Consistently, one of the top reasons patients request assisted suicide is fear of becoming a burden on their family, friends and caregivers (Oregon Health Data). A new study by a pair of Harvard Business School researchers finds that employers underestimate, to their detriment, the struggle their...
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are increasingly being legalized and primarily involve patients with cancer. Oncologists who care for persons with advanced, terminal cancer and who practice in jurisdictions where PAS/physician aid in dying (PAS/PAD) is legal now face individual decisions whether to endorse...
An intensive care doctor ordered "significantly excessive and potentially fatal" doses of pain medicine for at least 27 near-death patients in the past few years after families asked that lifesaving measures be stopped, an Ohio hospital system announced after being sued by a family alleging an improper dose of...
Lars Larson speaks with Kristen Hanson, Community Relations Advocate for Patients Rights Action Fund, to share her and her husband’s story to advocate for better end-of-life care for terminal patients. His illness gave them firsthand insights into how assisted suicide endangers those who are most vulnerable. Click here...
The World Medical Association (WMA) was founded in 1947, in part to work for the highest possible standards of ethical behaviour and care among phy- sicians. This was considered particularly important after the gross ethical violations observed, by physicians themselves during the Second World War...
In our broken, profit-driven healthcare system, vulnerable people are at risk of deadly harm when insurers and providers put the bottom line above true patient care. According to Axios, 'Health care executives gave no indication to bankers and investors at this year's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference...
A Nova Scotia Catholic congregation, thrust into a controversy about the right to die, is confident its policy will endure. The Sisters of St. Martha has an agreement with the Nova Scotia government, forbidding medical assistance in dying, at Saint Martha’s Hospital in Antigonish, N.S. “It is named in...
Palliative care is a type of care provided to patients with serious illness, such as cancer. This care can reduce symptoms, improve quality of life and may make it possible to continue with cancer treatment. The goal is to prevent or treat the symptoms of...
Two Quebecers suffering from incurable degenerative diseases are in court today challenging provincial and federal laws that have left them ineligible for medically assisted death. Jean Truchon and Nicole Gladu don’t qualify to have a physician end their lives because, despite their suffering, they are not at the end...
A year ago, I lost my 36-year-old husband to cancer. In the first few months after his death, I often felt lost without the heroic man I fell in love with 14 years earlier. But in our last few weeks together, I promised J.J. that...
They received the same diagnosis—and chose two very different paths J.J. Hanson—a loving husband, father, and Marine—was diagnosed in spring 2014 with grade 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme, the deadliest form of brain cancer. He was right in the prime of his life. This aggressive cancer was the same...
Hawaii's new medically assisted suicide law has gone into effect, but few doctors and pharmacies are willing to prescribe and dispense the life-ending medications. Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions and hospitalized patients will...
A central question raised by Yager et al1 is whether it is ethical for psychiatrists to be involved in competency assessments in the context of so-called “physician assisted death.” (We endorse, and herein employ, the terminology advocated by the American College of Physicians and the American...
Nova Scotia's only Catholic hospital is at risk of being found in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation by refusing to provide medical assistance in dying, a Halifax law professor says. St. Martha's Regional Hospital in Antigonish, N.S., is a...
In a recent Wicked Local Lexington commentary (“Medical aid in dying important for some with disabilities,” Sept. 28), Michael Martignetti argues for the legalization of assisted suicide from the perspective of someone with the progressive neurological disability, Friedrichs ataxia. I can relate to the author’s...
by Shane E. Macaulay, MD The American Medical Association, and the entire profession of medicine in the U.S., stand at a crucial ethical crossroads. For two years the AMA has been considering the question of physician-assisted suicide (PAS): shall physician assistance with patient suicide now be considered...
In his 29 years as chief executive officer of Hospice Maui, LaGoy said he has often heard incoming patients talk about wanting to end their lives early because they imagine all the suffering that lies ahead. But he said that two big things usually happen...
Now, in Massachusetts, our legislature is considering making assisted suicide a medical treatment, and I cannot help but to think about my experience with suicide. Forty-six years ago, my husband chose suicide by shooting himself in the back of his head in our bed. We...
A pair of startling new reports from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General paints a troubling picture of America's hospice system -- with serious deficiencies in some cases and a lack of action from the federal government to remedy...
Just as organs harvested after a fatal drug overdose can often be safely transplanted, so may livers taken from individuals undergoing physician-assisted suicide, Belgian researchers reported in a JAMA research letter. In a retrospective single-center review, Diethard Monbaliu, MD, PhD, of University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium,...
On June 12, the Mashpee Republican Town Committee invited Dr. Roger Kligler to address our membership regarding medical aid in dying, a newly coined moniker for physician-assisted suicide. Dr. Kligler is a local, retired internist and cancer patient. He is currently endorsing the passage of “An...
https://youtu.be/FUKXHzLYZF4 Dr. Tatiana Santos is a young physician who explains that assisted suicide is one of the biggest threats to authentic medicine. Her words of caution are especially poignant given our current profit-driven healthcare system where doctors are put under tremendous pressure for cost containment....
At first I thought I supported assisted suicide. As a member of a peer community of people with lived experience of mental health diagnosis, trauma, and addiction, I passionately believe in self-determination regarding treatment for our physical and mental health. But when I looked more...
A doctor who was accused of murder after helping a patient to die was on Tuesday found not guilty by a court in Muttenz in the canton of Basel-Land. However the doctor was convicted of violating drugs laws and received a 15-month suspended sentence and a...
Stephanie Packer, a mother of four in her mid-30s who lives in California, testified Tuesday, June 25, 2019 while sitting in a wheelchair with an oxygen tube in her nostrils before the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health about a proposed bill that would...
Euthanasia, assisted suicide, right to die, all ways to describe an issue that's divided the Commonwealth. It was on the ballot in 2012, statewide, voters rejected the measure by the narrowest of measures (51% to 49%)...