Update 058: Volume 25, Number 3 (2011-3)

On-line Update 2011-2

2011 bills dealing with assisted suicide:

Some already defeated, others still pending

So far this year, death-by-prescription advocates have had nothing to crow about. While they have introduced nine bills to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in five states, five of those measures have already been effectively defeated. Their hopes rest with the remaining four bills that have not as yet been heard in committee. But, assisted-suicide advocates were not happy about seven other 2011 bills: two are pending, four died in committee, and—much to advocates’ dismay—one passed and has been signed into law.

Defeated measures

· New Hampshire

New Hampshire’s assisted-suicide bill, HB513, was introduced on January 6, 2011, followed by a lively hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on February 28. Committee members killed it three days later by a vote of 15-1 and labeled the bill “inexpedient to legislate.” Despite the committee defeat, New Hampshire legislative rules required that the bill be voted on by the full House. On March 16, the House overwhelmingly rejected the measure by a vote of 234-99.

During the Judiciary Committee hearing, the bill’s co-sponsor, Steve Vaillancourt (R-Manchester), became agitated over questioning by a committee member. He shouted, “If it were up to me, I would say anybody should be able to end their life just like that,” as he snapped his fingers. [New Hampshire Union Leader, 3/1/11]

· Hawaii

Hawaii is a state that has often been targeted for legislation to legalize assisted-suicide. Between 1998 and 2009, 24 bills were introduced, all of which met with defeat. This year, three more doctor-assisted suicide bills were introduced. SB803 and HB1383 were identical companion bills, both titled “Death with Dignity,” and the third, HB1165, was similar to the others, but titled “Compassion in Passing.” SB803, however, was the only bill that was heard in committee.

On February 7, after hearing 4½ hours of testimony, the Senate Health Committee voted unanimously to quash SB803 and held it in committee. The testimony given at the hearing—from dozens of accident survivors, health care providers, elder caregivers, and disabled state residents—was overwhelmingly opposed to the bill’s passage. [CNBC.com, 2/8/11; Star Advertiser, 2/8/11] While it is still possible that the Senate or House could vote to bring SB803 to a floor vote, that would be highly unlikely. It is equally unlikely that either HB1383 or HB 1165 will be heard in their assigned committees this year given the public’s strong opposition to SB803.

· Montana

After the Montana Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that there was no state statute explicitly banning doctor-prescribed suicide, two state senators began drafting competing assisted-suicide bills for this year’s legislative session. SB167, sponsored by Sen. Anders Blewett (D-Great Falls), would have legalized prescribed suicide, but with less restrictions than those contained in the Oregon and Washington laws. SB116, sponsored by Sen. Greg Hinkle (R-Thompson Falls), would have prohibited assisted suicide, and a second Hinkle bill, SB169, would have enhanced prison sentences for a “suicide predator” who aids or solicits another’s suicide. All three bills were heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 9. All three were tabled by that committee. On the legislature’s web site, each bill is labeled “Probably Dead.” When Blewett was asked if he plans to bring back his bill later in the session, he indicated it would be unlikely. “That ship has sailed,” he said. [Great Falls Tribune, 2/21/11]

Bills still pending

· Vermont

Of all the bills introduced in 2011, assisted-suicide advocates are spending the most money and lobbying the hardest for the Vermont “Patient Choice & Control at the End of Life” bill. They see victory in Vermont as a springboard for victory in other New England states.

In 2010, the Oregon-based Death with Dignity National Center (DWDNC), through its political arm, Death with Dignity Political Action Fund, began preparing the way for “a full legislative campaign launch in January.” [DWDNC, 2010 Annual Report, 12/28/10] Part of that preparation involved financially supporting Peter Shumlin for governor last year. The victorious Shumlin had promised to champion prescribed-suicide legislation. DWDNC then pledged $100,000 to the Vermont campaign to legalize Oregon-style assisted suicide. [True North Reports, 3/29/11]

Advocates had promised the bill would be introduced in January 2011, but, by February 1, there was still no bill. The House version, H.274, wasn’t introduced until February 17, and, the Senate bill, S.103, did not get introduced until March 29.

H.274 and S.103 have been referred to the House Committee on Human Services and the Senate Committee on Judiciary, respectively, but, as yet, neither has been scheduled for a hearing. Human Services Chair Ann Pugh (D–S. Burlington) said there are no plans to hear the bill this year, and several Senate leaders, including Majority Leader Bill Carris (D-Rutland), do not support the bill. But Vermont’s legislative sessions are two years long, so advocates have the time and money to still drum up support. [Burlington Free Press, 2/18/11; Boston Globe, 2/22/11]

· Massachusetts

The Massachusetts assisted-suicide bill (H.2233) was filed by Rep. Louis Kafka (D-Stoughton) on January 21 and referred to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on January 24. There has been no further action taken.

· Pennsylvania

Another Oregon-style bill, SB431, was introduced on February 7 and referred the same day to the Senate Judiciary Committee. No further action has been taken.

Bills (apart from MT’s) that advocates did not like

· Idaho

Last year, the advocacy group Compassion & Choices (C&C) began an intense campaign to convince Idaho’s residents, professional groups, and lawmakers that the state should join Oregon, Washington, and Montana and make assisted suicide a medical treatment because Idaho state law was unclear on the matter. In response, the 2011 Idaho Legislature overwhelmingly passed SB1070, a bill that explicitly made “causing or assisting” a suicide a felony under state homicide laws. The Senate vote was 31-2 for passage; the House concurred 61-8. On April 7, Governor C.L. Otter signed the bill into law. [AP, 3/28/11]

· Connecticut

In January, Proposed Bill 356—a bill to require a minimum prison term for the crime of assisted suicide—was referred to the Joint Judiciary Committee. Thus far, there’s been no further action taken.

· Wyoming

HB148 would have made assisted suicide a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. No action was taken in committee before the end of the 2011 legislative session.

· Oregon

HB2016—a bill to amend Oregon’s assisted-suicide law by requiring that suicide-requesting patients be referred for psychological counseling—was sent to the House Health Care Committee. No action was taken, so the bill is dead.

· Washington State

SB5378 would amend Washington’s law by mandating that “assisted suicide” be listed on the death certificate when such a death occurs. Currently, the deceased’s underlying illness must be listed as the cause of death. So far, the Senate Health Committee has taken no action on the bill.

Good news and bad news for patients

Hospice is well known for its holistic approach to providing terminally-ill patients with the overall care and effective pain and symptom relief (palliative care) they need, along with support for patients’ families and loved ones. Recent research confirms palliative treatment’s effective role in patient care, while health care cost-cutting seriously threatens hospice’s availability for patients at the end of life.

The good news

A study, recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that cancer patients who were referred for palliative care soon after being diagnosed experienced greater quality of life and fewer depressive symptoms than if the referral was made later in the course of their terminal illness. Another finding—one that some found surprising—had to do with survival rates. The study divided 151 newly diagnosed lung cancer patients into two groups. The first group received standard cancer treatment; the patients in the second group received treatment as well palliative care within 12 weeks of diagnosis. Those in the second group lived approximately three months longer than those in the first group and rated their mood and quality of life significantly better than those who had received only the cancer treatment. [Ternel, et al., “Early Palliative Care for Patients with Metastatic Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer,” NEJM, 8/19/10; The Age, 3/3/11]

The bad news

The results of an independent study, released by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), indicate that two recent cuts to Medicare reimbursement threaten the financial viability of 66 percent of U.S. hospice programs, especially rural programs. Reimbursement cuts made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the 2010 Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act are projected to decrease hospices’ Medicare profit margins to minus 11 percent (-11%) by 2019, with rural program margins estimated to decrease to minus 16 percent (-16%).

“With the entire hospice community—rural and urban, large and small, community-based and multi-state—being hit by the same devastating slope downward,” said NHPCO President J. Donald Schumacher, “there is no way for patient access to not be negatively impacted.” [NHPCO, Press Release, 3/7/11]

Death by prescription advocates are currently campaigning across the country to make the crime of assisted suicide into a legal medical treatment—a treatment that is far less expensive than hospice care. PRC legal consultant Wesley J. Smith, a trained hospice volunteer, warns that, if we allow patient access to hospice care to be diminished by these budget cuts, “…the dark alternative of doctor-prescribed death will become increasingly attractive to a society that will have indicated a pronounced willingness to abandon and isolate the most weak and vulnerable among us.” [Wesley J. Smith, Secondhand Smoke Blog, “Hospice under Financial Pressure as Advocates Push Assisted Suicide,” 3/14/2011]

Doctor-Prescribed Suicide:

Some Questions We Need to Ask

by Rita L. Marker

In states across the country, assisted suicide is being promoted as a choice that should be available—but only for adults, only in hard cases, and only under careful guidelines. Deceptively soothing words and phrases, like “death with dignity” and “aid in dying,” give the impression that what is at issue is compassionate care, greater personal autonomy and the right to be free of unwanted medical treatment.

But what is really at stake?

In 1994, Oregon voters approved the “Death with Dignity Act.” Since then, similar laws were proposed in twenty-two states. Each and every one failed until November 2008, when Washington State voters adopted a law virtually identical to that in Oregon.

Many people in Oregon and Washington, including those who voted for a “death with dignity” law, didn’t have a clue about its implications. No one could foresee that, rather than increasing choice, assisted suicide actually limits choice.

Today, pharmacies in Oregon and Washington dispense prescriptions, often accompanied by instructions such as, “Take this with a light snack and alcohol to cause death.” And, in Oregon, both private health insurance and state Medicaid pay for those prescriptions while, at the same time, they refuse to cover treatments that patients need and want, even though those treatments could extend life and alleviate pain.

When doctor-prescribed suicide becomes a medical treatment as it is in Oregon and Washington, it is only one among many options for the treatment of certain conditions. But it differs in a major way from other treatments. It is extremely cost effective. Let’s face it, providing pain alleviation can be expensive. Death, however, is cheap.

With concerns about health care costs, general financial uncertainty, and serious talk about limiting health care for the elderly currently reaching the boiling point, we all need to ask ourselves some serious questions before we embrace the idea of permitting prescribed suicide. In this atmosphere, do we trust profit-driven insurance companies or government bureaucrats to do the right thing—or will they do the cheap thing?

And, there are other considerations as well.

We hear that assisted suicide would be a matter of choice. We hear that it would be an option made available only to those diagnosed with a terminal illness. But this option of doctor-prescribed death would come at a time of great vulnerability in a person’s life. It’s a difficult, painful and confusing time. It’s a time when people are more susceptible to pressure or persuasion than ever. Are we absolutely sure that a patient’s choice would be free of pressure and coercion?

Most of us would do anything we could to protect our loved ones from pain or coercion. We’d treat them with love and compassion, putting their interests first. But not everyone is blessed with loved ones like that. The sad truth is that sometimes even family members are motivated by greed or spite, instead of compassion and love.

If death by prescription becomes legal in additional states, how many people would lose their lives because of pressure or persuasion? How many elderly, vulnerable patients would worry secretly about becoming a burden on those they love? And, acting out of love, would they choose doctor-prescribed suicide to alleviate that burden?

Is that really an outcome we want for those we love the most?

There’s something else we should consider. That’s the reality that mistakes are made. We all make mistakes. Doctors make mistakes. Many of us know people who lived years after being told they would die within months. In Oregon, it is on record that people—who were told they had six months or less to live and were given prescriptions for lethal drugs by their doctors, but didn’t take the drugs—ended up living well beyond their doctors’ predictions. How many more would have lived longer but, out of fear, took the drugs that ended their lives?

That’s a mistake that can’t be reversed.

Do we really want to take chances with our lives and those of our loved ones?

Rita L. Marker is an attorney and the executive director of the Patient Rights Council. She is the author of the book, Deadly Compassion, and has appeared on national and international TV and radio programs too numerous to list.

Washington issues 2nd annual report on doctor-prescribed suicide deaths

Between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2010, 68 different doctors wrote prescriptions for intentionally lethal drugs that 40 different pharmacists dispensed to 87 patients in Washington State. Of those patients who received the death causing drugs,

· 51 ingested the drugs and died;

· 15 died without taking the drugs;

· 6 others died, but the state doesn’t know if they ingested the drugs or died naturally; and,

· for the remaining 15 patients, the state has no clue if they are alive or dead.

These are the figures reported by Washington State’s Department of Health (DOH) in its “2010 Death with Dignity Act Report,” released on March 10, 2011. Washington’s total number of reported assisted-suicide deaths for 2009 and 2010 now stands at 87.

Washington’s 2010 statistical report is the second one issued by the DOH, but it is the first one that covers an entire year of assisted-suicide practice. The first official report, issued last year, covered less than ten months of 2009: from March 5 (when Washington’s permissive assisted-suicide law took effect) to December 31, 2009.

The second annual report confirms trends that were seen in the first report. The overwhelming majority (94%) of patients who received death-producing drugs lived west of the Cascade Mountains. Most were “Non-Hispanic White” (95%) and most had cancer (78%). The majority were concerned about losing their autonomy (90%), not being able to engage in enjoyable activities (87%), losing their dignity (64%), and losing control of bodily functions (52%). A few were concerned about inadequate pain control (36%), being a burden on others (28%), and the financial implications of treatment (4%). A particularly troublesome trend was that only two patients (3%) were referred for a psychiatric/psychological evaluation in 2010, down from three patients (7%) in 2009. [WA DOH, 2010 Death with Dignity Act Report. Available at http://www.doh.wa.gov/dwda.]

Oregon connection

Washington’s assisted-suicide law is modeled after Oregon’s 13-year-old law, and both states use virtually the same oversight and reporting system. That accounts for the similarities found in both states’ annual reports. (For an overview of Oregon & Washington statistics see the chart below.)

As is the case in Oregon, Washington’s oversight of doctor-prescribed death is seriously flawed. The state has no way of knowing the exact number of assisted-suicide deaths in a given year, a fact that Oregon officials have readily admitted. The state depends on doctors to honestly report their assisted-suicide cases to the DOH. But, if a doctor does not report a case—perhaps because he or she violated the law in some way—there is no procedure to alert the state that the case exists, and, even if there were, the DOH has no authority or funds to investigate.

Recipe for abuse

The fact that Washington’s DOH lost track of the status (including ingestion status) of 21 patients in 2010 should be alarming—especially considering that the DOH’s deadline for data retrieval was February 9, 2011, well past the December 31 cut-off for 2010 deaths. The reason for the late deadline was to ensure that delayed patient documentation would be received and included in the 2010 report. In its first report on 2009 assisted-suicide patients, the DOH also admitted it had lost track of patients, 20 to be exact.

Furthermore, neither the Oregon nor the Washington laws requires that there be a disinterested witness present at the time in the assisted-suicide process that patients are most vulnerable —when the patient ingests the lethal drugs. Consequently, there is absolutely no protection for patients who are being pressured to die by others or are being given the lethal drugs against their will or without their knowledge.

Washington elder law attorney Margaret Dore is concerned about the abuse risk—especially for elderly patients—inherent in the state’s Death with Dignity Act. “Washington’s act has significant gaps which render it a recipe for abuse,” she wrote. “Washington’s report, which does not even address whether administration of the lethal dose was voluntary, does nothing to alleviate this concern. The information provided is inherently unreliable.” [http://margaretdoreblog.com, 3/11/11]

When choice becomes no choice

According to Eileen Geller, R.N., president of the Washington group True Compassion Advocates (TCA), more and more concerned and overwhelmed patients, family members and friends are calling her office because state and federal budget cuts for elderly, caregiver, and disability services are effectively giving many patients no choice but to ask for assisted suicide. One call, she said, was from “a seriously ill, paralyzed woman who was discharged prematurely from a Seattle-area hospital and worried about being a burden to her family. She did not have financial resources for adequate care, so she requested doctor-prescribed death… because she felt she did not have any other real choices.” Another call concerned “a depressed man with no health insurance” who requested assisted suicide because of “financial worries and pressure from family members.”

“Assisted suicide in Washington,” Geller explained, “is neither safe nor voluntary for those who feel coerced, can’t afford proper health care, or are victims of unreported elder abuse.”[TCA Press Release, 3/11/11]

News briefs from home & abroad . . .

l Diane W Meier, M.D., is a renowned expert in geriatric and end-of-life palliative care. She is the director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at New York City’s Mount Sinai Medical Center and the director of the Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She also used to be a formidable advocate for legalized assisted suicide. She is no more.

On March 28, 2011, she addressed a medical group in Burlington, Vermont. In response to a question about the relationship between palliative care and “death with dignity,” Dr. Meier said,

I, as a young person, was strongly in favor of legalization of assisted suicide. I think I was somewhat naïve at the time, you know, kind of doctrinaire about my commitment to patient self-determination and patient autonomy. And as I got a bit older and had more experience taking care of patients and families, [I realized] that autonomy was not really relevant to the human condition. We are all parts of families and parts of communities and critically dependent on one another in ways that notions of self-determination and autonomy pretend don’t exist. Bob Butler, whose photo I showed you, said to me when I was writing stuff in favor of assisted suicide that there’s an old Chinese proverb: “Suicide reverberates for seven generations.” The harm to families when someone decides to leave, rather than having to leave, is substantial and has been understudied.

What’s also very interesting is that the movement to legalize assisted suicide is overwhelmingly driven by the “worried well”—by people who are so terrified of the loss of control that illness and death, dying and death bring—that there’s a sort of reaction formation: “Damn it, I’m gonna take control back” over something that’s so terrifying. But, for millions of years, humans have lived and died in their families. And it’s not that scary. It’s pretty natural, like birth. And when you look at “What do sick people want?”—sick people almost always want to continue to live. And it took my experience with sick people—who , if it were me, I’d say, “I want assisted suicide”—and they still want to live. Overwhelmingly, people want to live, in spite of conditions that the “worried well” would think are intolerable.

I don’t know how many of you saw the Bill Moyer’s series “On Our Own Terms: Dying in America.” I don’t know if you remember that patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease whose wife was taking care of him and Moyers went back repeatedly, and the first time he said, “Well, if I’m in a wheelchair all the time, that’s it, I’m outta here.” So, Moyers goes back six months later, he’s fulltime in a wheelchair, he can’t do anything for himself, and, “It’s okay.” Then he says, “Well, if I have to get to a point where my wife has to change me and bathe me and I can’t take care of my own business, I’m outta here.” [Moyers] goes back six months later, that’s exactly what he needs, and life is still worth living. Because people adjust, people are remarkably resilient. And life is precious, and your vision of what’s worth tolerating changes.

And legalization of physician-assisted suicide in a society like ours, which is entirely driven by overwhelmed, overextended doctors chasing the dollar, is pretty scary—because the patients who might opt for this are the ones who really need thoughtful, extended conversations about what is motivating [them] to want to die at this point, and the differential diagnosis is long. And I can promise you that the overwhelming majority of doctors have neither the training nor the time to engage in that kind of careful discussion with seriously ill patients.

And I do believe that real access to palliative care that is timely, that is high quality, would essentially eliminate the need for that and the fear that drives people to vote for these ballot measures. [Video transcription provided by True Dignity Vermont. See truedignityvt.org.]

l According to a new report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, state-run adult protection agencies are in danger of being overwhelmed by the increasing number of elder abuse cases—cases that are complex and involve multiple types of abuse. [NY Times, 3/3/11] Along with physical and mental abuse, seniors are often the target for financial abuse and exploitation by family members, friends, and strangers. Elderly patients—consciously or unconsciously—say things all the time that should alert their doctors to the likelihood that these patients are being financially victimized. Unfortunately, doctors are not trained to pickup on the cues. A new educational program, however, is being introduced this year in 25 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Its goal is to teach physicians how to spot elderly patients at risk for this type of abuse. [NY Times, 3/2/11]

In Oregon and Washington where assisted-suicide is legal, elderly patients with even small estates are particularly at risk for mental and financial abuse. If heirs are impatient and want their inheritance sooner rather than later, they could pressure elderly patients with terminal conditions to request an early prescribed death. Moreover, since neither state’s assisted-suicide law protects patients after they obtain the lethal drugs, it would not be difficult for greedy heirs to coerce patients to take the drugs or to surreptitiously administer them to patients.

l Nick Klonoski, a 29-year-old Eugene, Oregon, resident, was a popular college graduate with great potential. He also endured episodes of pain and fatigue that left him seriously depressed. Earlier this year, he ended his life using an apparatus called the helium-hood kit that he ordered by mail from a small company in Southern California run by a 91-year-old mother and her 57-year-old son. “The company that sells this kit obviously is purposely targeting a vulnerable group,” Nick’s grieving brother Jake said. “They made money off my brother, they gave him the tools to take his own life without knowing him, without knowing anything about him. For $60, they blew his life apart,” he added. “It breaks my heart.” [Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), 3/20/11]

Helium suicide kits are nothing new. Derek Humphry—longtime euthanasia and assisted-suicide guru and co-founder of the Hemlock Society (now called Compassion & Choices)—actively promoted the helium hood method in Final Exit, his how-to-kill-yourself book first published in 1992. It is also the death method used by the assisted-suicide group Final Exit Network (FEN), a national group of volunteers who travel around the country assisting the suicides of its members. Two FEN “exit guides” are currently on trial in Phoenix, Arizona, charged with manslaughter and assisting the 2007 suicide of Jana Van Voorhis, a 58-year-old woman who was physically healthy, but mentally ill. FEN volunteers are also under indictment in Georgia for another helium-plastic bag death.

l The Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die (FFRTD), a newly-formed, unincorporated, assisted-suicide organization in Canada, is challenging the country’s law that bans aiding and abetting another’s suicide. The group claims Criminal Code Section 241(b) is unconstitutional and arbitrary because it deprives citizens of their right to liberty and security and denies “the right of equality to persons with physical disabilities who lack the physical ability to end their own lives.” Apparently, FFRTD is attempting to set up the Canadian version of the Final Exit Network. Its purpose, according to a press release, is “to assist its members in ending their lives humanely.” FFRTD is also challenging a ruling by British Columbia’s Registrar of Companies that denied the group’s request for nonprofit status. [FFRTD, Press Release, 2/21/11; Courthouse News, 4/11/11]

l The March 1, 2011, death of British assisted-suicide advocate Nan Maitland, 85, at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, has caused quite a stir in the U.K. Maitland, a member of Friends At The End (FATE) and a founding member of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS), had arthritis but was otherwise healthy and active. In a note she left behind, she explained that she “feared” dying of old age, “the long period of decline, sometimes called ‘prolonged dwindling.’” [Michael Irwin, MD, World Right-to-Die News List, 3/4/11] In 2008, another FATE member—identified only as Chris—feared old age and died with Dignitas’ help. He said he wanted to die because he was “determined to end my life before my body fails me.” [SOARS Newsletter, 10/10]

l A nurse in India—left permanently brain damaged after being brutally raped and strangled in 1973—will be allowed to continue living thanks to a ruling handed down by India’s Supreme Court. Aruna Shanbaug, who some say is in a vegetative state, eats by mouth, smiles when she likes the food, and responds to commands by making sounds. Yet Pinki Virani, a journalist who wrote a book about Aruna, asked the court to order the hospital to stop feeding her and giving her fluids because, Virani said, Aruna is already “virtually a dead person” and has the right to die.

Doctors and nurses at King Edward Memorial Hospital, where Aruna worked as a nurse and where she has received care for the last 38 years, passionately argued for the continuation of her care. (The quality of her care has been so good that Aruna, now 60, has never had even one bedsore.) The court ruled that the hospital staff was effectively her family now and that Virani lacked standing in the case. [Hindustan Times, 3/7/11; Times of India, 3/8/11; The Hindu, 3/8/11; BBC, 3/11/11]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On-line Update 2011-3

Jack Kevorkian: It was never about the patient’s best interest

Jack Kevorkian now knows death first hand. On June 3, at the age of 83, he personally experienced the natural dying process in his hospital room in Royal Oak, Michigan, as nurses played his favorite music by Johann Sebastian Bach over the intercom. His was not an induced death, unlike the 130 people—by his count—whose lives were ended with his “help.”

Kevorkian had a long history of being obsessed with death—the deaths of others, that is. His nickname, “Dr. Death,” dates all the way back to 1956 when, as a young intern, he would go around the hospital photographing the eyes of patients as they died. Not long after, he wrote a paper advocating surgical experimentation and organ harvesting on live death-row inmates (under anesthesia) since they would be executed anyway. Prisons across the country either ignored or rejected outright his ghoulish proposals.

Kevorkian’s medical career could hardly be called successful. He once told a gathering at Washington, DC’s National Press Club that “people were just frightened to death of me,” and “it was hopeless to get a position.” [Speech given 10/27/92] In 1989, he even applied for a job as a paramedic and was turned down. [Detroit Free Press Magazine, 2/3/91]

As an unemployed pathologist—with no clinical experience with live patients other than during his internship and military service in the 1950s—Kevorkian switched his attention to creating suicide machines that sick and disabled individuals could use to end their lives under his supervision. Those who came to him had a broad array of medical conditions, such as neurological illnesses, cancer, dementia, paralysis, and mental illnesses, yet he had no formal training in any of those fields of medicine. But that didn’t seem to be a concern. What mattered most to Kevorkian was that he had somehow struck a chord, and the attention he so craved would finally be his.

Over time, however, the two major Detroit newspapers began to question Kevorkian’s “professionalism.” In 1997, seven years into his assisted-suicide campaign, the Detroit Free Press published its two-part investigative report on the 47 known deaths at that time. The paper found that Kevorkian consistently ignored rules and safeguards he, himself, established for “professional” assisted-suicide practice. In at least 19 cases, the paper wrote, “Kevorkian has failed to consult psychiatrists, even when dealing with depressed people.” In at least 5 of those cases, “the people who died had histories of depression.” Moreover, Kevorkian failed “to consult with pain specialists and other medical experts, even when the need was clearly indicated.” Another Kevorkian rule—that there must be a 24-hour waiting period between patients’ final death requests and their deaths—was also often ignored. According to the investigation, “At least 19 patients died less than 24 hours after meeting Kevorkian for the first time.” [Emphasis added.]

One of the investigation’s most revealing findings had to do with Janet Adkins, who had been chosen by Kevorkian to be his first “patient.” He selected her “without ever speaking to her, only with her husband.” Kevorkian also spoke with her doctor, Dr. Murray Raskind, who had been treating Adkins in Seattle for Alzheimer’s. According to the Free Press, “Raskind told Kevorkian that Adkins was not competent to make a life-and-death decision. Kevorkian gave her a lethal injection anyway, writing later that his opinion was based solely on conversations with Adkins’ husband. [“Suicide Machine, Part 1,” Detroit Free Press, 3/3/97]

After Kevorkian’s death, the Detroit News ran an editorial echoing some of the Free Press’s earlier findings and debunking Kevorkian’s persistent claims that he carefully screened and counseled patients before ever agreeing to help them die:

That is simply not true. Those whose suicides he assisted included Rebecca Badger, whose diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was found by Oakland County’s medical examiner to be mistaken; Frank Long, who had a 30-year history of treatment for mental illness; Judith Curren, who had improperly been given anti-depression medication by her own husband; and Roosevelt Dawson, a 21-year-old quadriplegic who was dead in Southfield within a few hours of his release from a hospital in Grand Rapids. Their deaths indicate he failed to double-check the medical histories of those who came to him, or simply disregarded them. [Detroit News Editorial, 6/4/11]

Since his death, Kevorkian has been eulogized as a “hero,” a “freedom fighter,” and a “compassionate visionary.” He has also been called a “murderer,” a “quack,” and—as the American Medical Association called him in 1995—a “reckless instrument of death.” [Bloomberg, 6/3/11; NY Times, 6/3/11; Detroit Free Press, 6/10/11; Philly Magazine, 6/13/11]

How people viewed Kevorkian usually depended on whether they were willing to scratch the surface of his image, honed over the years by his lawyers, mindless reporters looking for sensational stories, and Hollywood screen writers. (The HBO movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” probably should have carried the disclaimer, “And you still won’t know Jack after seeing this.”)

The best way to get to know Jack is through his writings, which, according to PRC legal consultant Wesley J. Smith, reveal Kevorkian’s “grotesquely utilitarian” goals. [tothesource.org, 6/8/11] In his book, Prescription: Medicide, Kevorkian wrote:

I feel it is only decent and fair to explain my ultimate aim… It is not simply to help suffering or doomed persons kill themselves—that is merely the first step, an early distasteful professional obligation that nobody in his or her right mind would savor… What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish…. [Prescription: Medicide (1991), p. 214]

Kevorkian had described those “invaluable experiments” and “beneficial medical acts” in a 1986 article published in the journal Medicine and Law. He envisioned a process by which “subjects” (including infants, children, and the mentally incompetent) would be used for experiments “of any kind or complexity.” If the subjects survived the experiments, he wrote, “death may be induced” by “removal of organs for transplantation” or by “a lethal dose of a new or untested drug to be administered by an official executioner.” [Medicine and Law (1986), pp. 194-195]

Kevorkian never publicly retracted any of his published writings.

Editor’s note: For more facts about the real Jack Kevorkian, visit:

http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/ site/jack-kevorkian

Poll reveals disabled people’s fear of assisted suicide

A poll commissioned by Scope, a leading British disability organization, found that 70 percent of disabled people are fearful that changing the law to allow assisted suicide would create pressure on those with disabilities to end their lives prematurely. More than one in three (35%) said legalizing the practice would put pressure on them personally to die, and over half (56%) said allowing assisted suicide would be detrimental to “the way that disabled people are viewed by society as a whole.” [Scope NDPP Survey, 2-3/11]

Richard Hawkes, Scope’s chief executive, said, “Disabled people are already worried about people assuming their life isn’t worth living or seeing them as a burden, and are genuinely concerned that a change in the law could increase pressure on them to end their life.” [Scope Press Release, 5/9/11]

The assisted-suicide debate in the UK has increased in intensity this year. At the same time, the government is proposing substantial cuts to the aid many disabled people need to live. “Sounds a little like the United States,” blogged Stephen Drake, research analyst for the US disability group Not Dead Yet. In the UK, “[t]hey’re fighting battles that may be just as imminent for us within a very short time.” [NDY News & Commentary, 6/14/11]

Kevorkian: A Dark Mirror on Society | by Wesley J. Smith

The death of Jack Kevorkian by natural causes has a certain irony, but it is not surprising. His driving motive was always obsession with death. Indeed, as he described in his book Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian’s overriding purpose in his assisted-suicide campaign was pure quackery, e.g., to obtain a societal license to engage in what he called “obitiatry,” that is, the right to experiment on the brains and spinal cords of “living human bodies” being euthanized to “pinpoint the exact onset of extinction of an unknown cognitive mechanism that energizes life.”

So, now that he is gone, what is Kevorkian’s legacy?

He assisted the suicides of 130 or so people and lethally injected at least two by his own admission (his first and his last); as a consequence of the latter, he served nearly ten years in prison for murder. But I think his more important place in contemporary history was as a dark mirror that reflected how powerful the avoidance of suffering has become as a driving force in society, and indeed, how that excuse seems to justify nearly any excess.

Thus, while the media continually described him as the “retired” doctor who helped “the terminally ill” to commit suicide, at least 70 percent of his assisted suicides were not dying, and five weren’t ill at all according to their autopsies. It. Didn’t. Matter. Kevorkian advocated tying assisted suicide in with organ harvesting, and even stripped the kidneys from the body of one of his cases, offering them at a press conference, “first come, first served.” It. Didn’t. Matter. And as noted above, he wanted to engage in ghoulish experiments. It. Didn’t. Matter. He was fawned over by the media (Time invited him as an honored guest to its 75th anniversary gala, and he had carte blanche on 60 Minutes), enjoyed high opinion polls, and after his release from prison was transformed by sheer revisionism into an eccentric Muppet. He was even played by Al Pacino in an HBO hagiography.

Kevorkian was disturbingly prophetic. He called for the creation of euthanasia clinics where people could go who didn’t want to live anymore. They now exist in Switzerland and were recently overwhelmingly supported by the voters of Zurich in an initiative intended to stop what is called “suicide tourism.” Belgian doctors have now explicitly tied euthanasia and organ harvesting. In the U.S., mobile suicide clinics run by Final Exit Network zealots continue unabated despite two prosecutions, as voters in two states legalized Kevorkianism as a medical treatment.

Time will tell whether Kevorkian will be remembered merely as a kook who captured the temporary zeitgeist of the times, or whether he was a harbinger of a society that, in the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne, “believes in nothing [and] can offer no argument, even against death.“

Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a legal consultant for the Patients Rights Council, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and a consultant to the Center for Bioethics & Culture. His article appeared in National Review Online on 6/3/11 and is reprinted with his permission.

No action on Vermont prescribed-suicide bill

Despite all their polling and other research—all pointing to a slam-dunk victory in Vermont—and despite their huge war chest—amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars—national and local doctor-prescribed suicide advocates were unable to advance their Oregon-style bill during the first of Vermont’s 2011-2012 legislative sessions. Neither the House bill (H.274) nor the Senate bill (S.103) was even heard in a committee. There was absolutely no movement of any kind, thanks to a coalition of the state’s disability community, the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, and others opposed to assisted suicide.

Prescribed-death advocates, however, are gearing up for the second session next year. Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin has renewed his pledge to get the bill passed and signed into law, and proponents still have a sizable war chest to mount an effective campaign. But 2012 is an election year, and, given the strong opposition coalition, proponents will likely find their lobbying efforts even more difficult than they were this year.

FBI probe shuts down suicide kit business

When a Eugene, Oregon, newspaper ran a lengthy article on the tragic suicide of 29-year-old Nick Klonoski, a Eugene native, things began to happen. People were outraged that this popular college graduate with incredible potential, who had periodic chronic fatigue with bouts of depression, was able to order and receive a “helium hood kit” by mail, a kit made expressly to cause death. Klonoski’s brother, Zach, put it this way: “They made money off my brother. They gave him the tools to take his own life without knowing him, without knowing anything about him. For $60, they blew his life apart.”

The helium hood kit was manufactured by the GLADD Group, a two-person California business run by 91-year-old Sharlotte Hydorn. The $60 kit consists of a large plastic bag—custom sewn by Hydorn to fit tightly around the suicidal person’s neck—and vinyl tubing that connects the bag to a helium canister, which the person has to buy on his or her own. Also included are instructions from the suicide manual Final Exit by Derek Humphry, co-founder of the Hemlock Society (now called Compassion & Choices) and a developer of the helium suicide method. According to Humphry, Hydorn sells more than 100 kits a month to clients around the world. [Register-Guard, 3/20/11; ABC News, 5/2/11]

News of Klonoski’s suicide prompted a full FBI investigation and a raid on Hydorn’s home. Agents seized her computer, all her records, all completed suicide kits (even those sent to the post office awaiting delivery), all material used to make them, and even her sewing machine. Using her list of clients that have already received kits, police in the clients’ local areas are sending officers to check personally on their wellbeing. Hyborn, who claims no wrongdoing, is effectively out-of-business, for now. [AP, 5/26/11; NBC News, 6/27/11]

Oregon lawmakers also responded by passing a bill banning the sale of suicide kits and authorizing the arrest of offenders operating in other states. [OR Public Broadcasting, 6/17/11]

What family is all about | by Jason Negri

“Time to brush your teeth!” Sue Doherty called. But knowing that Marie would need her help, Sue sighed and made her way to the bathroom to begin the bedtime ritual. “First, we use the toilet. Next, let’s wear this nightgown—isn’t it pretty? Now we wash our hands and face,” she said, pantomiming a scrubbing motion. “I’ll put the toothpaste on the brush if you want to brush your own teeth. Okay, let me check. Good job!” Sue smiled encouragingly, gave Marie a kiss, and shepherded her off to bed.

It’s a familiar scene to anyone who has small children. Except the last time Sue did this for one of her own daughters was some thirty years ago. Marie is Sue’s mother.

When the youngest of their four daughters had finally left the nest, Mike and Sue Doherty were looking forward to having some time for themselves, maybe traveling a bit, and doting on grandchildren. But life took a different turn for them, as it has for so many others, when they took in Sue’s nonagenarian parents, Herman and Marie Liedel.

They were not alone. According to a 2008 poll by USA Today/ABC News/Gallup, over forty-one percent of American baby boomers are providing some care for their elderly parents, and eight percent say that their parents live with them in their home. And many more expect that they will be providing assistance to their parents as they age.

“They initially moved in with us in the mid-90’s,” recalls Suzanne. “My father had Alzheimer’s, and it started to become too much for my mother to care for him and for herself. She began mixing up their medications, and it became apparent that they needed some help.” Having her parents living in the house with them made it more convenient for Sue to give them the care they needed, of course. She worried less about them when they were right there under her watchful eye. But the live-in arrangement was also demanding, and it took its toll. There were nights when Sue would collapse onto her bed, exhausted, and wonder, “What would it be like to just have myself to take care of?”

The demands increased when Herman developed pneumonia and was hospitalized. At that time, Mike and Sue realized that he needed twenty-four-hour supervision, so they explored local nursing homes and transferred Herman to one straight from the hospital. There were few options, and being unfamiliar with “the system,” and under time constraints to find a facility, Mike and Sue chose a nursing home that seemed fine and was convenient for them to visit. However, Sue soon became dissatisfied with the treatment her father was receiving. It was apparent that Herman was not being properly cleaned, and he developed bedsores. The home was understaffed and could not adequately care for the residents. One night when Sue and her mother were visiting Herman, she counted only three nurses on site, trying to care for over sixty resident patients.

Alzheimer’s gradually deprived Herman of his ability to swallow, so Sue asked about inserting a feeding tube so that her father could continue to eat and drink. A nurse at the facility told her that a doctor would come around “in two weeks” to assess Herman’s need for a feeding tube. Despite Sue’s pleading and demands, the nurse coldly refused to do any more. Sue mentioned the situation to a doctor friend, who visited Herman and put in the feeding tube himself.

Herman lived for eight weeks with the feeding tube, and Sue and her mother visited him every day. Then, one day, they returned from lunch to find that Herman had died in his sleep. “In some ways, because he had struggled for so long, his death was a relief,” Sue admits. I didn’t cry for him at that time, but the tears came later, when I missed him.”

Sue and Mike knew that Marie would eventually have to go into a nursing home as well. Now armed with the knowledge they had gained from their experiences with Herman, they searched and found St. Anne’s—half an hour away and expensive, but with a wonderful and caring staff. They put Marie on the two-year waiting list to get in, and continued caring for her in their home.

Shortly after, Sue herself was in need of back surgery, so she lined up her daughters to come and help take care of their grandmother for the month she’d be recovering. Then, the day before Sue’s surgery, St. Anne’s called and said they had an opening. They brought Marie for a trial night while Sue recovered from her surgery. She loved it, and never asked about coming back.

After almost three years, in August of 2010, Marie had a stroke that left her unable to talk or swallow. She went to a hospital, where doctors hesitated about putting in a feeding tube for her. Mike and Sue talked to the hospital ethicist, who said that Marie’s condition had so deteriorated that she was in the “dying process,” and her body wouldn’t absorb the nutrients. Putting in a feeding tube would actually be a burden to her, they explained. She was getting hydration through her IV, so Sue agreed to forego the feeding tube.

This decision caused problems with one of Sue’s sisters, who thought that they had condemned their mom to death by not demanding the feeding tube. But Sue knew that she had made the right decision, that when the dying process begins and the body is unable to absorb nutrition, inserting a feeding tube is actually counterproductive.

Indeed, Sue’s body kept shutting down and soon, even the fluids from the IV were backing up, and her veins were collapsing.

Before her stroke, Marie’s Alzheimer’s had become very bad. Strangely enough, after the stroke, she became more lucid for a time. Sue asked her if she wanted to go, if it was time. Her mom nodded; she knew she was dying. Sue told her that she was loved, adding, “We will miss you, but it’s okay for you to go.” The relief on her mom’s face, Sue said, was beautiful. She returned to St. Anne’s and received hospice care there until the end. She was asked every day if she was hungry or thirsty and always said no. Her mouth was swabbed as needed, she received Communion every day, and she received visits from her children and grandchildren. After a time she began to sleep a lot, and was no longer able to speak, but she did sit up and give Sue a last long hug of thanks.

On September 2, Marie came out of a deep sleep, looked ahead at something or someone unseen, then looked around the room, smiling and laughing. A nurse said she was in transition—moving to the next life. She had seen it before in other patients. “This most awesome experience,” as Sue describes it, lasted for fifteen minutes.

Sue wasn’t at her bedside when Marie passed. She had stepped out of the room for a moment, but she had felt a sense that her mother “wasn’t there” anymore. “I started to cry,” she recalls, “but then I asked myself, ‘Why am I crying? Mom has achieved her goal. No more worries, concerns or pain. She made it; released from this life. This is the happiest day of her life.’” Sue told the staff not to be sad, and never cried for her mom again.

Today, almost a year later, Sue thinks back to the years she spent taking care of her parents. If she has regrets, they’re only over her own failures. “You never think you did enough for them; you always second-guess yourself,” she admits. “Sometimes I wasn’t as patient with mom as I should have been.”But despite the difficulties, having her parents in her home was “a blessing” to her, and an example to her own children. She saw it as a privilege and also as “payback” in a sense, for their raising her for eighteen years. “You don’t abandon your parents when they need you,” Sue explained. “That’s what family is all about.”

Jason Negri, J.D., is the assistant director of the Patients Rights Council.

News briefs from home & abroad . . .

˜ Gallup’s 2011 Values and Beliefs poll found that the most divisive moral issue in America today is doctor-assisted suicide. The poll, conducted May 5-8, 2011, surveyed 1,018 adults nationwide. When asked about the moral acceptability of doctor-assisted suicide, respondents 45% said it is acceptable and 48% said it is morally wrong. The number of people who think the practice is morally acceptable has fallen from a high of 53% in 2004 to a low of 45% in 2011. [Gallup.com, 5/31/11]

˜ Another poll—conducted in May by the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston—is believed to be the first time a nationwide survey has linked health care costs for seniors with end-of-life choices. Since rising health care costs and proposed cuts in Medicare are currently being hotly debated, the survey asked, “To help save health care costs, do you believe mentally-able seniors should be able to end their own lives?” Of the 1,070 respondents, 375 (35%) said YES, 566 (53%) said NO, and 129 (12%) said they were undecided. [Question 43, Suffolk University National Survey, 5/10-17/11]

Researchers were surprised by the results. “The wording of the question directly links the economic piece to end-of-life, so I thought there would be various slices of no’s that outweighed the yes’s,” remarked David Paleologos, director of the university’s Political Research Center and a pollster for more than 25 years. “For me, it was an amazing finding that over a third said that this should be an option for mentally-able seniors,” he added. Other previous end-of-life choices polls have not singled out seniors as a group for a death option and always contained questions that clearly linked the “right to die” to terminal illnesses, not costs. [Boston Globe, 6/6/11]

It should be noted that the Suffolk University polling question did not stipulate that seniors had to be physically ill or suffering in anyway, just that they be “mentally able .”

˜ The Orlando Sentinel recently published a commentary by one of its columnists, Mike Thomas. “We need a physician-assisted suicide law in Florida,” Thomas wrote. “Only we should go beyond the laws approved by voters in Washington and Oregon.” What Thomas meant by “go beyond” was that Florida, with its large senior population, should not only legalize doctor-prescribed suicide for the terminally ill, but for those with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia as well. In the past, according to Thomas, Florida’s nursing homes—where the state’s dementia patients usually end up—were simply warehouses with “countless cases of neglect, infected sores, sexual abuse, malnourishment and deaths.” Now that the Florida Legislature is proposing “deep cuts” in Medicaid funding for nursing home patients, on top of federal Medicare cuts for the nursing homes, those “hellhole” warehouses are likely to return, especially for dementia patients. “I’m not arguing that we pour unlimited funds into nursing home,” he opined. “Our plundering of the next generation has to stop somewhere.” [“Law should allow choice of death over dementia,” Orlando Sentinel, 4/25/11 ]

The rationale underpinning Thomas’ commentary—as well as the responses to the Suffolk University polling question—was predicted by Derek Humphry (Final Exit author and Hemlock Society co-founder) and Mary Clement in their book, Freedom to Die:

Similar to other social issues, the right-to-die movement has not arisen separate and distinct from other concurrent developments of our time. In attempting to answer the question Why Now?, one must look at the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society, because in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice. As technology advances, as medical costs skyrocket out of control, as chronic diseases predominate, as the projected rate of the eighty-five-and-older population accelerates, as managed care seeks to cut costs and as Medicare is predicted to go bankrupt by 2007, the pressures of cost containment provide impetus, whether openly acknowledged or not, for the practicalities of an assisted death. [Freedom to Die: People, Politics, and the Right-to-die Movement, 2000, p. 339 (paperback); emphasis added.]

˜ A recently published Time Magazine article echoed Thomas’ call for dementia patients’ right to die. Referring to recent research advances that would make it possible to detect the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of any symptoms, Erik Parens and Josephine Johnston (both research scholars at the Hastings Center) wrote that early detection would help patients and their families “plan for the future”—a future that “could include patients planning their own deaths.”

We cannot ignore competent people who say they would rather die than no longer recognize their children or the partner with whom they built a life. Nor should we dismiss those who say that they can’t themselves afford to pay for years of nursing home care, don’t want their children saddled with that expense, or would rather that the money be used for their grandchildren’s education…. Fear should not keep us from trying to imagine whether we can honor the truly informed requests of people who believe that the way of dying that fits best with their understanding of a good life, is to leave before Alzheimer’s fully takes hold. [Time Magazine, 6/8/11]

˜ An article, published in the Seattle Weekly’s “Health and Welfare” section, explicitly instructed readers on how to make and use their own “helium-hood” suicide kit. (See page 3 for more on the kit.) The article also reported that the Oregon House of Representatives had passed a bill outlawing those kits. Then the author, Curtis Cartier, wrote this: “Oregonians with an unshakable desire to end their lives are therefore encouraged to seek out more traditional methods of suicide.” [“How to Kill Yourself With a Suicide Kit,” Seattle Weekly, 6/13/11]

Editor’s comment: Has legalized assisted-suicide in both Oregon and Washington so altered the thinking there that a newspaper feels justified in openly teaching people how to kill themselves and encouraging Oregonians to use “more traditional methods of suicide” in lieu of a mail-order kit? Many would call this and the calls for induced deaths for dementia patients (see p. 6) classic examples of the slippery slope.

˜ Dementia patients are clearly an endangered species in the Netherlands. In 2010, 21 early-stage dementia patients were reported euthanized by lethal injection, up from 3 such deaths reported in 2006. Over the last year, public hearings have been held to instruct seniors—even those who are healthy—about their “right” to die, particularly as it applies to a future dementia diagnoses. “That people are putting themselves forward for death so early suggests that there has been quite a bit of pressure put on them,” observed Phyllis Bowman of the British group Right to Life. [Daily Mail, 6/29/11] A national poll, conducted by the hospitals of Utrecht, Groningen, and Rotterdam Universities, found that 1 in 3 Dutch doctors are willing to terminate the lives of early-stage dementia patients. [Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 6/26/11]

˜ According to a report, published in the journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology, doctors in Belgium are harvesting organs from euthanized patients, organs that doctors say are superior in quality to those obtained from brain-dead patients or those who have suffered cardiac arrest. Approximately 25 percent of Belgian lung donors and 3 percent of heart donors have died by lethal injection. Doctors are quick to say that all the euthanasia and organ procurement procedures were performed in a hospital with the patient’s consent and on the day requested by the patient. Donor patients who have debilitating neurological or muscular conditions, like multiple sclerosis, have organs suitable for transplantation. Cancer patients do not. [Pabst Publishers Press Release, 6/10/11; Mercator.net, 6/13/11; Daily Mail, 6/14/11]

“Given that half of all euthanasia cases in Belgium are involuntary, it must be only a matter of time before the organs are taken from patients who are euthanized without their consent,” warned Dr. Peter Saunders, head of Care Not Killing, a British coalition of diverse groups and individuals opposed to euthanasia. “Doctors there are now doing things that most doctors in other countries would find absolutely horrific.” [Telegraph, 6/14/11]

˜ Nowhere has the issue of assisted suicide been more hotly debated than in Great Britain—thanks to continued flame-stoking by the BBC and the advocacy group Dignity in Dying (DID). Since 2008, the BBC has aired five programs, all in favor of legalizing assisted suicide. The most controversial was broadcast on June 13, after weeks of all the hype and fanfare the BBC and DID could muster. The program, “Choosing to Die,” hosted by science fiction writer Sir Terry Pratchett, showed the actual death of millionaire Peter Smedley, 71, at the suicide clinic Dignitas in Switzerland. Smedley, who had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), was still in an early stage of the disease. He was accompanied by his resigned wife and cheered on by Pratchett, who has early-stage Alzheimer’s and is a generous patron of DID. Earlier in the show, Pratchett interviewed Andrew Colgan, 42, who had MS and also died at Dignitas. His death was not shown. It was later revealed by his brother that something went wrong, and it took over 90 minutes for Colgan to die—a fact that the BBC and Pratchett neglected to mention. [Times, 6/13/11; Daily Mail, 6/14/11 & 6/26/11]

At the same time the BBC and DID are pushing assisted suicide, the scandalous state of elder care in the UK is coming to light. The care provided by the National Health Service (NHS) in some areas is so bad that doctors are having to write prescriptions for drinking water so that elderly patients don’t die of thirst in the hospital. A recent report by the Care Quality Commission indicates that over 800 die of dehydration every year and another 300 die of malnutrition. In some hospitals, staff routinely ignore elderly patients’ calls for help. [Daily Mail, 5/27/11]