While some in the Massachusetts legislature support the proposed assisted suicide bill (H.4782/S.2745), legalizing assisted suicide would be disastrous for the most vulnerable among us. During this worldwide pandemic, compassion is at the forefront of everyone’s mind and everyone wants their loved ones to be cared for and comfortable at the end of life; but

  Watch this new video from @hopeire1 on the impact of #assistedsuicide & #euthanasia for the most vulnerable members of society.

September is National Suicide Prevention Month     Luke’s Story   “Every suicide is tragic – whether you’re old or young, healthy or sick, your life is worth living,” says Luke Maxwell, 19, who survived an attempt to take his own life.

One of the arguments we hear is that assisted dying will bring down the number of violent suicides. It will provide a more peaceful death to patients in unbearable suffering who would otherwise have violently killed themselves. For other patients, the mere option of assisted dying (even if it will never be effectuated) is said

We must invest in strengthening the nature of our society by raising the level of palliative care and resist all efforts towards facilitating the death of the vulnerable among us. Earlier this month, a cross party group of Parliamentarians heard from internationally renowned Dutch ethicist Professor Theo Boer who, in 2002, initially supported the legalization

A champion of the Dutch euthanasia system has admitted that British critics are right to warn that assisted dying is a slippery slope to ‘random killing of the defenceless’. Dr Bert Keizer said that the type of patients whose lives are ended in the Netherlands has spread far beyond the terminally ill and now includes physically

  New York is considering legalizing assisted suicide, but such a law would threaten the most vulnerable in society: the elderly, the terminally ill and people with disabilities. As someone who lives with a disability and advocates for the rights of people with disabilities, I strongly encourage the New York Legislature to reject assisted suicide,

  The COVID-19 pandemic is shedding new light on the way patients are treated. In his recently published article, Dr. Jeffrey White discusses the prioritization of life-saving resources in a pandemic surge crisis.  We must not allow brutal utilitarian calculus to sacrifice the principles of trust and equity on the altar of crisis, fear or latent

  Every 40 seconds, someone in the world takes their own life. That’s at least 800,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and the numbers are rising in some parts of the world. In the United States alone, suicide rates have increased by 35% between 1999 and 2018. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls

  Michael Hickson was a 46-year-old African American resident of Texas, a quadriplegic with a brain injury. Despite these challenges, he was leading a fulfilling life with his family. Then he contracted COVID-19. Over the objections of his wife, doctors at a Texas hospital refused to treat Hickson, stating that lifesaving care wouldn’t be justified

  Melissa Hickson’s husband, Michael, was a 46-year old quadriplegic suffering from COVID-19 who died after the hospital ended his treatment because of what they considered to be his low quality of life. Hickson’s experience, like mine, highlights the ableism that permeates our medical system and often results in a refusal to treat those whose

      “I want to be able to live. I want my conditions effectively treated, and I want effective pain relief. But while Martignetti may assume he will get good care, Black people like me tend to receive inferior care because of racial disparities in cardiac care, diabetes, and cancer. Black people like me

  Everyone has a right to equal quality of care. We should reject ableism in all its forms, but especially in these life and death situations. ‘Nursing homes in the UK were asked by government health managers and family doctors to place blanket “Do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders on all residents at the height of

    Read two views and vote AGAINST assisted suicide in the Boston Globe’s online poll…     Dr. Laura A. Petrillo Palliative care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital; Newton resident Although the United States is in the throes of the greatest health and economic crisis of our era, a bill to legalize physician-assisted death

  A closer look at the official figures is is disturbing.  Four years after euthanasia was legalised throughout Canada on 17 June 2016, the “first annual report” covering euthanasia deaths in 2019 was released in July 2020. As the dead bodies pile higher – 13,946 of them in three and a half years according to

I disagree with Joan Milnes’s call for passage of the assisted suicide bill now in the legislature (“Making a final choice about quality-of-life,” July 28). Her framing of it as an individual matter of “choice” about one’s so-called “quality-of-life” is prejudicial and dangerous. Milnes’s example is her cousin Tony with cystic fibrosis who, at his

State policies for rationing health care during the coronavirus pandemic could allow doctors to cut off treatment for some of the sickest patients in hot zones and revive the specter of so-called death panels, say disabled rights groups who are rallying the Trump administration to intervene. The effort has recently gained urgency due to guidelines

  What Melissa Hickson says happened to her husband — and what the hospital says — are in conflict. But this much is for sure: Michael Hickson, a 46-year old quadriplegic who’d contracted COVID-19, died at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center in Austin, Texas, on June 11 after the hospital ended treatment for him

Discrimination in health care has only been exacerbated by the coronavirus, as state after state has considered Crisis Standards of Care that violate the civil rights and erode the inherent human dignity of elders and people with disabilities. Battling these CSCs has been like a frantic game of whack-a-mole for advocates and the federal government