In this third part of a series analyzing the arguments against medical-assistance-in-dying (MAID) by opponents of physician-assistance in hastening a person’s death in the face of a terminal illness, Lamar Hankins looks at a major reference for most MAID opposition articles – a 2008 Michigan Law Review article, “Physician-Assisted Suicide in Oregon: A Medical Perspective,” by psychiatrist Herbert Hendin and neurologist Kathleen Foley. Both oppose what they term “assisted suicide.”
In Part 1 of this series, I addressed ten criticisms of MAID laws, particularly those in Oregon and Washington, though most such laws are modeled largely on Oregon’s law. In Part 2, I look at criticisms of MAID laws concerning economic pressures, coercion, depression, inadequate resources for MAID clients, doctor shopping, inadequate Medicaid rules, ableism, and the failure of the drugs prescribed to MAID clients. My hope is that we can learn from opponents of MAID laws how to make the laws better.
With this post, I begin a multi-part series about the views of those who oppose medical-assistance-in-dying (MAID) or have written critically about MAID laws. I think there are some good ideas that we can learn from these critics to help us improve MAID laws, though that is not their intent. They will oppose MAID under any law, no matter how carefully written.
Larissa MacFarquhar discusses treatment approaches for people in the late stages of dementia in the October 8, 2018, issue of The New Yorker–The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care. It is not unusual for late-stage dementia patients to have delusions (the belief in something that is not real) or hallucinations (false sensory perceptions of objects or events). How caregivers might respond to these and related dementia problems is the subject of MacFarquhar’s article.
What resources and services do home funeral guides and end-of-life (EOL) assistants offer or provide?
Those of us in the right to die (RTD) movement want to take charge of our own deaths should we be faced with unwanted suffering, either immediately or in the foreseeable future. Some of us who are supported by our families and friends might also like for those same family members and friends to take care of what happens to our bodies after death–a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to funerals. Others of us won’t care or we may favor a commercial disposition option.
Since the 1970s there have been debates about whether “patients” have the right to refuse various forms of life-saving or life-sustaining medical treatment, ranging from blood transfusions to ventilators and feeding tubes. More recently the debate has moved into the area of dementia and which, if any, kinds of treatment may be refused under the terms of a directive written in advance of loss of decision-making capacity. The issue of forced feeding is addressed by several articles in the July/August issue (48:4) of the Hastings Center Report, one of the nation’s preeminent bioethics publications.
A Washington state man, Aaron McQ, described his illness (a rare form of ALS) as “terrifying . . . like waking up every morning in quicksand.” He agreed to discuss his experience with Kaiser News to help provide more understanding about how users feel after qualifying for PAD. Over 3,000 terminally ill residents in the US have used PAD laws since Oregon’s first took effect twenty years ago. This is one man’s experience.
Many older people decide for themselves that they don’t want to be wholly dependent on others, and they don’t want to be remembered as someone in that circumstance. Others do not want to be an increasing burden on their family, a decision that is theirs, irrespective of whether the family feels that they are a burden. Such old and increasingly infirm individuals may get little, if any, pleasure from living with myriad physical dysfunctions, and all that such health problems entail. They are the ones who should decide whether their lives are any longer worth living.
Nothing is more personal than how we define a good death, yet our definition may not be obvious at first. Consideration of this question leads me to the idea that a good death is a dignified death; that is, the dying process is dignified. To maintain dignity in the dying process depends greatly on how our death comes. If it comes through violent means, dignity may not be found.
