Elderly Dutch couple: Euthanasia is not the answer.

This article was published by OneNewsNow on October 9, 2017

Alex Schadenberg

One opponent of euthanasia is disappointed to see that the Netherlands has taken yet another step toward approving the practice for any reason.

A case in point is the recent euthanasia of 91-year-old Nic and Trees Elderhors, a couple who had been married for 61 years. The two suffered frailty typical of older people and decided to commit suicide together. Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition says their deaths are another indication of how off-track euthanasia has gone.

"Further, I think that this represents a whole other issue, which is the promotion in the Netherlands of the concept of completed life, meaning that somebody doesn't need to be terminally ill and dying in order to have euthanasia," Schadenberg continues. "They simply have to decide that they think their life has been completed, however you might define that."

Schadenberg raises the question of what society is doing that would give elderly people the impression that death by lethal injection is better than life.

"I ask that question for a significant reason, because I think our society also has a problem with how it treats people who are getting elderly," he poses. "I find there's far too much loneliness and depression within our culture."

He suggests one solution to that is to change the culture.

Schadenberg adds that another problem is how the media painted such a rosy picture of the couple holding hands as they died in order to advance euthanasia to its obvious conclusion of committing suicide at any time and for any reason.

1,982 reported assisted deaths in the first full year in Canada.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The data from Health Canada's 2nd Interim Report on assisted dying states that there were 1982 reported assisted deaths (1977 reported euthanasia deaths and 5 reported assisted suicide deaths) in the first year (June 17, 2016 - June 30, 2017) since legalization.

There were 167 reported euthanasia deaths in Québec prior to the federal government legalizing assisted death, therefore as of June 30 there have been (1982 + 167) 2149 reported assisted deaths in Canada.

Canadian governments have established a self-reporting system, meaning the doctor who carries out the death is the same doctor who reports the death (no oversight of the law) therefore it is possible that under-reporting and abuse of the law occurs. Based on the first Québec government euthanasia report 14% of the assisted deaths did not comply with the law.

Candice Lewis

There have been several stories indicating that there are problems with Canada's euthanasia law. For instance, Candice Lewis was pressured by doctors to die by euthanasia. Now she is feeling much better.

In late September 2016, Dr Will Johnston reported on two British Columbia deaths that appear to abuse the euthanasia law. 

In November I was contacted by a man who stated that his Aunt, who died by euthanasia, may only have had a bladder infection.

Canada's euthanasia law does not protect conscience rights for medical professionals. The Coalition for HealthCare and Conscience launched a legal challenge to the Ontario College of Physicians policy that forces physicians, who oppose killing, to "effectively refer" their patients to a physician who will kill.

Effective referral is defined as referral for the purpose of the act. The court case was heard (June 13 - 15) in an Ontario court.

A Canadian bioethicist published an article promoting euthanasia / organ donation and a study was published stating that up to 138 million dollars can be saved by euthanasia.

Meanwhile a Toronto study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that requests for euthanasia are based on existential distress and not physical pain.

To make matters worse, in June 2017 an Ontario judge extended euthanasia to non terminal people by redefining the phrase "natural death must be reasonably forseeable" in his decision and Canadian euthanasia doctors are demanding more money to kill.

The number of Canadian euthanasia deaths is high when compared to Belgium where there was 235 reported assisted deaths in the first year (2003), 349 in the second year and 393 in its third year after legalization. In 2015, there were 2021 reported Belgian assisted deaths. Belgium has approximately 1/3 of Canada's population.

Data from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 2015) indicates that more than 40% of the assisted deaths in Belgium were not reported in 2013.

In the Netherlands there were 6091 reported assisted deaths in 2016 representing 4% of all deaths. Data from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that 23% of the assisted deaths in the Netherlands were not reported in 2015. 

Based on the number of reported assisted deaths, it is possible that Canada will quickly surpass the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition continues to oppose euthanasia. 

• EPC has successfully produced the Euthanasia Deception documentary focusing on personal stories by people with direct experience with euthanasia,
• EPC is distributing the Caring Not Killing pamphlet explaining why euthanasia and assisted suicide are not necessary and what you can do to make a difference,
• EPC is working with the Compassionate Community Care service that offers advice and direction for family and friends of people who are considering dying by assisted death or people facing difficult end-of-life decisions. Contact CCC at: 1-855-675-8749. 

The euthanasia debate must go beyond theory and buzz words and focus human reality. People usually ask for euthanasia when they are emotionally or psychologically distraught by their medical or personal situation. Euthanasia abandons people at the most vulnerable time of their life.

The answer to euthanasia is to care for people and not to kill people.

Dangers of Assisted Suicide: The Latest Data from Washington State

This article was published by HOPE Australia on October 5, 2017

Washington State.

Washington State’s Death With Dignity Act, based on Oregon’s, came into operation on 9 March 2009.

The latest annual report with data from 2016 was published in September 2017.

This latest data confirms that once assisted suicide is legalised use of it increases from year to year, seemingly without limit.

In 2010, the first full calendar year of operation, some 87 prescriptions for lethal drugs were provided under the Act. By 2016 this had nearly tripled (285%) to 248.

Prescriptions for lethal drugs increased by 15% from 2015 to 2016.

Deaths from lethal drugs prescribed under the Act have nearly quadrupled (376%) from 51 in 2010 to 192 in 2016, increasing by 13.6% from 2015 to 2016 alone.

• Washington State 2015 assisted suicide report - assisted deaths increase by 31.7%.

Not all of those who are prescribed lethal drugs end up taking them. Some die of natural causes. There is no tracking of lethal drugs that are not used by those for whom they are prescribed so these lethal drugs are available in the community and could be used accidentally or intentionally to cause death. Of the 1184 prescriptions for lethal drugs issued since 2009 only 846 (71%) have been reported as used leaving some 338 doses of lethal drugs unaccounted for in the community. 

Some 59% of those for whom a prescription for lethal drugs was provided did not cite any concern about pain control as a reason for asking for the prescription. 

However, 87% cited concerns about loss of autonomy and 51% cited concerns about being a burden on family, friends or caregivers.

Significantly, 8% cited concerns about the financial implications of treatment.

Only 5% of those given a lethal prescription were referred to a psychiatrist or psychological for evaluation. 

In some cases the prescribing doctor knew the patient for less than a week before writing the prescription, and in more than half the cases (53%) the doctor knew the patient for less than 25 weeks.

Although the Act specifies that only persons with “six months or less to live” may request lethal doses of medication from a physician, the data shows that in each year between 5% and 17% of those who die after requesting a lethal dose do so more than 25 weeks later, with one person in 2012 dying nearly 3 years (150 weeks) later, one person in 2015 dying nearly two years later (95 weeks) and one person in 2016 dying more than two years (112 weeks) later. 

In 2016, one person took 11 hours to lose consciousness after ingesting the lethal dose and one person took 22 hours to die after ingesting the lethal dose. In 2013, one person took 3 hours to lose consciousness after ingesting the lethal dose and one person took 41 hours (1 day and 17 hours) to die after ingesting the dose. In 2015, one person took 72 minutes (1 hour and 12 minutes) hours to lose consciousness after ingesting the lethal dose, and one person took 30 hours (1 day and 6 hours) to die after ingesting the dose. In 2009, two people awakened after initially losing consciousness. In 2014, one person suffered seizures after ingesting the lethal medication.

At least 16 patients have regurgitated the lethal medication. Seven of these cases occurred in 2016 alone.

This may be related to the use of new experimental cocktails of lethal drugs being used since the price of the previously used drugs, secobarbital and pentobarbital (Nembutal), escalated.

The first of the new cocktails is a mix of phenobarbital, chloral hydrate and morphine sulfate. It was used in 88 cases in 2015 and 44 cases in 2016.

It has been reported to be very caustic and to cause a profound burning in the throat.

The second experimental cocktail includes morphine sulfate, propranolol, diazepam, digoxin and a buffer suspension. It has been used in 2 cases in 2015 and 22 cases in 2016.

There is no requirement under the Act for a physician or any other person to be present when the lethal dose is ingested.

Since 2009, there have been 200 cases where no health-care provider was present when the lethal dose was ingested and a further 104 cases where it is not known if a health-care provider was present.

In other words, in some 304 cases, people have died ingesting a dose of lethal medication, legally prescribed under Washington law, and nobody knows whether the person freely ingested the lethal dose or they were cajoled, coerced or forced to do so by another person.

Care Not Killing welcomes decision to reject legal challenge to UK suicide law

Press Release issued on behalf of Care Not Killing 

RELEASE DATE: Thursday 5th October 2017 

Link to the press release.

Care Not Killing welcomes the decision to reject another legal challenge to the Suicide Act 1961 today.

Mr Conway's case is substantially the same as that of Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb in 2014, except that his condition is terminal.

Those supporting changing the law argue that a blanket ban on assisted suicide and euthanasia is a breach of Mr Conway's human rights. However the judges in the High Court have yet again emphatically rejected this.

The senior and highly experienced judges concluded that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (Right to respect for private life) is not unlimited, but a qualified right and did not extend to compelling the State and doctors to provide the lethal cocktail of barbiturates for Mr Conway and other terminally ill people to kill themselves. In a free democratic society health, morals and the rights and freedoms of others must be protected and granting Conway his wish would have undermined this.

Dr Peter Saunders, Campaign Director of Care Not Killing, commented:

There have been over ten attempts to legalise assisted suicide through British Parliaments since 2003, all of which have failed. The last in 2015 was defeated by an overwhelming majority of MPs (330 to 118) in the House of Commons amidst real and well founded concerns about public safety.

'A change in the law is opposed by every major disability rights organisation and doctors' group, including the BMA, Royal College of GPs and the Association for Palliative Medicine. These groups have looked at this issue on numerous occasion in detail and concluded that there is no safe system of assisted suicide and euthanasia anywhere in the world.

'Laws in the Netherlands and Belgium that were only meant to apply to mentally competent terminally ill adults, have been extended to include elderly and disabled people, those with mental health problems and even non-mentally competent children. While in Oregon, the model often cited by those wanting to change the law, there are examples of cancer patients being denied lifesaving and life extending drugs, yet offered the lethal cocktail of barbiturates to end their own lives.

'At the heart of this legal challenge was an attempt to treat the terminally ill and disabled people differently in law by removing important and universal legal protections. The judges understood that the current law protects vulnerable people from being pressured to end their lives, because of real, or imagined fears of being a burden upon relatives, carers or on a state and health care system that is short of resources.

'The safest law is the one we currently have, which gives a blanket prohibition on all assisted suicide and euthanasia. This deters exploitation and abuse through the penalties that it holds in reserve, but at the same time gives some discretion to prosecutors and judges to temper justice with mercy in hard cases.

'We welcome the decision by the High Court to completely reject this attempt to change the law and hope that as a society we can now turn our attention to the important issue of ensuring the highest level of palliative and social care for disabled people, the terminally ill and how we fund that.'

For media inquiries, please contact Alistair Thompson of Media Intelligence Partners Ltd on 07970 162225 or 0203 008 8145.

Notes for Editors

Care Not Killing is a UK-based alliance bringing together around 50 organisations - human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups - and thousands of concerned individuals.

We have three key aims:

• to promote more and better palliative care; 
• to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed during the lifetime of the current Parliament; 
• to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law.

Distinguishing between sadness and depression at the end of life.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Professor Gregory Crawford

The Australian Palliative Care Association published an insightful interview by Heather Wiseman with Professor Gregory Crawford titled - Distinguishing between sadness and depression at the end of life: a significant challenge tackled by a leader in palliative care.

Depression is an important issue knowing that a study from Oregon indicated that 26% of the people who had asked for assisted suicide were depressed while a Netherlands study found that depressed people were 4.1 times more likely to request euthanasia.

Professor Crawford who is the president-elect of the Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine for the Royal Australian College of Physicians did his doctoral thesis on ‘Depression in palliative care in Australia: identification and assessment.’

In the interview, Crawford responds to the question of distinguishing between sadness and depression. He states:

There has been a large amount of research in this area, but it is still very difficult to really determine what is a normal reaction to what is happening, like sadness, and what is an abnormal reaction, like a major depressive illness. 

Not everybody at the end of life is depressed and you wouldn’t want to make a diagnosis that isn’t there. Equally, there is still a large stigma in our society associated with being diagnosed with a mental illness, and another challenge is that the treatments are not necessarily simple. Most are oral medications that have interactions and side effects and they are slow to make a difference. 

The bottom line, however, is that this isn’t easy. I am confident that I can make a significant difference to 90% of people who turn up to me with pain, but I don’t have the same confidence with depression or other psychological issues. They are harder to treat and there are fewer treatment options.

Crawford commented on the importance of treating depression:

The implications of not diagnosing are that patients have increasing suffering and may not be getting the best treatment. They may be losing an opportunity to have more time or meaningful interaction with people around them. For their families, this can be a very large trauma; to not understand why somebody has turned their back on them or why they might be rejecting relationships, being overwhelmingly sad, or wanting to die precipitously. When triggered by depression, those responses can be quite challenging.

Professor Crawford focus on depression and palliative care based on his personal experience:

One of the motivators was that I looked after a 15-year-old girl who had a malignancy who looked like she was dying. I was working as the clinical head of palliative care at a hospital in Adelaide, and she was referred to us on the basis that she only had weeks to live. She had difficult pain to manage and other symptoms that led to her becoming more and more withdrawn. 

I was slow to recognise that she was depressed and I found it hard to find advice and support about to manage it. 

I looked in the literature and talked to psychiatrists and other colleagues. I ended up changing her antidepressants and she made a miraculous improvement, both physically and psychologically. She improved and lived for another 12 months. She had serious, progressive disease but her physical function and her ability to interact and live improved. She went off on a holiday, achieved some other things on her wish list and made lots of other nice memories for her family.
She died at home, supported by our palliative care service and her GP, and we had support from the paediatric palliative care service. 

It showed me that sometimes the symptoms of impending death and the symptoms of advanced depression can look very much the same. I felt a bit like I had failed, having taken so long to recognise her depression and then act on it, which made me determined to learn more about depression in this context. It drove me to try and understand more about psychological illness.

The comments by Professor Crawford are particularly important considering that the Netherlands and Belgium permit euthanasia for psychiatric reasons while Canada is debating expanding the euthanasia law to permit euthanasia for psychiatric reasons.

Professor Crawford is chairman of Palliative Care SA, a senior consultant in palliative medicine and the director of research and education at the Northern Adelaide Palliative Service, and president-elect of the Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine for the Royal Australian College of Physicians. 

Opening the door to Assisted Suicide Organ Donation

This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on October 5, 2017

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith 

My very first anti-assisted suicide column in 1993 warned that it would lead to conjoining organ donation with euthanasia “as a plumb to society.” 

That is happening now in Netherlands and Belgium–including of people with mental illnesses, no less.

Article: Not Dead Yet submits public comment on proposal on living organ donation by “Persons With Certain Fatal Diseases”

Now–very alarmingly–the United Network for Organ Sharing seems to be opening the door to letting those planning to commit assisted suicide become living organ donors before taking the lethal pills. From its proposed changes to the ethics of living organ donation to allow the terminally ill to participate: 

We recommends that individuals with certain fatal diseases be allowed to donate their organs prior to an assisted suicide, but only in those U.S. states where physician assisted suicide is legal and individuals meet the criteria for physician assisted suicide. 

No! People planning assisted suicide should receive suicide prevention interventions, not implied validation or encouragement to do the lethal deed. 

Moreover, there should never be an inducement for the sick and despairing to kill themselves, which this proposal would do if implemented. (And what if the person changed their mind? Indeed, what if they didn’t die as expected?) 

If we encourage the sick suicidal do this, why not eventually also the healthy suicidal? Some mental health professionals already assert that a sustained “rational” suicidal desire is akin to a terminal illness. 

The paper takes no position on donation after assisted suicide as “outside the scope of this paper.” Trust me, do this, and the latter will soon follow. 

Bottom line: We should not look at the suicidal as natural resources. We should never send the insidious message to suicidal people–based on whatever cause–that the deaths can have greater value than their continued lives.

US Supreme Court upholds conviction of assisted suicide group in Minnesota death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On Monday, October 2, 2017 the United States Supreme Court declined to review the conviction of the Final Exit Network. By declining to review the conviction, the US Supreme Court therefore upheld the conviction and determined that the Minnesota assisted suicide is constitutionally valid.

On May 14, 2015, the Final Exit Network was found guilty of assisting a suicide, by a jury, in the death of Doreen Dunn on May 30, 2007 and were sentenced on August 24, 2015.

On December 19, 2016, the Minnesota appeals court upheld Final Exit Network conviction.

During the 2015 trial, the Lacrosse Tribune reported:

Dakota County prosecutor Elizabeth Swank told jurors that the evidence showed that two members of Final Exit Network went to Dunn's home in Apple Valley to assist her suicide. They then removed the equipment that she used for suicide so that it appeared she had died of natural causes.  

Swank said that despite Dunn's pain and depression, she had no life-threatening illness and her family was puzzled by her death. There were good things happening in her life: Her daughter who had been in Africa for about a year was coming home the next day and her son's fiancee was scheduled to give birth that week. However, her husband was also planning to move out, the prosecutor said.

The Final Exit Network has now been prosecuted in several assisted suicide cases. In Georgia, the Final Exit Network assisted the suicide of John Celmer, who was depressed after recovering from cancer. Susan Celmer, John's widow, testified against the Final Exit Network. 

The Final Exit Network assists the suicide of people at the most vulnerable time of their life. Larry Egbert, the former medical director for the Final Exit Network, lost his medical license in Maryland for participating in these acts. 

Beware: Doctors cannot tell when a patient will die.

This article was published by HOPE Australia on October 4, 2017

In any profession, mistakes will be made – it’s human nature. However, when doctors estimate patients’ life expectancy, mistakes treated as truth can have grave consequences. For some, there is no “live and learn”.

When it comes to doctors informing patients of their life expectancy, it is critical to never take doctors estimates as definite – because doctors cannot accurately assess when a patient is going to die.

A recent study revealed that doctors’ assessments for when a person will die are almost assuredly wrong. As reported:

More than half the patients whom doctors thought would die within a year lived longer, according to an overview of predictions. In a third of cases, doctors failed to spot that patients were in their final months.

Doctors were using “stone age” methods to pick out those patients who might need extra help at the end of their lives, risking overburdening palliative care services with the relatively well while denying treatment to those who need it, researchers concluded. More scientific methods of predicting who was nearing the end of life were needed to end reliance on faulty medical intuition, experts said.

GPs, nursing homes and some hospitals often use a simple screening question to pick up which of their patients with long-term conditions such as heart failure or cancer are likely to need palliative care, asking themselves: 

“Would you be surprised if this patient died within the next 12 months?”

This arbitrary “information” is oftentimes used to determine access to euthanasia or assisted suicide. When people believe their lives are getting near “the end,” they may then become more likely to seek means of ending their life – all based on guesswork:

Paddy Stone of University College London, who led the study, said this was not used in discussions with patients — “you wouldn’t say, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you were dead within a year’ ” — but in an attempt to trigger extra help for those who needed it without committing to specific predictions of weeks or months.

“The ‘surprise question’ plays a role in encouraging them to identify those of their patients who may benefit from palliative or end of life care, without the need for a precise survival prediction,” he said. “Doctors often feel like they’re making a self-fulfilling prophecy if they are asked to give a specific prognosis, but if they’re just asked this gentle question it makes it easier.”

He looked at 25,718 times doctors and nurses had answered the question across 22 studies, finding overall they were 75 per cent accurate. However, much of this was driven by successfully predicting that patients who were unlikely to die would not do so.

When doctors said they would not be surprised if someone were dead within a year, the patient lived longer in 54 per cent of cases. They were also surprised by 1,238 of the 4,217 deaths in the study, published in the journal BMC Medicine.

“It’s not bad but we think we ought to be able to do better,” Professor Stone said. He added that patients wrongly identified as in the last year of life should not be alarmed, as this simply meant doctors would have a discussion with them about their wishes,[emphasis added] which was likely to be helpful at some point.

If doctors’ assessments about a patient’s lives are so prone to being “off,” why would we base euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation on this error-prone assessment? Such legislation is not just irresponsible – it flippantly plays with citizens’ lives:

Bill Noble, medical director of the charity Marie Curie, said: 

“An accurate prognosis concerning the length of a terminal illness can be a really difficult thing for clinicians to get right, even for people in the advanced stages. While we may be able to improve the accuracy of predictions, these will ultimately always be expressed in terms of risk of death within a particular time frame. No two people are the same.”

This isn’t the first time medical professionals and research have verified that end-of-life assessments for terminal illnesses are error-prone. Professor Gregory Crawford has warned us before about such mistaken diagnoses:

… I looked after a 15-year-old girl who had a malignancy who looked like she was dying. I was working as the clinical head of palliative care at a hospital in Adelaide, and she was referred to us on the basis that she only had weeks to live. She had difficult pain to manage and other symptoms that led to her becoming more and more withdrawn. 

I was slow to recognise that she was depressed and I found it hard to find advice and support about to manage it. I looked in the literature and talked to psychiatrists and other colleagues. I ended up changing her antidepressants and she made a miraculous improvement, both physically and psychologically. She improved and lived for another 12 months. She had serious, progressive disease but her physical function and her ability to interact and live improved. She went off on a holiday, achieved some other things on her wish list and made lots of other nice memories for her family. 

She died at home, supported by our palliative care service and her GP, and we had support from the paediatric palliative care service.

…

The implications of not diagnosing are that patients have increasing suffering and may not be getting the best treatment. They may be losing an opportunity to have more time or meaningful interaction with people around them. For their families, this can be a very large trauma; to not understand why somebody has turned their back on them or why they might be rejecting relationships, being overwhelmingly sad, or wanting to die precipitously. When triggered by depression, those responses can be quite challenging.

Legally allowing people to both kill themselves and others based on this shaky, error-prone information isn’t just irresponsible – it is morally wrong. Australians deserve better than euthanasia and assisted suicide, and we can ALL live without it.

Brampton woman declared brain dead. But is she dead?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Taquisha's daughter holding her picture.

Taquisha McKitty (27) of Brampton Ontario was declared brain dead on September 20 after having a cardiac arrest on September 14 related to a drug overdose. Her parents immediately sought a court injunction to prevent the William Osler Health System in Brampton from removing her life-support.

On September 28 Ontario Superior Court Justice Lucille Shaw granted an injunction in order to allow Taquisha to be evaluated by another doctor.

Watch the City TV news clip.

Stanley Stewart, Taquisha's father, told CP 24 news, after being granted an injunction, that:

“If you are there with her and you touch her and you grab her feet, she will pull her feet from you. If you tickle her she will move her feet. In one instance one of her cousins was squeezing her hand and asked her to show her thumb and she moved her thumb,” 

“We know for a fact that she is alive because if she was dead and her brain was dead there is no way that a week-and-a-half later she would still be moving. If you are brain dead then no parts should be moving.”

Dr Paul Byrne, a retired American expert on brain death criteria told CP 24 news:

“What’s going on here is the young lady is living,”

“A declaration by a doctor does not make someone dead. There is clearly a difference between being alive and being dead and she is alive. Her heart beats, she has circulation, she moves her legs and she responds to the family.”

Byrne told CP 24 that it appears that the hospital rushed to declare Taquisha as brain dead because she had signed her organ donor card.

The injunction will remain in effect until the family’s next court date on Oct. 17 or 18.

This is not the first time that the William Osler Health System in Brampton is embroiled in a controversial withdrawal of care case. In August 2010 Joshua Myandi, a pastor of a small Church, was dehydrated to death after a controversial capacity board hearing.

A GoFundMe account to help with legal costs has been set up.

Lethbridge woman in the middle of a medical treatment dispute.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Miranda Holowka

Family members face difficult decisions when a sibling or a parent is facing life-threatening medical conditions. These situations sometimes result in division and legal battles over questions related to medical treatment decisions.

Darlene Crayne (71) has been in a medically induced coma since she had a heart attack on August 26. The Chinook Regional Hospital and Alberta Health Services says that Darlene has minimal brain activity and are moving to withdraw life-support.

Miranda Holowka, Darlene's daughter, is convinced that her mother is getting better and have filmed her mother moving. Miranda said to CTV news:

“We’re not asking for forever, we’re just asking for some time.”

Link to the CTV news story which includes video.

The sad reality is that the family is divided with one of Miranda's sisters agreeing with the hospital. 

Issues related to life-limiting health conditions are often mixed with difficult personal reactions. 

These difficult situations require you to legally assign someone to be your medical decision maker, before the health crisis occurs and while you are competent.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition sells the Life Protecting Power of Attorney for Personal Care to protect you when you are unable to make decisions for yourself.

Now the Holowka family, who only want more time for their mother to recover have had to hire a lawyer to attempt to gain more time for their mothers hoped for recovery.

Link to the Darlene Crayne - Go Fund Me legal costs campaign.

I’m dying of brain cancer. I prepared to end my life. Then I kept living.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Washington Post published an interesting article on September 27 about a man who was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, similar to Brittany Maynard, and who planned to die by assisted suicide, but has kept on living.

Jeffrey Davitz, a scientist and silicon valley entrepreneur, was diagnosed in April 2015 a lethal and aggressive brain tumor, a brainstem glioblastoma multiforme in an advanced stage. At that time he was given, at most, six months to live with treatment.

Davitz explains that he supported assisted suicide during the California assisted suicide debate and he was planning to die by assisted suicide. He decided to accept treatment with the hope of living a little longer, while expecting that he would eventually die by assisted suicide. But then he started feeling better. Davitz states:

Jeffrey Davitz

As I waited for the (assisted suicide) law to go into effect, I began to feel some creeping uncertainty about my decision to die. There were things I still wanted to do, like see my daughter’s high school graduation. I was ready to go, I thought, and yet I was conflicted. 

Then a peculiar thing happened: I started to get better. 

... I noticed that I was getting stronger: I had been almost bedridden in the early stages of my illness, too weak to walk. But my strength began to return, and as it did, I felt the dizziness that had come with the diagnosis recede. I regained my balance. Strange symptoms, such as a weird full-body buzz that had begun when I lowered my head, also faded away. Soon, I was having somewhat normal days, doing some professional things, socializing and exercising. 

I was an unusual hospice member — eventually the program kicked me out, designating me a “hospice graduate,” a label that I still find funny. I celebrated my brother’s 60th birthday with him, attended my daughter’s graduation, saw my parents hit their 72nd wedding anniversary and fell into a kind of life pattern.

My MRIs reflected this. The tumor stopped its relentless advance, and there were even signs of some retreat. My most recent image, in May, surprised my doctors, who saw signs not of the expected encroachment but of a slowing and even dormant process. 

I’ve now lived longer and better than anybody had projected. Suddenly, it’s hard to see self-termination in quite the same way. I could have missed all this.

One of the many flaws with legalizing assisted suicide is that it causes people who have many quality months and sometimes years to live to have their lives ended.

Davitz has not changed his mind about assisted suicide but he concludes by recognizing his internal conflict with assisted suicide. He states:

Sometimes, I wonder: Would dying have been a good choice anyway? In my case, and not speaking generally, the answer is: of course not. I had a surprising, profoundly unlikely path that has led to love and work of special kinds. I got some good luck in the midst of the bad luck, and I have had a great few years — in some peculiar way the ideal life. Not without pain and difficulties, but also with moments of transcendence. 

... But I am not trying to find my way to clear, simple feelings anymore. Instead, long beyond what was expected, I am simply living.

When assisted suicide is legal the decision is influenced by the doctor who has gained the right in law to cause death. 

This may have been a very different story if, from the beginning, his friends, family and medical care-givers said to him, I will not be involved with killing you, but I will ensure that you are properly cared for and that you do not suffer.

Many people fear a bad death and fear suffering, but legalizing assisted suicide is not about gaining a "right to die", but rather it is about giving someone else the right to end my life.

Not Dead Yet Submits Public Comment on Proposal on Living Organ Donation By “Persons With Certain Fatal Diseases”

This article was published by Not Dead Yet on October 1, 2017.

This is a complicated subject. It impacts people with disabilities in multiple ways, both as organ donors and recipients. But the tone and recommendations of the Ethics Committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network needed a response. Some excerpts follow.

Living donation by persons with certain fatal diseases.

The organ transplant program saves lives, including some of our organization’s grassroots advocates. Its goals are of unquestionable significance. In order to function effectively though, it needs to have strong public trust and support. The safety of potential donors should be of utmost concern. All lives of living donors must be equally valued. The OPTN must never pursue any policies that expose some donors to more risk than other donors. . .

We agree that there are some underlying health conditions that would not preclude a willing person from being a living donor. Decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis with the preservation of the person’s normal health as a paramount value. We are therefore disturbed and disappointed by the tone and tenor of the proposal as well as the recommendations that would create a two-tiered system of assessment, reporting and scrutiny.

The Committee’s focus as it seeks to expand the donor pool is not on donor protection but on transplant hospital protection. Although the details of implementation will be left to other committees, the thrust of the proposal is on reducing scrutiny for certain donor deaths. The Committee feels that in some cases, harm to donor can be traded off against other factors. The Committee gets to where it wants to be by conflating conditions which can be chronic and disabling with fatal conditions, and then blurring everything into terminal. This brings to mind what James McGaughey, former executive director of Connecticut’s Office of Protection and Advocacy, has written in a somewhat different context, “physicians…did not understand the prospects of people with disabilities to live good… lives…and recommendations sometimes reflected confusion concerning the distinction between terminal illness and disability…people with significant disabilities are at risk of having presumptions about the quality of their lives influence the way medical providers…respond to them. ”. . .

One example of the Committee’s biased double standard is while OPTN policy is not to accept persons as living donors if they show evidence of suicidality, it urges an exception for people with certain fatal diseases so as not to preclude people with plans for assisted suicide (where legal) from first undergoing a living organ donation. (pg. 10) Given the recent studies that many people who request assisted suicide are motivated by feelings of being a burden and other existential issues, the Committee seems to have joined those who see no reason to ensure that such issues are addressed by adequate home care, palliative care, counseling, peer contact and other supports. . . .

Along these same lines, the Committee references feelings of uselessness and insecurity as motivations for the subclass of living donors. (pg. 8) It lists as psychological benefits to the donor improved self-esteem and enhanced meaning in life. (pg. 12) . . .

All this has everything to do with medical/societal prejudices towards disability. Several of the conditions discussed in the proposal are deceptively depicted as fatal. They should more accurately be seen as chronic conditions which people must manage effectively and which are accompanied by some level of disability. People can live for decades with multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis (which is present from birth) or COPD and, indeed, remissions are possible with multiple sclerosis. Even with advanced neuromuscular conditions like ALS, the course of the disease and life expectancy are quite variable. Indeed, Duke University’s ALS Clinic is studying cases in which symptoms have partially reversed. . . .

However, good values can be perverted by bias or ignorance of the social context. The Committee is applying these values without any understanding of the disability medical experience – an experience that includes struggling for access to unbiased health care, being defined solely by one’s disability and fighting against “better dead than disabled” attitudes, an experience that wears on an individual.

It should be no wonder that some people diagnosed with ALS, who are too often given excessively grim prognoses and too rarely exposed to people who lead successful and fulfilling lives with respiratory support, feel that they cannot adapt. Yet the main difference between them and people with lifelong neuromuscular disabilities who have advanced to the same level of support needs is that they had less time to adjust and prepare.

Fortunately, OPTN’s Living Donor Committee seems to recognize that the proposal raises valid concerns. Our recommendation is that they go back and start over. 

To read the full NDY comment, go here.

Thank you to Lisa Blumberg, JD who drafted NDY’s public comment and collaborated throughout its preparation.

Resolution opposing assisted suicide to be debated in US Congress.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Washington Times published an excellent article about the press conference organized by Rep Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) and the National Alliance Against Legalizing Assisted Suicide announcing the introduction of Resolution 80 opposing assisted suicide. According to the Washington Times Wenstrup stated:

“My feeling is when the government supports, encourages or facilitates suicide, whether assisted by physicians or otherwise, we devalue our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings,” Mr. Wenstrup said during the press conference at the Longworth House Office Building. “I don’t believe that’s who we should be.”

Dozens of disability rights leaders attended the press conference. 

Anita Cameron, the minority outreach director for the disability rights group Not Dead Yet was reportedly stated:

Anita Cameron, minority outreach director for Not Dead Yet, said she has been protesting efforts to repeal Obamacare over the past few days. She said physician-assisted suicide laws only exacerbate the problems with the health care system. 

“That kind of ties in with assisted suicide because if you’re taking away health care from people, it’s just that much easier, if assisted suicide also passed, it’s that much easier to recommend prescribed suicide pills for people,” Ms. Cameron said. “And that’s something we don’t want.”

J.J. and Kristen Hanson

Statements on behalf of J.J. Hanson, the President of the Patients Rights Action Fund, were read by his wife Kristen. Hanson has been affected by recent seizures, Hanson stated:

If assisted suicide had been available at the time of his diagnosis, he would have been tempted to end his life, especially during a bout of depression. 

“As I wondered, ‘Am I too much of a burden to my family?’ When I asked, ‘Is ending my life easier than this?’ I thought about it, and I considered it,” said Mrs. Hanson, reading for her husband. “Thankfully, I did not end my life, and that is why I am here today.”

• Media Release: Members introduce bipartisan resolution on the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide.
• Text of Resolution H. Con. Res. 80.