Toronto health and human rights lawyer Hugh Scher.

In Bentley v. Maplewood Seniors Care Society 2015 BCCA 91, the British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed a request from the family of an 83-year-old woman that their mother no longer be given nourishment or liquids by staff members at the nursing home where she resides.

Justice Mary Newbury agreed with a lower court judge, ruling that the woman, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease, is exercising her consent when she opens her mouth to accept food and water, despite her family’s position that it was her wish while she was mentally capable that she not be fed in her current condition.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition – BC, represented by Scher and Geoff Cowper QC, were intervenors in the case at trial and on appeal.

“I recognize the terribly difficult situation in which Mrs. Bentley’s family find themselves and I appreciate the disappointment they must feel in being unable to comply with what they believe to have been her wishes and what they believe still to be her wishes,” writes Newbury. 

“It is a grave thing, however, to ask or instruct caregivers to stand by and watch a patient starve to death. It should come as no surprise that a court of law will be assiduous in seeking to ascertain and give effect to the wishes of the patient in the ‘here and now’, even in the face of prior directives, whether clear or not," says the decision.

The coalition also advanced its position at the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which previously ruled that oral nutrition should not be considered health care or medical treatment, but rather seen as basic personal care and support. The court found the woman is capable of making the decision to accept oral nutrition and hydration and is “providing her consent through her behaviour when she accepts nourishment and liquids.”

The case has seen national media attention, with Scher appearing on outlets including Global News, CTV and Lawyers Weekly, and he says with the appeal concluded, it’s time to look forward at how the ruling will take shape across the country.

“The first step is going to be to determine how the ruling in Bentley, which determines that regular feeding and regular hydration represent basic personal support and not health care or medical treatment, is applied across the country,” says Scher. 

“We know there are people in nursing homes across the land, including Ontario, where it’s an open question whether doctors are following that protocol. Families may be making requests of doctors to stop these measures of basic food and drink in a way that may be contrary to the law.”

There are a number of international policies and provisions in places such as the U.S. and Scotland, says Scher, that also consider foods and fluids to be personal support and not health care, but the issue now is how to determine whether the rules are being respected.

John Kelly and Alex Schadenberg on Radio Sputnik's “Brave New World”

John Kelly

This article was published by Not Dead Yet on March 27 2015.

Alex Schadenberg

At the end of February, John Kelly, the New England Regional Director of Not Yet Dead and Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, were guests on “Brave New World,” a show on Radio Sputnik. Also on the show was Gert Huysmans, the President of the Federation of Palliative care of Flanders (Belgium). John Harrison is the host of the show.

According to John Kelly, this show was better venue than he is used to – venues in which news hosts are often openly hostile to any opponent of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia. John said (and the show recording and transcript confirm this) “he (Harrison) gave each of the participants a chance to describe the situation in our own country, thereby giving us a chance to make our points without being asked the “what do you say to Brittany Maynard” type of gotcha question. When he asked me the devils advocate question it was about a person with a disability, not someone “about to die in pain” or some such nonsense.”

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Gert Huysmans: What you mentioned in Flanders and in Belgium, euthanasia is not a right. You have the right to request for euthanasia, and that’s a world of difference. So it’s not that you have the right to choose your moment of dying with euthanasia. You have to follow certain conditions that are mentioned in the law. You have to have unbearable suffering caused by a disease or an accident, and the physician you request your euthanasia [from] should have the internal persuasion that euthanasia is the only proper solution for your problems and in some cases and in some circumstances euthanasia is acceptable, but it is not a right as such.

And, as news of the law’s actual application has shown, practice is only as narrow as the broadest comfort zone of any given individual physician.

John talks about the long-term resistance to “right to die” laws from the disability community:

JK: We in the United States, the disability rights movement have fought [for] a generation against the arrogance being displayed by the doctor, where the doctors can presume to judge the quality of life, and when it is correct to end it. We have a history of being judged to not have high quality of lives, and whenever suffering is the subjective criterion for deciding who gets to die, people with disabilities will always be the ones who are targeted.

This show is an excellent one. I encourage readers to listen to the show or to read the transcript.