Kligler, a retired internist who has terminal prostate cancer, and Steinbach, who treats terminally ill patients, are plaintiffs in the case filed in 2016 against state Attorney General Maura Healey and Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe. They sought to have Suffolk Superior Court in Boston declare that physician-assisted suicide is not manslaughter.

  A rising number of Medicare Advantage plans are offering home-based palliative care as a supplemental benefit. This year, 61 plans offer a palliative care benefit compared to 15 during 2019, a new Duke University report indicates. Hospices provide about 50% of home-based palliative care in the United States according to the Center to Advance

  A recent study published in JAMA showed that palliative care services at hospitals was associated with a 10% reduction in ICU use for patients who died during hospitalization.  The researchers noted that over half of the hospitals sampled in the study reported that they never had a palliative care program.  Ask your state legislator

There will be a renewed push to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in New York State in 2020. Some think of this as a debate between religious and secular activists, the former in favor of traditional morals and rules and the latter in favor of individual freedom and autonomy. But the debate is actually much more

Photo Credit: Not Dead Yet Massachusetts   Compassionate medical care and end of life considerations are some of the most complex and difficult issues facing families, and society in general. It is a reality that may only intensify against a backdrop of an aging population. In the United States, the number of older individuals outpaces

  Bob Charland has a passion for building bikes. He just doesn’t know how much longer he can do it. “I want to help people,” said Bob. “I want to know that my time here meant something and that I was able to make a difference in this world.” Bob used to work as an

  Lewis Cohen argues for passage of the End of Life Option Act which has been defeated in the Maryland General Assembly for the past five years, but actually illustrates one of the many dangers of this terrible bill (“Deathly ill Marylanders should have a choice on how and when they die,”Dec. 4). Every year,

  Legalization of physician-prescribed lethal medication for terminal patients, even on request, is bad medicine. This is eliminating the sufferer, not the suffering. It is both unnecessary and dangerous. Twenty years’ experience in Oregon shows that “Inadequate pain control or concern about it” is a distant sixth most-cited reason for patients to choose lethal medication,

  Doctors make educated guesses about how long a person has left to live after a terminal diagnosis, but no one should take a healthcare provider’s estimate of how many weeks or months someone has left to live as gospel truth. Patients routinely survive long after the day they’re expected to succumb to their illness.

  While impeachment divided the House of Representatives along party lines, a group of lawmakers is rallying around a bipartisan resolution condemning assisted suicide as Congress heads into winter recess. Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) and Lou Correa (D., Calif.) introduced a resolution last week declaring that medically assisted suicide “puts everyone, including those most vulnerable, at risk of

  On July 7, 2018, Chris Dunn survived a freak diving accident that left him paralyzed, on a ventilator and mostly blind only to face an even more hellish reality: a year living in a Maine ICU fighting for his right to go to rehab and get back to living his life. Other than a

Anita Cameron, director of minority outreach for Not Dead Yet, will speak at a Congressional briefing to be held Thursday, December 12, 2019 in Room 2168 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The briefing is cosponsored by the National Council on Disability (NCD), Congressman Lou Correa (D-CA) and Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH). This briefing will explore the

  Earlier this year, the American Medical Association voted to uphold its longstanding opposition to physician-assisted suicide. The AMA says assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” This is, in fact, the historical position of medicine going back

Lawmakers like Reps. Luis Correa (D-Calif.), Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), and Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) have done the American people a great service by calling out assisted suicide for the dangerous public policy that it is. This newly introduced truly bipartisan Sense of Congress resolution shines a light on the many dangers of assisted suicide and is

  Assisted suicide makes for bad law and bad medicine. It is dangerous public policy that negatively impacts everyone and profoundly changes medicine’s role in society. Performing assisted suicides damages the physician-patient relationship and violates our calling to heal. Many medical groups globally and in the United States reject assisted suicide. The World Medical Association

  Impact on doctor/patient relationship It will surely involve major changes in the law, which could have serious consequences for the doctor/patient relationship. ‘First do no harm’, is frequently bandied about and whatever the origin, it is a maxim that means patients can hold us to the highest and most transparent of motives. Death is

  As more and more states consider passing assisted suicide policy, it is important for Americans to realize that this dangerous policy puts vulnerable lives, like mine and my children’s, at risk. In 2012, I was facing what appeared to be a hopeless situation. In spite of pursuing a decade’s worth of surgical and pharmaceutical