Weekly Digest - 11/6
HIGHLIGHT PIECE OF THE WEEK
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If Gov. Pritzker Allows Assisted Suicide, I Can't Protect My Patients
Dr. Kevin Garner, board certified in Internal Medicine, Hospice, and Palliative Care, says “I believe that the role of the physician is to affirm the lives of patients, to relieve suffering, and to give compassionate, competent care as long as our patients live. Assisted suicide ushers in abuse, discrimination, and injustice. Rather than hastening patients’ deaths, we should advocate for increased access to mental health, palliative care, and hospice services.”
Life After Challenges Status Quo of Assisted Suicide Debate
Director of Life After, Reid Davenport, was interviewed by Mia Galuppo of the Hollywood Reporter, “Life After is heading to Independent Lens after a long festival run. The director hopes the film helps cite a sense of urgency to change the status quo for disabled Americans. He says, ‘There needs to be seismic shifts in both the employment of disabled people, the support they receive, the health care they receive, and how they are able to access community.'”
Amber Smock Voices Concerns About Assisted Suicide For People With Disabilities
Amber Smock, Vice President of Advocacy for Access Living, participated in a brief debate on assisted suicide. She states, “At the end of their life, people with disabilities want to know what’s going to happen with them. But for a lot of people with disabilities, choice on how to live their lives is actually a day by day process. Right now, though, a lot of people who don’t actually experience real choice because there’s so much that is outside their control… They may not have access to pain medication.”
Palliative Care is Not Well-Funded, So Opposition to Assisted Suicide is Needed
Morgan Hayden, MSC, an Internal Medicine specialist in Cardiff, Great Britain, says “The need for palliative medicine is expected to increase, with demand posited to rise by 42% by 2040. The ethical arguments in favor of assisted dying seldom take into account this growing inequity within the speciality, indeed I would argue that the very fact that 20 people a day die in the UK in pain, is not an argument for assisted dying but for more reliable, consistent and specialist Palliative Medicine and social care provision.”
Assisted Suicide Produces Harmful Rhetoric
Jackie Sundquist, CEO of RAMP Disability Resources & Services, says “Instead of legalizing assisted suicide, Illinois should invest in better palliative and hospice care, stronger mental health services, and more home-based supports so people can live comfortably and with dignity. No one should feel that death is their only option because help and care are out of reach.”