Author Archives: Maria

Candy Coating Assisted Suicide

Monday, 18 February 2019 11:50
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elderly by the sea

By: T. Brian Callister

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

As a practicing physician and medical school professor with more than 30 years of experience, I know firsthand that hospice and palliative care are wonderful and underutilized resources for the terminally and chronically ill. One should also note that refusing medical interventions and medications at the end of life is both a reasonable and ethical option at times.

On the other hand, physician-assisted suicide — which could be on the agenda during Nevada’s current legislative session and is now being referred to by the candy-coated label “medical-aid-in-dying” — is an ethically absurd and morally corrupt intervention. It is overt killing at its very core.

First and foremost, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) creates perverse incentives to prematurely kill, not to just “aid in dying.” It also turns the physician into a complicit partner in this outright killing.

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There is No Health Care in Assisted Suicide

Friday, 15 February 2019 13:37
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Hands

 

By M. Zuhdi Jasser

Source: Washington Examiner

Even in our modern age of miraculous scientific advancements, some medical professionals are working to drag us back to the dark ages. In a recent collaborative opinion article, Doctors Josh Bloom and Henry Miller used the horrors of Alzheimer’s disease as the case in point why we should liberalize even more the regulation of physician-assisted suicide.

These doctors do themselves, and the rest of the medical community, a grave disservice.

In their article, they write, “If the goal of physician-assisted suicide is to prevent unnecessary suffering, then why are Alzheimer’s patients and their families forced to suffer for years with no recourse while people with a shorter-duration terminal disease that don’t impair their thinking have the right to choose their own fates?”

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I depend on life support. Why I oppose assisted suicide…

Monday, 29 October 2018 11:28
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Diane Coleman assisted suicide

Source: Star-Ledger

By Diane Coleman

I have an advanced neuromuscular condition and must use breathing support with a mask 18 hours a day. As a severely disabled person who depends on life-sustaining treatment, I would be able to qualify for assisted suicide at any time where it is legal.

If I became despondent, for example if I lost my husband or my job, and decided that I wanted to die, I would not be treated the same as a nondisabled, healthy person who despaired over divorce or job loss.

If anyone doubted that someone like me would qualify for assisted suicide in a state like Oregon, those doubts were laid to rest in December 2017 when an Oregon Public Health Department official clarified in writing:

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The Deadly Advocacy of Assisted Suicide

Thursday, 11 October 2018 17:49
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Assisted suicide image

Source: Washington Times

By Dr. G. Kevin Donovan

The announcement encourages residents to think about assisted suicide and offers resources which help a person pursue it, while all other organizations are trying to find ways to prevent suicide, and help those most in need, and at risk. Aren’t public service announcements supposed to call attention to a message that is in the public interest? Running announcements of this nature is reckless and dangerous, especially during the month dedicated to suicide prevention.

It is no wonder that the assisted-suicide lobby has resorted to such tactics — this dangerous public policy is so unpopular here that in the first year after the District of Columbia enacted a law to allow assisted suicide, not one person killed themselves with a doctor’s help, as the new law sanctions. In fact, during that time only two out of nearly 11,000 licensed D.C. physicians were willing to participate, and just one hospital cleared doctors to be involved.

Instead of veiled advertisements for assisted suicide from advocates, patients and physicians deserve to be given the facts, including the attendant abuses, and to know why so few doctors and hospitals are participating.

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Delaware Online: Assisted Suicide Undermines Human Dignity

Monday, 29 January 2018 13:09
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Doctor opposing assisted suicide

Source: Delaware Online

By: Michael DePietro

My extensive experience in dealing with dying patients leads me to oppose the legalization of assisted suicide. Legislation permitting assisted suicide is unnecessary to alleviate the distress of patients with terminal illness, and likely will precipitate harm to the sick and vulnerable.

It is important to make a distinction between physician-assisted suicide, where a doctor actively assists the patient in causing their own death, versus the commonly accepted practice of stopping or avoiding treatments that merely delay rather than reverse the dying process. The medical profession and society, including almost all religious traditions, recognize and endorse the patient’s broad legal right to decline medical treatments which are excessively burdensome and disproportionate to the potential benefits, even if doing so shortens the patient’s life.

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