The Good Death Society Blog | A Project of Final Exit Network

November 5, 2017November 5, 2017

ALS and the End-of-Life Choice

Once ALS starts, it almost always progresses, eventually taking away the ability to walk, dress, write, speak, swallow, and breathe and shortening the life span. How fast and in what order this occurs is very different from person to person. While the average survival time is 3 years, about twenty percent of people with ALS live five years, 10 percent will survive ten years and five percent will live 20 years or more. (Continue reading ...)

October 29, 2017

Using advance directives to control what happens to us after mental incapacity, PART 4

Following is my Supplemental Directive. I do not consider it to be superior to any other, nor do I suggest that anyone copy it, though everyone is welcome to use any of it that suits their needs. I offer it merely as an example of what can be done. Referring to posts 1 through 3 on this topic should clarify the reasons for my choices. You will judge how well I have resolved the issues. I welcome ideas, critiques, and comments to improve my efforts. (Continue reading ...)

October 22, 2017October 22, 2017

Using advance directives to control what happens to us after mental incapacity, PART 3

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” — John Stuart Mill The United States Constitution and the common law (along with some state constitutions) give us the right to make directives that control the health services we receive if we become mentally incapacitated. The instructions provided by most states in the statutory forms that have been approved since the late 1980s do not limit us. We can write non-statutory directives I call “supplemental directives” when they are attached to and referenced in the statutory directives. We can also write our own health care directives without using statutory forms (an issue to be discussed in a subsequent post). (Continue reading ...)

October 16, 2017

Using advance directives to control what happens to us after mental incapacity, PART 2

In Part 1 of this essay, I introduced two competing arguments concerning using advance directives to control what is done to our bodies should we become mentally incompetent. As explained previously, the sole purpose of advance directives is to record one’s decisions about medical and related care if a person becomes unable to make such decisions later because of mental incapacity. To explain the range of options that are available both before and after such incapacity, I’ll use a personal example. (Continue reading ...)

October 8, 2017October 8, 2017

Using advance directives to control what happens to us after mental incapacity, PART 1

With this post, I begin a multi-part series that suggests how one might use advance directives to hasten one’s death to avoid inevitable, intractable suffering or an unacceptable loss of dignity, when the option of direct self-deliverance is unavailable or unwanted. (Continue reading ...)

October 1, 2017March 16, 2022

Mental health, suffering, and a “Good Death”

Usually, when we talk about suffering, we are thinking of physical suffering. But there are many people with severe, unresolved, debilitating mental illness who can find no relief from their suffering – suffering that is just as real (though its cause is different) as that experienced, for instance, by a patient at the end stages of pancreatic cancer, or a patient dying of metastasized prostate cancer. And none of the existing programs and services can help those with unrelenting mental illness die a peaceful death – a good death – to put an end to their suffering. (Continue reading ...)

September 25, 2017March 16, 2022

A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 2

In Part 1, I began explaining why the disability rights group Not Dead Yet opposes Death With Dignity laws and the right to die. I also provided the most recent data from Oregon’s experience with its DWDA to refute some of the claims of Not Dead Yet. All of the arguments made against the DWD laws by Not Dead Yet are false or misleading. (Continue reading ...)

September 17, 2017March 18, 2022

A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 1

Five years ago in Massachusetts, the right to autonomy in one’s body went down to defeat in a vote related to irrational fear by some disability rights advocates working through the activist group Not Dead Yet. Their position was that they would be compelled or coerced into ending their own lives if the initiative passed. (Continue reading ...)

September 11, 2017March 18, 2022

A toast “to life” may include the wish for a peaceful death

Nearly everyone hopes for a peaceful death; yet such an end can be elusive. Many of us face both philosophical and practical questions as we do what we can to make our own deaths peaceful. Some of us may have religious questions. Judaism, like many other religions, is all over the map in its thinking about ways to achieve a peaceful death. (Continue reading ...)

September 3, 2017March 18, 2022

I’ll See Myself Out, Thank You: Notes on the Right to Die

Two years ago, a book of thirty essays supporting the right to assisted death edited by Colin Brewer and Michael Irwin, was published by Skyscraper Publications, Ltd. Most of the essays make arguments familiar to Americans involved in the right-to-die movement, but often with a European (and British) take that makes them fresh. Others tell first-person stories that are as riveting as any heard in the US. (Continue reading ...)

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