Possible expansion of physician-assisted suicide laws in other states should concern Montana

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/possible-expansion-of-physician-assisted-suicide-laws-in-other-states/article_e29d5322-8b2c-11e2-aba7-001a4bcf887a.html

I am doctor in Washington state where physician-assisted suicide is legal for “terminal patients” predicted to have less than six months to live. I disagree with the letter by Kristen Wood (letter, Feb. 28) that expansion is not a concern in this context.

In Washington state, our assisted suicide law has only been in effect for four years. We have, however, already had proposals to expand that law to direct euthanasia of non-terminal people. See e.g., Brian Faller, “Perhaps it’s time to expand Washington’s Death with Dignity Act,” Nov. 16, 2011. Last year, there was also this article in the Seattle Times, suggesting euthanasia for people who cannot afford their own care, which would be involuntary euthanasia: Jerry Large, “Planning for old age at a premium,” March 8, 2012 at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2017693023.html (“After Monday’s column, . . . a few (readers) suggested that if you couldn’t save enough money to see you through your old age, you shouldn’t expect society to bail you out. At least a couple mentioned euthanasia as a solution.“)

I am very concerned with where this is all going. I hope that Montana does not follow our lead to legalize assisted suicide.

Richard Wonderly,
Seattle, Washington

"Because of my mother's experiences, I no longer believe in "physician-assisted suicide.' Support House Bill 505."

Family member's 'accidental' death provides example for opposition to assisted suicide

http://www.ravallirepublic.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_2051b845-5a8d-5cdc-be0e-0b7bfbb5e2bf.html?comment_form=true 

This letter is being written for a right to live.  We taxpayers paid a phenomenal amount of money when others decided it was time for my mother to die.  She would not die!  Three times she defied attempts on her life, costing her bed sores, hospice and her daughter being arrested while helping her (the latter arrest record was dismissed).

Mom succumbed in the hospital on Sept. 6, 2010.  The coroner's report case No. 100906 lists congestive heart failure with oxygen deprivation and fentanyl therapy.  The manner of death: accident.

Fentanyl is reported "to be 80 to 200 times as potent as morphine."  A fentanyl patch of 100 mcg/hour has a range within 24 hours of 1.9-3.8ng/mL. Mom's death result was 2.7 ng/mL on or about 48 hours.

Complaint No. 2012-069-MED was filed with the Montana Department of Labor and Industry Board of Medical Examiners. The screening panel voted to dismiss the complaint with prejudice, which means the board may not consider the complaint in the future.

Because of my mother's experiences, I no longer believe in "physician-assisted suicide."  Support House Bill 505.

Gail Bell,
Bozeman

Doctor Effectively Euthanized Against his Will

James Mungas MD

For published version, click here.

My husband, Dr. James E. Mungas, was a respected physician and surgeon here in Great Falls. He developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and I took care of him. His mind was clear and thought processes unimpaired. He was against assisted suicide and euthanasia.

I needed to travel out of town for a day and a half. We agreed he would stay at a local care facility in my absence. Once there, nurses began administering morphine. After the first dose, my husband knew that he had been overdosed and typed out a message to call respiratory therapy. None came that day. Over the next few days, he struggled to breathe and desperately struggled to remain conscious to communicate, but the nurses kept pushing the morphine button and advised our children to do the same. My children and I did not understand the extent morphine would repress the respiratory system until later.  This was neither palliative care nor managing pain; this was hastening death. He was effectively euthanized against his will. He did not get his choice. It is traumatic, still, to realize his last communications were attempts to get help....

— Carol Mungas,
Great Falls, Montana

More Big News From Montana! We Passed the House!

Last week, HB 505 passed the House!

So, now the former Hemlock Society is gearing up the misinformation campaign.

Will keep you posted!

Meanwhile, enjoy the victory!

Thank you to everyone who made this possible.

Thanks!

Margaret Dore

More Big News From Montana. WE WON!

HB 505, which clarifies the offense of aiding or soliciting suicide, just passed second reading in the Montana House of Representatives!

The bill’s other purpose is to prevent the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Montana. 

The vote was 54 to 45!

Thanks you everyone for your help!

Way to go!!!!!

Margaret Dore, President

Choice is an Illusion,

a Nonprofit Corporation

www.choiceillusion.org 

Losing the Will to Live: The ghastly murders in Newtown, Conn., reflect the prevalence of suicide here and across the globe.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/28/suicide-mass-murder/1872833/

Rebecca D. Costa6:41p.m. EST January 29, 2013
 

Before we turn up the volume on the Second Amendment. Before we trot out data proving that more guns lead to more violence — or don't. Before we re-live every senseless mass murder and make children afraid to step into a movie theater, school or mall. Before all of this and worse — experts would be wise to examine a phenomena that has been the impetus behind so many recent attacks on innocent civilians: Long before the perpetrators reached for a weapon, they lost their desire to live.

 

That's right. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about Khalid al-Mihdhar and 9/11, or James Eagan Holmes opening fire on movie-goers in Colorado, or more recently, Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old responsible for the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. We now know that in each of these cases, the assailants felt they no longer had a reason to live. And it is this unnatural state that enabled them to commit unimaginable acts. Once a person makes a decision to die, the most abhorrent atrocities become permissible. There are no longer any consequences to fear: no arrest, no jail, no trial, no families of the victims to face, no remorse, no nothing. Dead is dead.

Historical anomaly

Consider this: John Wilkes Booth didn't shoot up the Ford Theater. After aiming his gun at President Lincoln, he ran. He hid. He tried to get away. The same goes for Lee Harvey Oswald. He didn't open fire on the people who lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the president's motorcade. Even disturbed killers such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy went to great lengths to keep their crimes hidden. Why? Because the drive to survive — to thrive, to propagate — is the strongest instinct among all living organisms. Self-preservation is a fundamental urge in nature. But in recent times, this instinct has gone awry.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antidepressants are now the most prescribed drugs in the USA, climbing almost 400% from 1988-94 through 2005-08. Not surprisingly, the biggest jump is among preschoolers and adolescents. And if that isn't a clear warning of what lies ahead, then perhaps the fact that an estimated 1 million people in the U. S. report attempting to commit suicide each year — and that one succeeds every 14 minutes — will trigger an alarm. The number of people who no longer wish to live has been steadily rising in the past two decades, even before the recession. That suicide rate among military veterans we are so worried about? It is rising to civilian levels.

And it's not just the U.S. Globally, suicides have risen 60% in the past 45 years. We have a widespread affliction on our hands that is affecting the entire human race. An affliction we understand very little about. An affliction we continue to sweep under the rug and blame on guns, the economy and every other thing. An affliction that has become a preamble for mass murder.

Small actions don't help

I wouldn't go so far as to say that separating motive from means won't be helpful. We can and should make it difficult for unstable citizens to get a gun, rent a plane, build a bomb or have access to deadly poisons. But in terms of the bigger picture, these solutions look disturbingly similar to raising the debt ceiling, taxing the wealthy and claiming we've addressed our fiscal problems. Or drilling for more oil and behaving as if we'll never run out. We know these quick fixes are designed to ameliorate our immediate pain, but they don't go to the heart of the matter.

Today, fast-firing assault weapons grab international attention, but that is not what makes people like Adam Lanza so dangerous or what gives us reason to fear more such attacks; it's the fact that Lanza had no will to live. That's not a problem that can be solved by gun control or arming school guards.

It is a problem about people. The reach of the problem is far deeper. The CDC reports a million Americans try to kill themselves every year, but twice as many make plans to do it. While suicide claims a victim four times an hour, one of our friends, family members or neighbors thinks about it every two minutes.

If we have any hope of curbing tragedies such as Columbine and Sandy Hook, we must not allow rhetoric or short-term mitigation overshadow the opportunity to address the real culprit behind mass violence.

Thriving, happy, connected human beings don't use guns to harm others, no matter how plentiful. They don't fashion fertilizer or airplanes into bombs. And they don't need the government to regulate these things. Nature has designed us so that the will to live acts as a deterrent against anything that threatens our continuation — including opening fire in a public place.

Fix this, and it won't be long before gun control is superseded by self-control. And at the end of the day, isn't this a far more lasting alternative than surrendering hard-won liberties?

Rebecca D. Costa, author of The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse, is aformer CEO and founder of Silicon Valley start-up Dazai Advertising.

Oregon's New Statistics

By Margaret Dore, Esq.

Oregon's assisted suicide statistics are out for 2012.[1]

This annual report is similar to prior years.  The preamble implies that the deaths were voluntary (self-administered), but the information reported does not address that subject.[2]

Oregon's assisted suicide law allows the lethal dose to be administered without oversight.[3]  This creates the opportunity for an heir, or someone else who will benefit from the patient's death, to administer the lethal dose to the patient without his consent, for example, when the patient is asleep.  Who would know?

The new Oregon report provides the following demographics:  

"Of the 77 DWDA deaths during 2012, most (67.5%) were aged 65 years or older; the median age was 69 years.  As in previous years, most were white (97.4%), [and] well-educated (42.9% had at least a baccalaureate degree) . . . ."[4]  Most (51.4%) had private health insurance.[5]

Typically persons with these attributes are seniors with money, which would be the middle class and above, a group disproportionately victims of financial abuse and exploitation.[6]

As set forth above, Oregon's law is written so as to allow the lethal dose to be administered to patients without their consent and without anyone knowing how they died.  The law thus provides the opportunity for the perfect crime.  Per the new report, the persons dying (or killed) under that law are  disproportionately seniors with money, a group disproportionately victimized by financial abuse and exploitation.

Oregon's new report is consistent with elder abuse.

Footnotes:

[1]  The new report can be viewed here: http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Documents/year15.pdf and http://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/year-15-2012.pdf
[2]  Id.
[3]  Oregon's law can be viewed here:  http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Pages/ors.aspx
[4]  Report cited at note 1.
[5]  Id.
[6]  See "Broken Trust:  Elders, Family, and Finances," a Study on Elder Financial Abuse Prevention, by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, and the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 2009.

Not Dead Yet: More on Double Euthanasia in Belgium

http://www.notdeadyet.org/2013/01/more-on-double-euthanasia-in-belgium-national-federation-of-the-blind-reacts-and-other-suicides-in-the-news.html

January 15, 2013 | posted by Stephen Drake

The 24+ hours since I posted on the double euthanasia of two deaf men in Belgium has resulted in some developments, varied reactions, and some reflection on my own part.  My apologies if this post seems a little scattered – a little like mental  multi-colored pasta thrown against the wall -  but sometimes that’s how my mind works.

First, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) issued a statement from Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the NFB:

“This disturbing news from Belgium is a stark example of the common, and in this case tragic, misunderstanding of disability and its consequences.  Adjustment to any disability is difficult, and deaf-blind people face their own particular challenges, but from at least the time of Helen Keller it has been known that these challenges can be met, and the technology and services available today have vastly improved prospects for the deaf-blind and others with disabilities.  That these men wanted to die is tragic; that the state sanctioned and aided their suicide is frightening.”

You can view the entire release and learn more about the NFB here.

At the same time, I’m sure that others have noticed that there are suicides getting a lot of coverage this week.  The Pentagon reports that deaths by suicide reached a record number in 2012, with more military deaths occurring due to suicide than from combat.  The suicide of programmer/activist/open source advocate Aaron Swartz – apparently overwhelmed by the double effects of depression and what is being called “overreaching” prosecution over his download of millions of journal articles.  He was faced with decades in prison and enormous fines.

Read through the comments on any of the countless articles covering these suicide stories and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone reacting like this:

• “It’s their body, their choice.”
• “When people decide they need to end it, they should be able to get help to do so.”
• “It’s too bad they had to use violent means – animals can get euthanized; we treat animals better than humans.”

The lack of statements like those struck me because they’re common sentiments expressed in article “comments,” and interactions on Facebook when people react to “double euthanasia” of Marc and Eddy Verbessem, the identical twins whose deaths are still making news.

I think that we don’t see those comments in the cases of Aaron Swartz and the military because those people are valued.  I know that euthanasia proponents say that their movement is all about respecting individual choice, but why are the “choices” of  Marc and Eddy Verbessem “respected” while the suicides of military personnel and the suicide of Aaron Swartz are treated as preventable tragedies?  The answer, of course, is that euthanasia isn’t about “respect,” but agreeing that another person’s continued existence is pointless.

The animal comparisons always get me.  I’ve written before (with Dick Sobsey) about the myths surrounding the “kindness” of pet euthanasia.

What struck me this time was an even deeper disconnect.  Anyone who spends a lot of time on the internet knows that cats are probably the most popular thing in existence.  Some of the most popular pictures/videos of cats involve disabled cats – and dogs.  Right now, the most popular cat on the internet seems to be Oskar the Blind Cat:


If you look around, you’ll find stories of a deaf and blind dog rescued from euthanasia and a pet now for seven years and there’s even a story out there about a deaf/blind dog with three legs that rescued his family from a fire.

Oskar has lots of fans.  Stories like the ones about the dogs seem to make people just tear up and feel generally inspired.


But two deaf men losing their vision getting “put down”?  That evokes shrugs and even applause.

I don’t get it.  And I think I’m grateful I don’t. 

Chicago lottery winner's death ruled a homicide

From Kate Kelly:

It seems ageism is getting younger. The victim in this case was 46 years old. Note that, except for a concerned relative's persistence, this murder would have gone undetected. Apparently it is not considered "suspicious" when you die suddenly at 46 - even when you have "suddenly" become wealthy...

http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-lottery-winners-death-ruled-homicide-181627271.html 

By Jason Keyser, Associated Press 

CHICAGO (AP) — With no signs of trauma and nothing to raise suspicions, the sudden death of a Chicago man a day after he collected a large pile of lottery winnings was initially ruled a result of natural causes.

Urooj Khan with lottery ticket



Nearly six months later, authorities have a mystery on their hands after medical examiners, responding to a relative's pleas, did an expanded screening and determined that Urooj Khan, 46, died shortly after ingesting a lethal dose of cyanide. The finding has triggered a homicide investigation, the Chicago Police Department said.

"It's pretty unusual," said Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina, commenting on the rarity of cyanide poisonings. "I've had one, maybe two cases out of 4,500 autopsies I've done."

In June, Khan, who owned a number of dry cleaners, stopped in at a 7-Eleven near his home in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the city's North Side and bought a ticket for an instant lottery game.

He scratched off the ticket, then jumped up and down and repeatedly shouted " I hit a million," Khan recalled days later during a ceremony in which Illinois Lottery officials presented him with an oversized check. He said he was so overjoyed he ran back into the store and tipped the clerk $100.  "Winning the lottery means everything to me," he said at the June 26 ceremony, also attended by his wife, Shabana Ansari; their daughter, Jasmeen Khan; and several friends. He said he would put some of his winnings into his businesses and donate some to a children's hospital.

Khan opted to take his winnings in a lump sum of just over $600,000. After taxes, the check, issued July 19 from the state Comptroller's Office, was about $425,000, said lottery spokesman Mike Lang.

Khan died a day later.

No signs of trauma were found during an external exam and no autopsy was done because, at the time, the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office didn't automatically perform them on those 45 and older unless the death was suspicious, Cina said. The cut-off has since been raised to age 50.

A basic toxicology screening for opiates, cocaine and carbon monoxide came back negative, and the death was ruled a result of the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries.

But a relative came forward and asked authorities to look into the case further, Cina said. He refused to identify the relative.

"She (the morgue worker) then reopened the case and did more expansive toxicology, including all the major drugs of use, all the common prescription drugs and also included I believe strychnine and cyanide in there just in case something came up," Cina said. "And in fact cyanide came up in this case."

Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Melissa Stratton confirmed the department was now investigating the death and said detectives were working closely with the Medical Examiner's Office.  

 

"Assisted suicide in Washington and Oregon is a recipe for elder abuse and cloaked in secrecy"

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/oregon-washington-assisted-suicide-laws-include-no-protections-for-patients/article_074c4378-507b-11e2-8348-001a4bcf887a.html

By, Margaret Dore, Esq.  Supporting documentation follows letter, below.

Re: Susan Hancock, “Death with Dignity is about giving people choices" (Dec. 20, guest column):

I disagree with Susan Hancock’s description of how the Washington and Oregon assisted suicide laws work. I disagree that assisted suicide cannot be forced upon an unwilling person.

The Oregon and Washington assisted suicide acts have a formal application process. The acts allow an heir, who will benefit from the patient’s death, to actively participate in this process.

Once the lethal dose is issued by the pharmacy, there is no oversight. For example, there is no witness required at the death. Without disinterested witnesses, the opportunity is created for an heir, or for another person who will benefit from the patient’s death, to administer the lethal dose to the patient without his consent. One method would be by injection when the patient is sleeping. The drugs used in Oregon and Washington are water soluble and therefore injectable. If the patient woke up and struggled, who would know?

The Washington and Oregon acts require the state health departments to collect statistical information for the purpose of annual reports. According to these reports, users of assisted-suicide are overwhelmingly white and generally well-educated. Many have private insurance. Most are age 65 and older. Typically persons with these attributes are seniors with money, which would be the middle class and above, a group disproportionately at risk of financial abuse and exploitation.

The forms used to collect the statistical information do not ask about abuse. Moreover, not even law enforcement is allowed to access information about a particular case. Alicia Parkman a mortality research analyst at the Center for Health Statistics, Oregon Health Authority, wrote me: “We have been contacted by law enforcement and legal representatives in the past, but have not provided identifying information of any type.“

Assisted suicide in Washington and Oregon is a recipe for elder abuse and cloaked in secrecy. Don’t make our mistake.

Supporting documentation below.

Margaret Dore,

Seattle, Wash.

Mass: Inclusion Key in anti suicide drive

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/14/inclusion-key-in-anti-suicide-drive/#disqus_thread

By Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, November 14, 2012

The anti-euthanasia movement found new life last week after voters in Massachusetts defied the conventional wisdom by rejecting a physician-assisted suicide initiative.

In a setback for the “aid in dying” movement, Question 2, known as the Death With Dignity initiative, lost by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent after leading by 68-to-20 in a poll released in early September by the Boston Globe.

The turnaround came after the “No on 2” camp fractured the liberal coalition that approved similar measures in Oregon and Washington by building a diverse campaign of religious leaders, medical professionals and advocates for the disabled along with a few prominent Democrats and a member of the Kennedy clan.

"Compassion & Choices is a successor organization to the Hemlock Society"

http://helenair.com/news/opinion/readers_alley/assisted-suicide-law-could-lead-to-patient-mistreatment/article_32bac11c-4985-11e2-9338-0019bb2963f4.html?print=true&cid=print

12/19/12

Theresa Schrempp Seattle, Wash.

I am a lawyer in Washington State where assisted-suicide is legal. Robert Zimorino’s letter encourages readers to contact Compassion & Choices, a promoter of assisted-suicide (“aid in dying”).

Your readers should know that Compassion & Choices is a successor organization to the Hemlock Society, originally formed by Derek Humphry. In 2011, Humphry was the keynote speaker at Compassion & Choices’ annual meeting here in Washington State.  In 2011, he was also in the news as a promoter of mail-order suicide kits from a company now shut down by the FBI.This was after a 29 year old man used one of the kits to commit suicide.

In 2007, Compassion & Choices was a plaintiff in Montana’s assisted-suicide case. Therein, Compassion & Choices requested legalization of assisted-suicide for “terminally ill adult patients.” The definition of this phrase was broad enough to include an otherwise healthy 18 year old who is insulin dependent or a young adult with stable HIV/AIDS. Such persons can live for decades with appropriate medical treatment.

Once someone is labeled “terminal,” an easy justification can be made that their treatment should be denied in favor of someone more deserving. Those who believe that legalizing assisted-suicide will promote free choice may discover that it does anything but.

Supporting authority not included in the published letter, below:

Massachusetts: Support withered for assisted-suicide ballot question

http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_22157064/support-withered-assisted-suicide-ballot-question#ixzz2Egbgwy23

 

By Chris Camire, ccamire@lowellsun.comlowellsun.com

Updated:   12/09/2012 07:15:07 AM EST

In late September, polls showed a ballot initiative that would make physician-assisted suicide legal for terminally ill patients had support from 68 percent of Massachusetts voters. 

Over the next month, that support steadily eroded, and on Election Day the measure failed by a razor-thin 51-49 percent margin. 

How did a proposal that seemed sure to pass just five weeks before the election come up short? 

Joseph Baerlein, president of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, who handled public relations for the Committee Against Physician Assisted Suicide, said the measure's opponents had to convince voters who supported the idea of assisted suicide that the bill before them was flawed. 

"We focused our campaign strategy on looking at those weaknesses," said Baerlein. "For us to have a chance to win, we would have to have some amount of voters who felt it was their right take another look, so they would see that this wasn't the right way to do it."

The Death with Dignity Act, or Question 2, mirrored legislation passed in Oregon and Washington state.

Elder financial abuse 'more brazen and diverse,' deputy DA says

http://www.sddt.com/Commentary/article.cfm?Commentary_ID=10&SourceCode=20121120tbc&_t=Elder+financial+abuse+more+brazen+and+diverse+deputy+DA+says#.UKwio-SxzTo 

By GEORGE CHAMBERLIN, Executive Editor

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Paul Greenwood is a great crime fighter. In particular, in his role as a deputy district attorney in San Diego, he heads up the elder abuse prosecution unit.  That's why he was invited to testify last week at a hearing in Washington, D.C., called by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, titled, “America’s Invisible Epidemic: Preventing Elder Financial Abuse.”

Greenwood said at least 65 percent of his office’s prosecutions involve some form of financial exploitation.

“The conduct of the criminals is becoming more brazen and diverse," Greenwood testified. "The perpetrators are constantly developing new ways to gain access to our seniors’ life savings and have focused upon a generation that typically has been more trusting and less able or willing to self-report the victimization.”

That hesitancy makes it difficult to determine the size of the crimes.

“While the costs associated with elder financial abuse are estimated at $2.9 billion each year, financial abuse often goes unrecognized because victims are too afraid or embarrassed to report the crime to authorities,” said Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the committee.

Man convicted of murder "claimed his mother committed suicide"

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/man-convicted-of-murdering-his-mother/story-e6frg13u-1226522829658

A 27-YEAR-old Perth man has been found guilty of murdering his mother to steal her money and property.

Brent Donald Mack, 27, was on trial in the WA Supreme Court accused of murdering his mother, Ah Bee, between December 18 and 29 in 2008.

Ms Mack, 56, who also went by the name of Pauline, was last seen alive in September 2008, but her body has never been found.

In a police interview earlier this year, Mack claimed his mother committed suicide and had asked him not to tell anyone.

Justice John McKechnie, who presided the case without a jury, returned the guilty verdict today.

A psychiatric report and psychological report were ordered.

Mack will be sentenced on January 25.

Winning in Massachusetts: Inclusion was Key

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/14/inclusion-key-in-anti-suicide-drive/#disqus_thread

By Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, November 14, 2012

The anti-euthanasia movement found new life last week after voters in Massachusetts defied the conventional wisdom by rejecting a physician-assisted suicide initiative.

In a setback for the “aid in dying” movement, Question 2, known as the Death With Dignity initiative, lost by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent after leading by 68-to-20 in a poll released in early September by the Boston Globe.

The turnaround came after the “No on 2” camp fractured the liberal coalition that approved similar measures in Oregon and Washington by building a diverse campaign of religious leaders, medical professionals and advocates for the disabled along with a few prominent Democrats and a member of the Kennedy clan.

Those who are not dying can be lured to assisted suicide

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2012/11/02/those-who-are-not-dying-can-lured-assisted-suicide/mYhNV8k6hWseAFwSxdCnIL/story.html

I am a cancer doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal. Oregon's assisted-suicide law applies to patients predicted to have less than six months to live. This does not necessarily mean that such patients are dying.

In 2000, I had a cancer patient named Jeanette Hall. Another doctor had given her a terminal diagnosis of six months to a year to live.  This was based on her not being treated for cancer. At our first meeting, she told me that she did not want to be treated, and that she wanted to opt for what our law allowed - to kill herself with a lethal dose of barbiturates.

I did not and do not believe in assisted suicide. I informed her that her cancer was treatable and that her prospects were good. But she wanted "the pills."  She had made up her mind, but she continued to see me. On the third or fourth visit, I asked her about her family and learned that she had a son. I asked her how he would feel if she went through with her plan. Shortly after that, she agreed to be treated, and her cancer was cured. 

Several years later she saw me in a restaurant and said, "Dr. Stevens, you saved my life."

For her, the mere presence of legal assisted suicide had steered her to suicide.

I urge the citizens of Massachusetts to vote no on Question 2.

Dr. Kenneth Stevens

Sherwood, Ore

Killing with kindness: Why the Death With Dignity Act endangers people with disabilities

http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/146648-killing-with-kindness-why-the-death-with-dignity-/#ixzz2AvS5wlXH

 

By S.J. Rosenbaum

I think my opinions about doctor-assisted suicide crystallized the night Mike — my wheelchair-using, ventilator-breathing boyfriend — choked on pineapple juice, passed out, and died.

He was dead for several minutes, on a steel table in the ER. The doctor shocked the pulse back into his heart and dropped him into an induced coma, but it still wasn't clear whether he would make it. As I stood by his bedside, shaking, one of the nurses touched me on the shoulder.

"Maybe it's better this way," she murmured.

I'll never forget that moment. We'd been watching a movie together a few hours before. We had plans to go clubbing. Maybe it's better this way?

I'm not a violent person, but I wanted to punch that lady in the face.

When I started going out with Mike, I thought that prejudice against people with disabilities was something we'd left behind along with Jim Crow and sodomy laws. I was shocked, again and again, to find that I was wrong. So wrong. Everyone I met had ideas about what it must be like to date Mike — that we never went out, that we couldn't have sex, that I must have to take care of him all the time — that were so false as to be laughable. We did laugh at that stuff. We had to. But for every person who came up to us to congratulate Mike on his "bravery" in taking a trip to the mall, there was someone who actually thought he'd be better off dead.

Some of those people were doctors.

Not the young doctor who fought like a demon to restart his heart in the ER. But there were others: well-meaning doctors who saw Mike, and people like him, as pitiable — as "bad outcomes." In fact, that's the norm: study after study has shown that doctors, as a group, consistently underestimate the quality of life of their disabled patients. Those prejudices — unquestioned and unacknowledged — can have disastrous results.

I don't know anyone born with a serious disability whose doctors didn't tell their parents that they would never be able to live independently. A doctor at Mass General, who treats children with muscular dystrophy, told me about colleagues who had counseled their patients against using the ventilators that would prolong their lives by decades. Those doctors weren't trying to do harm. They simply saw their patients' lives as not worth living.

As disability activist Carol Gill writes: "Many of us have been harmed significantly by medical professionals who knew little about our lives, who thought incurable functional impairments were the worst things that could happen to a person, and who were confident they knew best."

All this, then, is why I'll be voting against referendum Question 2, the Death with Dignity Act, on November 6.


The language of the bill sounds reasonable: it would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication, upon request, to patients with terminal diseases. But it wouldn't actually have much benefit for the dying, who already have the same access to self-administered suicide as anyone else. Instead, it could present doctors with an option to offer the patients they think they can't help: the bill's definition of "terminal disease" is so vague as to encompass disabilities like Mike's, and it has no requirement that a person seeking the fatal dose see a counselor or be screened for depression.

So why would a person with a disability ask for a suicide pill? My ex never would. Disabled from birth, Mike has been fighting for his rights since he was in grade school. He's a badass with 60 tattoos, and he's not ready to die any time soon.

But for the late-disabled, it's different. People diagnosed with a progressive disease — MS, ALS, and other such dire acronyms — still carry the same prejudices they've held all their able-bodied lives. Often, they don't know anyone living a full, enjoyable life with disabilities, don't know such lives are possible. So if a doctor offers them an exit, they're all too likely to take it.

It's happened. One of the earliest right-to-die cases, in 1989, was that of David Rivlin, a spinal-cord-injury survivor. Isolated in a nursing home, cut off from meaningful work, unable to live independently on the meager assistance the state offered at the time, he demanded to die. "I don't want to live an empty life lying helplessly in a nursing home for another 30 years," he told a reporter.

No one offered him an alternative. "The nondisabled people around him assumed that when a person with such a disability said he would rather be dead, he was acting rationally," disability activist Paul K. Longmore wrote a few years after Rivlin's death. Neither Rivlin, nor other people with disabilities seeking "death with dignity," realized that they could have been fighting for the support to live, rather than the right to die. Longmore observed, "The only real aid the system offered any of them . . . was assistance in ending their lives."

It's not 1989 anymore. The disabled in Massachusetts have more access, and more agency, than those in almost any other state, and activists fought hard to make it that way. Disabled Bostonians are filmmakers, tattoo artists, psychologists, writers. They ride the T. They own houses and businesses. And like Mike and me, they fall in love.

But not everyone knows that those things are an option. And with Romney — a man who sees adequate health care as a privilege, not a right — on the same ballot as Question 2, all that progress is scarily close to rolling back. Now is the worst time to perpetuate the myth that death is better than disability.

Vote no on Question 2.

Read more: 

http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/146648-killing-with-kindness-why-the-death-with-dignity-/#ixzz2AvRHl7Jn

Assisted Suicide Users are Older People with Money

By Margaret Dore, Esq., Updated October 29, 2012

Users of assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington are overwhelmingly white and generally well-educated.[1]  Many have private insurance.[2]  Most are age 65 and older.[3]  Typically persons with these attributes are seniors with money, which would be the middle class and above, a group disproportionately at risk of financial abuse and exploitation.[4] 

In the United States, elder financial abuse costs elders an estimated $2.9 billion per year.[5] Perpetrators include strangers, family members and friends.[6]. The goals of financial abuse perpetrators are achieved "through deceit, threats, and emotional manipulation of the elder."[7]

The Oregon and Washington assisted suicide acts, and the similar Massachusetts proposal, do not protect users from this abuse. Indeed, the terms of these acts encourage abuse. These acts allow heirs and other persons who will benefit from an elder's death to actively participate in his or her lethal dose request.[8] There is also no oversight when the lethal dose is administered, not even a witness is required.[9] This creates the opportunity for an heir, or someone else who will benefit from the person's death, to administer the lethal dose to that person without his consent.[10]  Even if he struggled, who would know?

This is not to say that all persons who use the Oregon and Washington acts are subject to abuse or that their actions are not voluntary.  Rather, the Oregon and Washington acts do not protect such persons from abuse.  Neither will the Massachusetts proposal.

For more information about problems with the Massachusetts' proposal, click here and here. For a "fact check" on the proposal, click here.

[1] See the most current official report from Washington State, "Washington State Department of Health 2011 Death with Dignity Act Report, Executive Summary ("Of the 94 participants in 2011 who died, . . . 94% were white, non-Hispanic . . .75 percent had at least some college education"), available at http://www.doh.wa.gov/portals/1/Documents/5300/DWDA2011.pdf  See also the most current official report from Oregon, also for 2011 ("most [users] were white (95.6%) [and] well-educated (48.5% had at least a baccalaureate degree) . . .", available at http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Documents/year14.pdf
[2] See Washington's report in note 1, page 5, table 2 (46% had private insurance only, or a combination of private and Medicaid/Medicare).  See Oregon's report in note 1("patients who had private insurance (50.8%) was lower in 2011 than in previous years (68.0%). . ."
[3] See Washington's report in note 1, page 5, Table 2 (74% were aged 65 or older).  See Oregon's report in note 1, page 2 ("Of the 71 DWDA deaths during 2011, most (69.0%) were aged 65 years or older; the median age was 70 years").
[4]  Educated persons are generally financially better off than non-educated persons; persons with private insurance have funding to pay for it; seniors generally are well off.  See "Broken Trust:  Elders, Family, and Finances, a Study on Elder Financial Abuse Prevention, by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, and the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, March 2009, Executive Summary, page 4 ("Elders’ vulnerabilities and larger net worth make them a prime target for financial abuse").
[5]  The Met Life Study of Elder Financial Abuse, " Crimes of Occasion, Desperation, and Predation Against America's Elders," June 2011, page 2, key findings ("The annual financial loss by victims of elder financial abuse is estimated to be at least $2.9 billion dollars, a 12% increase from the $2.6 billion estimated in 2008"). 
[6] Id.
[7] Id., page 3.
[8] See e.g. Margaret K. Dore, "'Death with Dignity': What Do We Advise Our Clients?," King County Bar Association, Bar Bulletin, May 2009; and Margaret K. Dore, Memo to Joint Judiciary Committee (regarding Bill H.3884, now Ballot Question No. 2), Section III
[9] Id.  See also entire proposed Massachusetts Act at http://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ma-initiative.pdf
[10]  The drugs used, Secobarbital and Pentobarbital, are water and alcohol soluable, such that they can be injected without consent, for example, to a sleeping individual.  See "Secobarbital Sodium Capsules, Drugs.Com, at  http://www.drugs.com/pro/seconal-sodium.html  If the person wakes up and trys to fight, who would know? 

UK govt agrees to investigate "death pathway"

Article below regarding abuse of the Liverpool Pathway, from Michael Cook of Bio Edge.

A problem also in the US and Canada.  See, for example, Kate Kelly's article about her mother and "VSED" by clicking here

With some doctors abusing the power they already have with the Liverpool Pathway, etc., why would you give them more power to effect patient death, i.e., by legalizing assisted suicide and/or euthanasia?

The problem will only get worse.

* * *

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10293
by Michael Cook | Oct 27, 2012 |

Pressure from the British media has forced an investigation into the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway by National Health Service and the Association of Palliative Medicine.

The medical establishment appears very reluctant to question the LCP. Only a few days ago 22 organisations signed a consensus statement supporting it. It quoted the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health, Earl Howe:

"The Liverpool Care Pathway has sometimes been accused of being a way of withholding treatment, including hydration and nutrition. That is not the case. It is used to prevent dying patients from having the distress of receiving treatment or tests that are not beneficial and that may in fact cause harm rather than good."

But the campaign by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph has been relentless. "When well over 100,000 are dying on the LCP each year, the suspicion inevitably arises that the pathway is being used to hasten death and free up beds," said the Daily Mail in an editorial.

Neurologist Patrick Pullicino contends that the LCP has made euthanasia a "standard way of dying on the NHS". He and his supporters were scathing about the consensus statement: 

"It is self-evident that stopping fluids whilst giving narcotics and sedatives hastens death... The median time to death on the Liverpool Care Pathway is now 29 hours. Statistics show that even patients with terminal cancer and a poor prognosis may survive months or more if not put on the LCP."

The investigation coordinated by the NHS will examine poor experiences under the LCP, which everyone acknowledges do happen. The NHS will talk to family members of people who have died on the pathway, investigate complaints and speak with clinicians. "Poor experiences must be explored, acknowledged and learnt from," says Professor Mayur Lakhani, Chair of the Dying Matters Coalition.

Will the investigation result in a thorough revision of the LCP? Even though the medical establishment admits that there are problems, it may not admit that they are due to the basic framework. The Consultant Nurses in Palliative Care Reference Group is already interpreting criticisms as dangerous and offensive. "Counter-productive comments", it says, are "deeply offensive to public servants who abide by clear codes of conduct and the law".