Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ken Stevens MD: "legalizing assisted suicide can result in decreased patient choice"

Assisted Suicide
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53280042-82/suicide-patients-assisted-oregon.html.csp

Updated Jan 19, 2012 01:01AM

Patty Henetz' "Do Utahns have the right to choose how they die?" (Tribune, Jan. 8) refers to the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon. Utahns should understand that legalizing assisted suicide can result in decreased patient choice.

I have been a cancer doctor in Oregon for more than 40 years. The combination of assisted-suicide legalization and prioritized medical care based on prognosis has created a danger for my patients on the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

The plan limits medical care and treatment for patients with a 5 percent or less likelihood of surviving five years. Patients in that category who have a good chance of living another three years and who want to live cannot receive surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy. However, the plan will cover the patient's suicide.

Oregon law says only patients with no more than six months to live are eligible for voluntary suicide, but the plan nonetheless offers suicide to patients in this category.

The mere presence of legal assisted suicide steers patients toward suicide. One patient was adamant to use the law. I convinced her to be treated. Eleven years later she is thrilled to be alive.

Kenneth Stevens, M.D.

Sherwood, Ore.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Hawaii: Assisted Suicide Not Lawful, Says State

http://www.staradvertiser.com/s?action=login&f=y&id=137466873

A 103-year-old act does not let doctors kill, the attorney general's office tells proponents


By B.J. Reyes

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 17, 2012

An obscure 1909 law intended to ease suffering of Hansen's disease patients does not make physician-assisted suicide legal in Hawaii, according to an opinion by the state attorney general's office.

The opinion, dated Dec. 8, was in response to an inquiry from state Sen. Josh Green, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who sought clarification of the law amid reports that supporters of physician-assisted suicide were seeking a patient willing to test the statute.
 
An obscure 1909 law intended to ease suffering of Hansen's disease patients does not make physician-assisted suicide legal in Hawaii, according to an opinion by the state attorney general's office.
 
The opinion, dated Dec. 8, was in response to an inquiry from state Sen. Josh Green, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who sought clarification of the law amid reports that supporters of physician-assisted suicide were seeking a patient willing to test the statute. Login for more...

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Massachusetts voters, reject Petition 11-12

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/11/massachusetts-voters-reject-petition-1112/

If adopted this November, a ballot initiative in Massachusetts will legalize physician-assisted suicide for patients whose conditions are predicted to produce death within six months. Initiative Petition 11-12 claims to ensure that the patient's decision to commit suicide is voluntary. That claim, however, is misleading.

The initiative petition requires that two persons witness the patient's written request for a lethal prescription. One witness, however, can have a financial interest in the patient's death. That person can be the only witness present when the lethal drug is taken. Thus, an interested heir could pressure the patient, and no one would know because no objective witness is required when the drug is taken. Also, the petition would require the death certificate fraudulently to list the patient's underlying condition, rather than the lethal drug, as the cause of death.

Initiative Petition 11-12 uses terms like life-ending "medication" and death in a "humane and dignified manner." But there is nothing medicinal about poison and nothing dignified about the prospects for the abuse the initiative petition would allow. It is a bad law that the voters of Massachusetts should reject decisively.

STEPHEN L. MIKOCHIK
Professor emeritus
Temple Law School

Monday, January 9, 2012

The Emperor has no Clothes: "VSED"

Euthanasia proponents have a new campaign promoting starvation and dehydration.  VSED: "Voluntarily" stopping eating and drinking.  Below, Kate Kelly provides a real life example:  "I watched her suffer." 

______________________________________________

Mild stroke led to mother's forced starvation

By Kate Kelly

I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst.  She had Alzheimer's, this old woman, and was child-like, trusting, vulnerable, with a child's delight at treats of chocolate and ice cream, and a child's fear and frustration when tired or ill.

I watched her die for six days and nights.

I watched her suffer, and I listened to the medical practitioners, to a son who legally decided her fate, and to an eldest daughter who advised him and told me that the old woman, my mother, was "comfortable," except when she was "in distress," at which times the nurses medicated her to make her "comfortable" again.

I watched the old woman develop ulcerations inside her mouth as she became more and more dehydrated; the caregivers assured me these were not painful.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Canada: The Danger of Euthanasia: "If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim"

 
By Alex Schadenberg, Ottawa Citizen January 2, 2012
 
Re: Time to rethink euthanasia, Dec. 29.
Marcel Lavoie implies that legalizing euthanasia would stop violent deaths in the elderly, such as the death of Doreen Flann by stabbing.

In many of these deaths, the perpetrator-husband also kills himself for a murder-suicide.
 
In Oregon, where assisted-suicide has been legal since 1997, murdersuicide has not been eliminated. Indeed, murder-suicide follows the national pattern.

Moreover, according to Donna Cohen, an expert on murder-suicide, the typical case involves a depressed, controlling husband who shoots his ill wife: "The wife does not want to die and is often shot in her sleep. If she was awake at the time, there are usually signs that she tried to defend herself."

If euthanasia were legal, the wife, not wanting to die, would still be a victim.

Our laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia are in place to protect vulnerable people. Assisted suicide and/or euthanasia should not be legalized in Canada.

[For more indepth information, see Dominique Bourget, MD, Pierre Gagne, MD, Laurie Whitehouse, PhD, "Domestic Homicide and Homicide-Suicide:  The Older Offender," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, September 2010 (Canadian study);  Don Colburn, "Recent murder-suicides follow the national pattern," The Oregonian, November 17, 2009; and “Murder-suicides in Elderly Rise: Husbands commit most murder-suicides – without wives’ consent” ]

Alex Schadenberg,
London Ont., Canada
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition