In the News
If You’re Fighting a Life-Threatening Sickness, Keep Fighting
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.
Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Resolution Condemning Assisted Suicide
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
Refusing to Die: The Chris Dunn Story
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
Is Assisted Suicide a Human Right?
The Kings County Medical Society in New York recently hosted a brunch with New York State legislators. One of the guests was Richard Gottfried, chair of the New York State Assembly Health Committee, who is cosponsoring A2694, a bill legalizing [assisted suicide]. As a medical oncologist with 30 years’ experience treating seriously ill patients,
Disability Activist Anita Cameron Speaks At Congressional Briefing On Assisted Suicide
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
State should not let doctors become suicide enablers
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
Justice Minister Lametti looking to larger reforms on assisted suicide
Justice Minister David Lametti is being asked to move quickly to respond to a court ruling that Canada’s law on doctor-assisted death is too restrictive, but he says the Liberal government is open to reforming the law in an even bigger way than the judge ordered… Trudeau also wants Lametti to work with the
Congress should keep the ADA in mind when setting assisted suicide policy
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
When healers become agents of death, not life
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
Why the RCGP should not adopt a neutral stance on assisted suicide
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
Cori Salchert: Assisted suicide is not the answer — every life is worth the fight
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
Join JJ’s Legacy Circle for Giving Tuesday
Kristen Hanson, Community Relations Advocate As 2019 comes to an end, and we begin to make plans for the year ahead, I am reminded that time is precious. Nearly two years ago, I lost my husband, JJ, to terminal brain cancer. Although we couldn’t save JJ’s life, we can carry onhis work fighting against the
Panel created by Quebec government says access to assisted suicide should be expanded
A panel of experts is recommending the Quebec government expand access to medical aid in dying. In recommendations made public today, the group said people should be allowed to make advance directives requesting a doctor-assisted death, which is not allowed under current law. The panel suggests that to make such an advance request, a person
Assisted suicide column contains disputable points
Several claims about assisted suicide that were made in an opinion piece published Nov. 21 were dangerous and inaccurate. The author of the piece, who belongs to a national organization pushing for the legalization of assisted suicide across the United States, claimed the practice was safe for everybody and negatively impacts no one. But
Assisted Suicide and ‘Neutrality’
The RCGP is consulting members on its assisted suicide stance – currently, opposition. Their definition of ‘assisted dying’ does not mention terminal illness and could thus embrace doctors assisting the suicides of disabled, elderly and psychologically ill people. Can GPs really be ‘neutral’? Watch the video here… For more information: www.carenotkilling.org.uk/articles/the-rcgp-assisted-suicide-and-neutrality
Where in Europe is assisted suicide legal?
Only three countries approve of assisted suicide and euthanasia as a whole: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The first two even recognize requests from minors under strict circumstances, while Luxembourg excludes them from the legislation. Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Austria allow assisted suicide under specific scenarios. Read more here…
November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month. Five Things You Should Know About Hospice.
Here are five things to know to help dispel some of the misunderstandings about hospice care. 1. Hospice isn’t about ‘giving up.’ Hospice can extend your life. Hospice is often associated with ideas of giving up or surrendering to death. Statistics show otherwise. Studies published in 2007 by the New England Journal of Medicine
Is a lack of affordable care options forcing some to choose assisted suicide?
There has been a flurry of discourse in the media regarding ways to make medically assisted death more accessible for Canadians, including reports on the Quebec ruling to overturn the criterion that one’s death must be “reasonably foreseeable” and the Alzheimer Society of Canada position statement supporting advance requests for medical assistance in dying
Doctor tells judge N.J.’s new assisted suicide law is murder
The state’s medical aid in dying law “legalizes murder,” and no doctor in New Jersey should be required to do anything to help carry it out, including the routine act of releasing a patient’s file, an attorney for a devoutly religious physician and a pharmacist argued in court Monday… The law violates the constitutional
Psychiatrists Must Prevent Suicide, Not Provide It
We fundamentally disagree with our two colleagues that public opinion is an ethically appropriate means of informing public policy decisions or even more crucially, determining professional norms of physicians. Polls have not just moral but also methodological problems. Response rates are often low, and typically it is those with the strongest feelings about the