Rebecca Dresser is a law professor and recognized expert in biomedical ethics. She argues that “people usually live for many years after a dementia diagnosis, years in which meaningful and satisfying life can continue. People can’t be sure how they will fare as dementia patients . . .” She suggests that because dementia patients can adapt to their new circumstances, they must, therefore, be allowed to accept this new life.. Lamar Hankins analyses her ideas in a two-part post.
Jim Waun, a retired anesthesiologist, shares some of his personal experiences that led him to support the Death With Dignity movement and the Final Exit Network (FEN), and he explains how FEN’s Exit Guide program works.
ZDoggMD (Zubin Damania, MD) explains in his engrossing style what it really means to decide that you want to be kept alive by doing everything possible. It may be time to remodel those advance directives.
Kevin Bradley discusses heaven and hell and the fear of death among those with whom he has been involved in his career with hospice and hospital patients.
In his 2006 book about death with dignity and the right to die (The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia), Neil Gorsuch leveled several criticisms, by implication, against Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), a law that deals not at all with assisted suicide or euthanasia. Under the Oregon law, a person desiring a hastened death in the face of terminal illness may take his own life with a lethal prescription drug or drugs, unassisted by another person. Nevertheless, Gorsuch argues that we can’t determine the value of the DWDA for other jurisdictions without knowing how Oregon’s law is working in practice, and he asserts that we don’t have enough information about that.
A former Dominican priest shares his thoughts on ending life gracefully after a fruitful time on this earth.
Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., an American biologist recently published a post on his blog titled “Thought for the day: On mental illness and assisted suicide,” discussing the topic just after the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. In the post, he includes a video of Adam Maier-Clayton, a former frequent contributor to FEN’s Facebook page, where his death in April 2017 was announced with both sadness and understanding.
The idea suggested by some disability rights advocates, that most of us will be disabled in one way or another by the time we reach the end of our lives, has been borne out in my experience. Virtually everyone I have known who has died has met, days or weeks or months before their deaths, the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. How can we assure that those who are disabled are not coerced into ending their lives too soon?
Understanding disagreements between DWD advocates and disability rights advocates may be a way to find some common ground between the two groups. This is Part 1 of a multi-part series exploring the issues.
Developments since 1997 in accepted medical practice regarding voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) and terminal sedation (TS) warrant fresh claims that state exclusion of lethal assistance to a competent, fatally stricken patient is so arbitrary as to violate equal protection of the laws under state and federal constitutions. While the prevailing jurisprudence for the past 20 years has upheld state bans on lethal poisons as a mode of protecting a vulnerable population (dying patients) against abuse or mistake, there are at least 2 cogent counter arguments in any renewed constitutional debate.
