Disability rights leaders and cancer surviver opposes assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In 2015, 26 states have considered legislation to legalize assisted suicide and all of them have defeated that legislation. Disability rights groups, Not Dead Yet, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and Second Thoughts are successfully leading the opposition to assisted suicide.

An article by Danielle Ohl and published by McClatchy DC  examines one woman's experience with cancer while explaining why disability rights leaders oppose assisted suicide.

Chastity Phillips
with her daughter.

The article begins with Chastity Phillips, a woman who is living with chondrosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer, since 2002 and now has Lupus. Unlike Brittany Maynard, Phillips chose to be treated. From the story:

Doctors told Chasity Phillips in 2002 that she had a 50 percent chance of surviving surgery. 

Her choices were certain death, her doctors said, or surgery to remove part of the tumor. 

She chose the surgery. Still, the return of her cancer was likely. Doctors told her she would have six months to a year before it grew back, requiring more risky followups.  

But 13 years later, Phillips is 38 years old and thriving, despite two very severe medical conditions.

Phillips developed a healthy philosophy about her possible mortality:

“There’s a certain freedom that comes with dying,” said Phillips, who lives near New Orleans. “You really don’t have to deal with your annoying cousin. You really don’t have to go on that family trip. You can eat ice cream for breakfast.”

Diane Coleman

The article then examines the disability rights community opposition to assisted suicide. From the article:

“The risk of mistake and coercion and abuse are really too great,” said Diane Coleman, founder and CEO of Not Dead Yet, an advocacy group that informs and lobbies on behalf of the disabled. 

To Not Dead Yet and the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund, this amounts to fear of disability rather than fear of painful death or lessened quality of life. 

The laws have a provision that bars physicians from prescribing a life-ending prescription to a person with disabilities simply because they are disabled. But opponents stipulate that the danger does not come from those with disabilities who might feel pressure to end their lives, but those without disabilities who fear becoming disabled or having a poorer quality of life.

Marilyn Golden

Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst with the DREDF acquired her disability after an injury commented on her personal experience. From the story:

“At the beginning, I felt that the injury was unbearable,” 

“A year later, it hit me: There was no change in my quality of life.”

Every state that has debated assisted suicide in 2015 have rejected the death bill. Recently the sponsors of the California assisted suicide bill pulled the bill after recognizing that it would be defeated in the House Health Committee.

• California assisted suicide bill died a peaceful death.
• Disability rights leaders opposes assisted suicide.
• Disability rights advocates fight California assisted suicide bill.
• Why disability rights activists oppose assisted suicide.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article26972707.html#storylink=cp

Not Dead Yet - UK: Open letter to David Cameron

This letter was written by Not Dead Yet UK to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Prime Minister David Cameron

Dear Prime Minister

We are hugely grateful for your stated personal opposition to legalising assisted suicide, especially in light of the forthcoming ‘Marris Bill’ (September 11, 2015) in the House of Commons. We are however deeply concerned about the intention to have a ‘free vote’ at that time. That such that a law might be passed with such consequences, especially for vulnerable and disabled people, on the strength of ‘individual conscience’, is very worrying indeed.

We imagine that you already know that no Disabled Person’s Organisation (DPO) has favoured a change in law to permit third party intervention in any individual’s end-of-life decisions. Not Dead Yet UK is the lead DPO speaking out in Britain, and e.g. in the US disabled colleagues have been clear in rejecting such laws, for reasons of their consequences. Legislators there have almost universally turned away from their intentions to legalise assisted suicide once they are fully informed of those consequences.

Through rigorous research, we have gathered a body of evidence that such laws are not only dangerous, leading to the deaths of disabled people, but they also fundamentally depend on the stated views of their ‘architects’ in other jurisdictions, that our disabled lives are ‘not worth living’. This is paradigmatic disability discrimination – fatal discrimination in this instance.

Certainly some disabled individuals, like some non-disabled people, do come to seriously consider dying early, but disabled people will sometimes reflect their communities, discussions in the public domain and other factors. While we respect their views, we are at pains to distinguish a very few individual voices, supported by a wealthy pro-assisted suicide lobby, from our collective view. The effect of any law is to cover every citizen. Extension of the law’s reach, once passed, is almost immediate to those supposedly never intended to be ‘beneficiaries’ of them.

We see the lack of universally available best palliative and social care, and critically the right kind of human support, as core to what leads many people to despair of their futures, however long or short they may be. When the only choice available to someone in despair is death, we count that as no choice at all. The rhetoric around choice an autonomy is just that – rhetoric. Choice is an illusion, and the proposed law places all the decision-making power in the hands of doctors anyway, removing it from patients.

Not Dead Yet assembled at 10 Downing St.

Pain we know and even Lord Falconer has now publicly admitted, is not the issue that leads most people to ask for an untimely death – feeling themselves ‘to be burden on others’ is the biggest driver (e.g. 61% in Washington State, US which has a law very similar to the ones proposed so far). We expect no great differences in the terms of the Marris Bill, unless it attempts to subvert our opposition by pretending there can be ‘safeguards’.

Additionally, Lord Falconer’s own self-styled ‘commission’ reported clearly that ‘assisted dying’ is ‘a compendium term’ for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia (Demos 2012, p39). So a vote for an assisted suicide Bill that mimics his, as we expect Marris’s will in essence, will be a vote for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. We understand that the public at large do not understand this nuance but we hope it should not be lost on your parliamentary colleagues.

We must widen understanding of the dangers of legislating in the face of media insistence in exploiting ‘hard cases’ which generate natural waves of public sympathy. Those people who appear have our every empathy too, from our lived experience as disabled people. But, for example, Oregon is chosen as the paragon of such a law working well. when again we have a body of evidence to demonstrate the anomalies, the abject failures of so-called ‘safeguards’, and what occasionally surely amounts to cruelty in implementation: a depressed patient whose GP knew him well over many years and declared him not to be a suitable candidate for Oregon’s assisted suicide programme but who ‘doctor-shopped’ and found another doctor who knew him not at all – the patient was dead weeks later. Or the patient who had no private health insurance and who received by letter the news that the state would not fund his drugs for terminal cancer. He was informed by this same letter that he qualified for the assisted suicide programme. There are many more factors: no doctor is required to be present when the patient finally takes their final lethal dose (sometimes years later – so much for the six months to live prognosis). No investigation is permitted post-mortem, which begs the question, who could know if there was suggestion, coercion, or even murder.

Thankfully the proportion of doctors who say they would be willing to perform such acts remains very small. But that will increase dramatically should a law be passed – the act involved, providing suicide assistance will be legal – self-questioning will become redundant. The short step to people claiming they cannot do the final act themselves, challenging the by-then existing law to ‘grant them their rights’ too, will follow swiftly. Voluntary euthanasia will supplement what the courts already allow, non-voluntary euthanasia (typically, switching off life-support), and we will find involuntary euthanasia, the final peg, ‘helping’ people with Alzheimer’s Disease for example, to die will arrive soon after. We will have the full panoply of a Belgium in just a few years.

We are convinced that the law in Britain as it stands provides for those who are serious in their intent to die whilst protecting all those who become vulnerable when faced with such terrible end-of-life issues. The best protection against these developments is keeping the first steps illegal.

We seek further dialogue over these pressing matters, with yourself if at all possible, with your colleagues, officials, to hear our evidence-based concerns and how they are so integrally associated with this terrible desire to offer State sanction to assisted suicide.

Please accept our letter to you as another way to fulfil our aspiration to have an intelligent debate about assisted suicide/euthanasia in our country. This is about the kind of society we want to live in – disabled people more than any other group are under threat. Patient safety remains at the heart of good clinical governance in best medical practice. We too need to be safe.

On behalf of Not Dead Yet UK, we remain

Yours sincerely

Baroness Jane Campbell
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson
Liz Carr, Actress
Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, OBE
Dr Phil Friend, OBE
Sian Vasey

Experts in care of the elderly speak out strongly against assisted suicide

This article was published by Dr Peter Saunders on his blog on July 13, 2015.

Dr Peter Saunders

Peter Saunders is a founder of the Care Not Killing Alliance.

The leading organisation representing health professionals caring for the elderly in Britain has this last week spoken out strongly against the legalisation of assisted suicide.

The British Geriatrics Society is the professional body of specialists in the health care of older people in the United Kingdom.

It has over 2,750 members worldwide and draws together experts from all the relevant disciplines in the field - doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and scientists.

In a powerful statement issued on July 10 the society says that whilst it respects that patients have a ‘right’ to determine the choice of treatment and care they receive and some symptoms are ‘difficult to control’ a policy which allows physicians to assist patients to die is ‘not acceptable’.

Speaking from the experience of caring for ‘many older people with frailty, disability and those who are dying’ the experts ‘accept life has a natural end’ and believe that their job is not to ‘prolong life at all costs’ but to ‘improve quality of life’ whilst accepting that death is inevitable.

They express deep concern that many requests to end life come directly or indirectly from the patients’ families and not the older person themselves: ‘Often such requests are then forgotten if such degrading symptoms as urinary and faecal incontinence, depression and unremitting pain are relieved.’

They argue that the clear priority is ensuring that the best possible care is available.

They observe that much of the public demand for assisted dying seems to stem from ‘the fear of a prolonged death with increasing disability sometimes associated with unwanted burdensome medical care’.

Suicide promotion has led to more youth suicide in Australia.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Philip Nitschke has been promoting assisted suicide for many years. Recent statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that Nitschke's is promotion of suicide techniques has led to many younger people dying by suicide.

The Sydney Morning Herald featured the story of Lucas Taylor (26) who died in 2012, after receiving suicide assistance from Nitschke and his group.

Judith Taylor, the mother of Lucas, told the Morning Herald:

Twenty-six-year-old Lucas Taylor took his own life by taking Nembutal more than three years ago, but he still gets Exit International's email newsletter. 

Judith Taylor, the mother of Lucas.

After his death in 2012 his mother Judith went through his emails looking for answers and found he had been a paid up member of the organisation. 

the deaths among younger people were an "unintended consequence" of the voluntary euthanasia movement putting out information online on suicide methods.

Nembutal is a veterinary euthanasia drug. 

According the Sydney Morning Herald:

New data from the national coronial information system shows 120 people died by taking Nembutal .. between July 2000 and December 2012. 

The deaths included one person under the age of 20, 11 people in their 20s and 14 people in their 30s. 

Voluntary euthanasia campaigners say the actual number of Nembutal deaths is even higher, as many deaths are not reported to the coroner and people who use the drug to take their lives take steps to make it look like the death is of natural causes.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts contact Your Life Counts.

Nitschke is also fighting to keep his Australian medical license. There have been 12 complaints to the Australian Medical Board concerning Nitschke and his group Exit International. 

Judith Taylor submitted one of those complaints. Taylor told the Medical Board that:

her son had been coached in how to take his own life by forum members who exchanged information on the particulars. 

There was no one present to urge restraint or at least some second thoughts about the permanency of suicide, other possible options and the fact that he would be wrapping up his pain and passing it on to his family for the rest of their lives. 

It is the worst of the worst. To find your son has died is bad enough but to find out it was by his own hand and then to find out there is an international business that promotes it, coerces it and provides all the info was worse.

Nitschke's has been promoting veterinary euthanasia drugs for many years. In June 2010 I commented on a study from Victoria Australia that found:

... of the 51 people who were known to have died from Nembutal, 6 people were in their 20's, 8 people were in their 30's, 5 people were in their 40's, 14 people were in their 50's, 3 people in their 60's, 10 in their 70's, and 5 people were over the age of 80. 

... of the 38 known deaths that were investigated by a coroner, only 11 had a significant physical illness or chronic pain with the remaining 27 cases showing no signs of physical problems. 

The report suggested that the 27 otherwise healthy people who died from Nembutal use were most likely depressed or mentally ill.

Paul Russell, the director of HOPE, an organisation devoted to preventing euthanasia and assisted suicide, said the data was concerning and something suicide prevention organisations should be heeding.

We need to find more effective ways of helping people [who] are feeling desperate from going to these clandestine organisations.

The fact is that Nitschke recklessly abandons vulnerable people who deserve social, and psychological support, excellent care, effective pain management and a caring community.

• Nitschke continues to promote lethal veterinary drugs.
• Philip Nitschke is being investigated in 20 deaths.
• Nitschke: An undetectable death or murder?

We must not give doctors license to kill people

This letter was published on July 10 in the Cap Cod Times.

On July 7 the California Legislature rejected an assisted suicide bill, joining other states like Connecticut, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire and more in bipartisan defeats this year.

Massachusetts should continue to reject proposed legislation that would remove important safety protections against fraud, coercion, discrimination and much worse. Many of us know people who have outlived a dire but wrong prediction. Many friends, neighbors, children, the lonely, depressed and abandoned will feel pressure to throw away their lives. There is a malpractice industry testament to doctor mistakes. They must not be licensed to legally help kill people.

Let’s continue to expand care and comfort at the end of life, including cutting-edge pain treatment, increased access to hospice care and attendant care.

Leslie Wolfgang

I would never refer one of my patients for an arranged suicide or euthanasia.

This article was published in the National Post on July 9, 2015.

Dr Will Johnston

Dr Will Johnston, is a family physician in Vancouver and the Chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition - BC

I would never refer one of my patients for an arranged suicide or euthanasia, and there are people out there who would demand that I be disciplined for that.

Yet nothing in the Supreme Court’s Carter ruling compels physicians to be involved in arranging the suicide of a patient. The ruling simply allows an exception to the criminal law such that a physician who “aids or abets a person to commit suicide,” or kills the patient directly, is not necessarily guilty of an offence.

“Safeguards,” promised to be “stringent” and “rigorous” by the original B.C. trial court, are supposed to prevent abuse. This promise of transparency would indeed recognize some of the most compelling concerns about euthanasia going on in Belgium and the Netherlands. There, some disabled infants and psychiatric patients are now being killed by injection.

Remember that the Carter ruling requires only that the applicant for assisted suicide be a competent adult who describes their illness or disability, either physical or mental, to be grievous and intolerable. The Supreme Court left itself in the position, if its logic were to be followed, of not really being able to say “no” to anyone, dying or not, who prefers death over receiving therapy or coping with some other life situation.

It remains for future courts to decide exactly which life situations are to be solved by suicide or euthanasia, but the experience elsewhere suggests the answer is “more and more.”

These three points — the wide potential eligibility for state-endorsed suicide created by the Court, the professed need for rigour and transparency, and the wise absence of compulsion for any individual doctor to be involved in such a practice — give us direction.

Death-seekers who think they fit within the Court’s wide scope of eligibility could — themselves — notify a judge who would ensure that the Supreme Court’s instructions were going to be honoured. The requirement for a court order would ensure that alternatives to suicide had been effectively presented to the person and that the possibility of coercion had been questioned. With medical input, courts now routinely determine mental competency to write a will. It would seem even more important that a court create a transparent public record of someone’s competency and eligibility to engage the state to end their life.

Many Canadians want access to conscientious doctors who want nothing to do with assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Once the state, through the court, endorses a particular suicide, it would be the state’s responsibility to provide that “service.” No particular doctor would be compelled to provide it or coerced to refer for it. In fact, it would be wise to keep the “service” clearly separated from our usual places of treatment. The public should not have to worry for themselves or their loved ones in a hospital. The shadow of assisted suicide and euthanasia should not fall on our medical system any more than the law has suddenly required. Self-referral to a judge might be one route to this goal.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is now consulting its members on these issues. Some influential academics want to force objecting doctors to override their conscience and judgment by referring their patients into whatever assisted suicide regime emerges in 2016. In effect, these euthanasia advocates are proposing to exclude doctors who oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia from the practice of medicine. This may seem despicable, but it is not impossible. Sadly, we are now in the “harm reduction” phase of Canada’s assisted suicide adventure.

Many Canadians want access to conscientious doctors who want nothing to do with assisted suicide or euthanasia. The CMA committed itself to respecting doctors’ conscience rights last year. As this year’s CMA General Assembly approaches, I and many of my fellow CMA members are hoping the wind will not blow our organization off course.

A Letter of Hope to Laura

Sign: A Letter of Hope to Laura.

A healthy 24-year-old Belgian woman, known only as "Laura" has been scheduled to die by euthanasia based on her psychological pain. 

Laura has been living with suicidal thoughts for many years.

Laura's story has received more response than any previous story of a person seeking a lethal death Link to her story.

A Letter of Hope to Laura

Dear Laura:

Since we first read your story on June 19 in a Belgian newspaper, our hearts have been broken over the prospect of your possible death by lethal injection.

We have received many messages from people who want to contact you to share their story of living through similar psychological pain. These messages told us of their experience with suicidal thoughts and how they also wanted to die. These people shared their stories of hope and of how they lived through the suffering and have found happiness in living.

They expressed how your story was a reflection of their story.

They want you to live. We want you to live.

At this moment, your life may seem dark and without a future, but we want you to know that there is help and there are people who want to care for you.

Everyone who has signed this letter wants you to know that they care about you. They also want you to know that your death may shatter the hope that many others, who suffer like you, are seeking.

We, the undersigned, ask you "Laura" to choose to live and by living you can offer hope to others.

Alex Schadenberg

International Chair
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sign: A Letter of Hope to Laura

• Healthy 24-year-old woman to be euthanized in Belgium.
• Belgium euthanasia: Treatment for depression.
• Euthanasia doctor justifies death for depressed people.

California assisted suicide bill appears to have died a peaceful death.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

California assisted suicide bill SB 128 appears to have died a peaceful death in the California House after Democrat legislators opposed it based on opposition from the disability community and the Latino community.

The assisted suicide lobby has organized more than 25 attempts to legalize assisted suicide in States this year with all of them failing. These campaigns were financed with the money raised by the assisted suicide lobby through the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide campaign last year.

Representative Freddie Rodriguez

Reuters news reported that Democratic Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, who is on the health committee, said his opposition stemmed from his background in healthcare.

To me it's not what healthcare is about 

For me to go back on everything I've done and give that option, so to speak, is something I'm not comfortable with.

Disability rights advocates united in opposition to SB 128. Anthony Orefice is one of many disability rights activists who are speaking up against the California assisted suicide bill. He and others are concerned that:

depression and incorrect prognoses may lead people with serious disabilities to end their lives prematurely.

Marilyn Golden, the senior policy analyst at Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, argues that the assisted suicide bill poses "considerable dangers" to people with new disabilities who may have suicidal thoughts. Golden states that:

many people who initially received terminal diagnoses have "lived full lives (for) years or even decades" longer than expected.

Deborah Doctor, a legislative advocate for Disability Rights California, wrote in a letter to State Senator Lois Wolk:

disabled people are vulnerable to abuse and could be coerced by family members not acting in the patients' best interests. Relatives, she said, could put pressure on people to take life-ending medication. 

"Our responsibility is to think of people who are the most vulnerable to coercion, abuse and pressure."

The assisted suicide lobby will continue to push to legalize doctors having the right in law to prescribe lethal drugs for suicide.

California is one more example of what happens when legislators are given the opportunity to learn how legalizing assisted suicide effects people with disabilities and society in general.

• Disability rights advocates fight California assisted suicide bill.

California Assisted Suicide Bill is Dying

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on July 5, 2015.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

I have been hearing this news for a few weeks, but it looks like CA’s assisted suicide bill may be dying. From the Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle: 

The highly touted proposal by state lawmakers to legalize physician-assisted suicide suddenly finds itself at death’s door as Latino Democrats balk at voting for the measure. 

I knew that it would take liberals to stop assisted suicide in California, and that is what is apparently happening. 

Two major elements of the liberal Democratic coalition that pushes social policy in this country oppose assisted suicide–civil rights organizations such as LULAC, and the disability rights community. 

This is also worth noting: 

One Assembly staffer monitoring the bill said his boss had received 30 calls so far against the bill — and two for it. 

That’s because assisted suicide is not driven by public demand, but rather, is a top-down ideological movement mostly pushed by the privileged who never have to worry about poor care or abandonment. 

If California does not pass the bill, it will mark a year in which half the country’s state legislatures were assaulted by Compassion and Choices with Brittany Maynard emotionalism – and it failed everywhere. 

And that’s a huge part of the story of assisted suicide advocacy that is rarely told. The death ideologues have tried for more than 20 years to sweep the country, and they just haven’t. 

Let’s hope this poor record continues. 

Next up in California: Attempts to impose by court ruling. The cases have already been filed.

Dutch expert: Children may be pressured by family members to die by euthanasia.

Professor Theo Boer

Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Dutch News reported today that Professor Theo Boer, a Dutch euthanasia expert, is concerned that the Netherlands Paediatric Association (NVK) is extending euthanasia to children under the age of 12. Boer is concerned that children will be pressured by family members. Boer stated:

Around one in five patients who choose euthanasia in the Netherlands acts under pressure from family members.

Boer based the estimate on his experience as a member of a euthanasia review committee for nine years where he reviewed 4000 euthanasia deaths.

‘Sometimes it’s the family who go to the doctor. Other times it’s the patient saying they don’t want their family to suffer. And you hear anecdotally of families saying: “Mum, there’s always euthanasia”.’

Since one in five patients who die by euthanasia may be pressured by family members therefore children who die by euthanasia are also likely to be pressured by family members. 

Boer is also concerned by the growth of euthanasia in the Netherlands.

euthanasia and assisted suicide... has trebled from around 1,800 in the early years to 4,829 in 2013. 

Although the vast majority of requests still come from terminally ill cancer patients, the parameters have gradually widened to take in growing numbers of people with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and psychiatric illness.

Boer is further concerned that euthanasia, which was considered a 'last resort' is now  considered a right. The Dutch news reported

‘The debate has changed. Euthanasia is no longer a last resort. It was originally seen as a law that gave doctors rights rather than patients. But we very frequently hear it discussed in terms of a patient’s right to euthanasia.’

Boer also argues that the reasons for euthanasia has changed

He has been critical of phenomena such as ‘duo-euthanasia’, where the partner of a terminally ill patient asks to die with them because he or she cannot face life alone.

Doctors are also feeling pressured by euthanasia. According to a study that was published by the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) last December

70% of doctors had experienced pressure, while 64% felt it had increased in recent years. The survey did not ask where the pressure came from.

Boer believes that the Dutch euthanasia law should be tightened.

‘We made a number of serious mistakes when we drew up the law,’ says Boer. ‘The problem with being the first country is that you have no precedent. It’s good on some points, such as transparency and evaluation, but in general it’s nothing for us to be proud of. I worry that if death is seen too quickly as the solution, the value of life is reduced.’

Last November, Boer urged the Dutch government to reform the euthanasia law. He said that people who had months, even years to live were dying by euthanasia.

• Theo Boer: Dutch euthanasia law needs reform.
• One-third of Dutch doctors would euthanise people with mental illness.
• Netherlands 2013 euthanasia report.
• Dutch ethicist: "Assisted suicide - Don't Go There".

Popular articles on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

1. Assisted Suicide: A Recipe for Elder Abuse and the Illusion of Choice  Feb 17, 2011.

2. Healthy 24-year-old Belgian woman scheduled to die by euthanasia June 24, 2015.

3. Euthanasia is out-of-control in the Netherlands Sept 25, 2012

4. Oregon 2012 assisted suicide statistics: An analysis Jan 25, 2013

5. Depressed Belgian woman dies by Euthanasia Feb 6, 2013

6. 5 reasons why people devalue the elderly May 25, 2010

7. Twins euthanized out of fear of blindness in Belgium Jan 14, 2013

8. Nitschke continues to promote Nembutal sales June 22, 2010

9. Declaration of Hope Jan 17, 2013

10. Petition: Stop euthanasia Bill 52 in Quebec May 24, 2014

11. Dutch ethicist changed his mind - Assisted Suicide: Dont Go There July 16, 2014

12. Trisomy 18 is not a Death Sentence. The story of Lilliana Dennis May 29, 2012

13. Woman with Anorexia Nervosa dies by euthanasia in Belgium Feb 10, 2013.

14. Québec's euthanasia Bill 52 is lethal Dec 12, 2013

15. Opposing the Supreme Court of Canada Assisted Suicide decision  Feb 17, 2015

16. Mild stroke led to mother’s forced death by dehydration  Sept 27, 2011

17. Netherlands 2012 euthanasia report: sharp increase in deaths Sept 24, 2013

18. Dr Phil: Woman wants to euthanize her adult children with disabilities April 16, 2012

19. New Jersey Senate will vote on assisted suicide bill Dec 16, 2014

20. Botched sex-change operation victim euthanized in Belgium Oct 1, 2013

21. Belgium study finds that nearly half of all assisted deaths are not reported Dec 4, 2010

22. Elder abuse caught on video, incident is not isolated May 22, 2013

23. Oregon Suicide rate soars after legalizing assisted suicide Sept 12, 2010

24. A petition to Gov. Chris Christie to veto New Jersey assisted suicide bill Nov 19, 2014

25. Euthanasia in Canada: Letter writing campaign Feb 24, 2015

Become a member of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition ($25) membership

More important articles:

• Exposing Vulnerable People to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide  Dec 4, 2012.
• Supreme Court assisted suicide decision is irresponsible and dangerous  Feb 7, 2015.
• Netherlands 2013 euthanasia report  Sept 29, 2014.
• Belgium euthanasia deaths increase by 26% in 2013  May 28, 2014.
• More than 1000 Belgian deaths hastened without request. March 18, 2015.
• Assisted Suicide increased by 44% in Oregon - 2014 report  Feb 15, 2015.
• Assisted suicide deaths increase by 43% in Washington State (2013)  June 6, 2014.
• 27% increase in assisted suicide at Swiss suicide clinic in 2014  March 11, 2015

German Bundestag debates assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Assisted suicide was debated, today,  in the German Bundestag. The issue of assisted suicide has been debated for several years based on high profile cases of German citizens who have died by assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.

According to Deutsche Welle media, the German Bundestag were presented with four competing draft bills.

One lawmaker, Ulla Schmidt of the Social Democrats (SPD), voiced a concern that assisted suicide harkens back to the euthanasia program employed during the Nazi era, and called on her colleagues to proceed with caution. 

Katrin Göring-Eckhardt of the Green party said she was a worried about becoming the type of society that expects "the suffering elderly and those in need to bring an end to their own lives." 

Renate Künast of the Greens and Petra Sitte of the Left party, would completely remove legal hurdles to assisted suicide. 

Michael Brand of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Kerstin Griese of the SPD have prepared what they call a "middle way" between punishing those who provide euthanasia assistance and a complete deregulation of the process. 

Another CDU member, Patrick Sensberg, presented a draft that sought to criminalize any sort of assisted suicide. ... He spoke of the personal burdens some doctors would have to bear if they were required to help any terminally ill patient who wanted their assistance committing suicide.

The article also noted

German Bundestag

Opponents of Brand and Greise's draft said it would dissuade doctors from helping terminally ill patients seeking the right to die, in case angry relatives argue that doctors are making money from practicing.

The article concluded that

The only thing that all parties were able to agree on was the need to strengthen and spread the availability and services provided by hospices and palliative care wards.

In June 2012, the German Medical Association voted against euthanasia, to forbid euthanasia organizations and to urge the government to make the commercialization of suicide a crime.

It is expected that legislation will be passed by November 2015.

Euthanasia memorial

Last December, the German Ethics Council rejected a change in the assisted suicide law while supporting confidentiality between patients and physicians. 

Last November, the majority of the German Bundestag opposed assisted suicide groups such as those in Switzerland.

Last September, the memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program victims opened in Berlin.

• German ethics committee rejects the legalisation of assisted suicide.
• German Bundestag opposes assisted suicide groups.
• Memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program opens in Berlin.
• German Medical Association opposes euthanasia.
• The victims of Nazi euthanasia have been forgotten.

Opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide based on evidence of disability discrimination

Kevin Fitzpatrick

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick is the director of Hope Ireland.

The inaccuracies and elisions in the Economist article: Doctors should be allowed to help the suffering and terminally ill to die when they choose came as a shock. I thought that the Economist held to finer standards of journalism.

Canada recently wrote into law that disability is, in and of itself, sufficient reason for a euthanasia death. Professor Em Etienne Vermeersch declaimed (Goethe Institute, November 13, 2013): Belgium's euthanasia law was written for disabled people, who quite rightly in in his view, would want to die: a transsexual deeply failed by family and ‘healthcare’, an anorexic woman sexually abused by her treating psychiatrist, a woman being treated for depression with medication known to bring suicidal ideation, deaf twins who found they were also becoming blind who were deeply afraid of being institutionalised? Now a young 24 year old woman who thinks euthanasia is a 'nice idea’, finds planning her own death and funeral 'fun' is granted a euthanasia death because 'life is not for her'. She formed this idea after a friend committed suicide eighteen months ago. All of them would absolutely qualify for protection under disability discrimination law in the UK. What they are getting is a false positive: 'of course we understand. Yes, we have the solution for you at the end of a syringe.’

Your article denies a stark reality.

Assisted dying (why ‘soften’ the language? Assisted suicide and euthanasia should be legal everywhere on grounds on mental anguish is explicitly written into Belgium's 2002 euthanasia law. By this logic gay people, who are deeply distressed by the prejudice and discrimination they suffer, would qualify. Or black people, when so obviously persecuted, older people the evidence of whose abuse is almost daily, those of certain faiths or even shades of supposedly the same faith dying horribly on the shards of ideology.

Disabled people understand discrimination in all its forms and subtleties, from direct experience. In a secular world. To diminish us, our well-researched, well-formed views to that of Stephen Hawking who represents not one disabled person's organisation anywhere, is facile, and the clearest example of the lazy moral thinking that infects this piece, to our great disappointment. With your high-standing and reputation comes a high level of responsibility; it is deeply betrayed here.

We have long argued that pain is not the primary nor even the biggest reason people want to die. Even Lord Falconer, promoter of legislation in the British House of Lords, has admitted this now.: ‘…pain…can be dealt with…it is the sense of people losing independence and being reliant on other people…there’s a small number of people who…find that an intolerable position...’ Yes, 61% of people in Washington State US say they want to die because they feel themselves ‘to be a burden on others’ (Daily Mail 11 June 2014). No small number that.

Even amongst the most worrying of your discussion contributors knows this:

Perrodin posted:

‘It is not always about pain. It is also about being decrepit, disabled, incapable of taking care of oneself anymore, getting blind, getting incontinent, becoming an object of disgust and pity for those in charge of cleaning you up and feeding you. Who wants to go through all that when there is an easy way out?’

There it is: all of it. Becoming an object of disgust and pity for others, being 'decrepit, disabled’ - and when the 'easy way out’ is to hand.

Your article wrapped us all up in anti-religious sanctity of life. Such assumption. There are as many atheist, agnostic, believing disabled people as in any population. We are not a homogenous whole. Ours is not a religious argument in any way. Ours is the evidence of rank disability discrimination - to death.

What happens to people with disabilities when you legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide?

Andy R responded to Kevin Fitzpatrick's article: Assisted suicide for disabled people - democracy in Britain? The comments by Andy R are published below his article. This article is Kevin's response to Andy R.

Kevin Fitzpatrick

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick is the director of Hope Ireland.

I would ‘loathe me’ too if I ever pressured you or anyone else to stay alive for such a self-serving reason. I can’t actually see any reason or moment when I would contemplate pressuring someone this way, although I know that when people cannot bear even to imagine losing their beloved, they might allow themselves to go down that road, for love.

Supporting someone in the depth of despair is first and foremost to recognize that – at least some of them – are serious about wanting to die. And many with very good reason - precisely because the kind of support they need is absent. When we are faced with the conviction that there really is nothing left, nothing at all, no person, no event, no medication, nothing but the need to be gone, then speaking about choice (and autonomy) is empty. Empty because what gives life meaning depends on a grandchild’s birthday party, the best cup of coffee in town, the kindness of a smile, all the millions of things we count in a human life, most of all the love of others, the ones for whom we feel we must push the extra mile, the ones we love back.

That is no mere support. Giving it, watching our loved ones not getting enough of it, say in a clinical setting, or not having what feeds our human depths despite the best professional intentions, noticing and coming to fear that absence for ourselves – it is all the stuff of human despair, feeling alien in this world, dying.

The question is not whether you or I or anyone else wants ‘the option’ for surely we all do want a peaceful painless, swift and comfortable death? I would never deny you or anyone else this either. To be clear, I want it too.

The question is what happens when you legalise this as a process. There is nothing to stop anyone committing suicide now, and people do, in exactly the way you describe, but also in more horrific ways. Suicides, like all human deaths, matter.

The problem comes when you say to others ‘This is legal – so go ahead, no questions will be asked.’ The problem then is how do we know - older people, suggestible people, people made vulnerable by facing just the very thoughts you express – how do we know they really did not change their minds or were not so imbued with the idea by weeks months years of subtle pressure that they jumped willingly. Pressure is not one thing in human life.