Health minister says disabled should have help killing themselves

Health minister's assisted suicide comments condemned by SPUC Pro-Life: In an interview in The Times newspaper, Britain's new health minister Anna Soubry called it "ridiculous" that disabled and chronically-ill people are not given help to kill themselves in Britain."

Related: Italy "too Catholic" to legalize killing the disabled

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What we weren’t told about Terry Pratchett’s ‘award-winning’ euthanasia documentary

What we weren’t told about Terry Pratchett’s ‘award-winning’ euthanasia documentary | NRL News Today: Fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett won a Bafta for his ‘documentary’ Choosing To Die, in which he followed a man with motor neurone disease to Switzerland in order to film him killing himself at the Dignitas facility. The man’s wife, who was clearly very uncomfortable about the whole event, but went along with it out of deference to her husband, was prevented from comforting him as he died by one of the facility staff.

At a recent meeting where Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship was speaking a woman told him  she had always supported assisted suicide before seeing the film, but that watching it had caused her to change her mind. She now strongly opposes a change in the law.

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Head of GPs in UK takes stand against assisted dying

BioEdge: Head of GPs in UK takes stand against assisted dying: The president of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK, Iona Heath, has taken a strong stand against the legalisation of assisted suicide. In an eloquent article in the BMJ she argues that campaigns in support of assisted dying rely on an excessively rosy view of society.

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Georgia replaces assisted-suicide law that was tossed out

News in brief - May 21, 2012 - amednews.com: Georgia has enacted legislation to outlaw physician-assisted suicide, replacing a law the state Supreme Court struck down in February on First Amendment grounds. The law makes it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for any licensed Georgia “health care provider” to knowingly and willfully assist in the commission of a suicide.

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Campaign to legalize assisted suicide in S Africa

Campaign to legalise assisted suicide in SA - Mail & Guardian Online: A controversial campaign to legalise doctor-assisted suicide and active euthanasia was launched in Cape Town on Thursday, spearheaded by the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicsSA) and Dignity SA. The launch comes two weeks after the much-publicized return to South Africa of Dignity SA founder Sean Davison, following his five-month house arrest in New Zealand for assisting his aged mother to die.

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Assisted suicide or a show of love?

LA Times: Alan Purdy, 88, sat by while his beloved Margaret, 84 and in unrelieved pain, killed herself. San Diego County authorities arrested him, but the issue is tough for everyone involved. Prosecutors worry that declining to prosecute will put them on a slippery slope: What if the next case involves someone whose illness was not terminal? What if the surviving partner had a financial interest in the death?

70 patients died under Washington state’s assisted-suicide law in 2011

News in brief - May 14, 2012 - amednews.com: The number of Washington state residents who died of physician-assisted suicide rose to 70 in 2011, up from 51 in 2010 and 36 in 2009, when the state’s Death With Dignity Act took effect. The Washington State Dept. of Health reported in May that 103 patients requested and received lethal doses of medications from 80 different physicians in 2011.

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Beware 'suicide contagion'

NRLC: The latest figures for Oregon show that cases of assisted suicide have gone from 16 in 1998 to 71 in 2011, an increase of 450% (see chart). Switzerland has seen a 700% increase in assisted suicides over the same period. Swiss authorities have recorded a steady rise of assisted suicides in recent years, from 43 in 1998 to 297 in 2009. Earlier figures are not available, even though assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942.

The experience of both countries demonstrates that when assisted suicide is legalised there will inevitably be incremental extension. A major factor fuelling this increase is suicide contagion – the so-called Werther effect. This is particularly dangerous when assisted suicides are backed by celebrities as they are here and given high media profile as they are frequently by the BBC.

Last Will & Embezzlement

Imagine the Elder Exploitation in an Assisted Suicide World: The abuse wouldn’t just be about property.

Vermont senate removes assisted suicide language from bill

Burlington Free Press: For nearly two hours Thursday afternoon, the Vermont Senate focused on legislation that would allow people with fewer than six months to live to opt for a lethal dose of medication. From the start, it was clear the legislation wouldn’t pass — and it didn’t, failing on a procedural vote. The point, though, was just to have the debate, supporters said. The Senate Health and Welfare Committee had earlier this week attached the end-of-life legislation to a bill that would prohibit those under age 18 from using tanning salons.

Physician-Assisted Suicides in Oregon Increasing in Number with Less Information

PCCEF - Articles: The Public Health Department of the Oregon Health Authority released their report for physician-assisted suicides for the 2011 year. Their report is available online. Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation is concerned with multiple areas of the report. Among their concerns are:

• There were more prescriptions and deaths than in any previous year, indicative of an increase in hopelessness and despair among a vulnerable population with serious illness.
• As in previous years, there was virtually no formal evaluation for underlying depression, anxiety or other serious mental health issue. Only one of the 71 patients was referred for psychiatric evaluation. Are we failing to recognize and address the despair that is frequently found in patients near the end of life? What are we doing to protect these vulnerable Oregonians?
• As in previous years, pain has not been a major concern; only one third of patients had inadequate pain control or concern about it. The most commonly expressed concerns of those dying from physician-assisted suicide were unchanged from previous reports: less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable, losing autonomy, and loss of dignity.
• In only 6 cases was the prescribing physician present at the time of ingestion, thus very little is known or reported regarding events at the time of ingestion of the medications. 
• With each passing year, Oregonians know less and less about what is really happening with assisted suicides in the state. The proper practice of all aspects of medicine requires adequate oversight and peer review. 

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Attempt to relax UK law on assisted suicide fails

Attempt to relax the law on assisted suicide fails | News | The Christian Institute: An attempt to undermine the law against assisted suicide has been unanimously rejected by the House of Commons. In stark contrast the Commons gave unanimous backing to an amendment encouraging the development of specialist palliative care services.

Related: The “Right to Die”—a misanthropic green light to defeatism

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Oregon Report Shows More Assisted Suicides, More Secrecy

Oregon Report Shows More Assisted Suicides, More Secrecy | NRL News Today: Assisted suicide proponents argue that getting the government to sanction medically induced death results in patient autonomy. Of course, they may be the only people nowadays who believe that increased government involvement results in increased individual autonomy.

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Case of locked-in syndrome seeks to establish dangerous precedent

Case of locked-in syndrome seeks to establish dangerous precedent | NRL News Today: Legal action brought by a locked-in syndrome sufferer, who wants a doctor to be able to end his ‘intolerable’ life lawfully, can go ahead following a judge’s ruling Monday. The Ministry of Justice had previously argued that the case should be struck out on the grounds that it is a matter for parliament, rather than the courts, to decide. But the judge’s ruling today means that Mr. Nicklinson’s case will go to a full hearing, where medical evidence can be heard.

Related BBC article

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Joke Oregon Assisted Suicide Report Published

Wesley J. Smith: One of the great propaganda coups of the assisted suicide movement was making people believe that the Oregon annual reports about assisted suicide were meaningful or informative. But, for example:

• They are based almost solely on self reporting by death doctors, who are about as likely to tell the state that they broke the law as they are to tell the IRS they cheated on their taxes;
• The Oregon Health Authority has no authority or budget to investigate abuses or violations–even if a doctor did self confess. All they can do is refer to the physician’s licensing board.
• The documentation is destroyed after the report is published so there is no independent way to check.
• Over the years, the reports have grown increasingly sparse–seemingly for political impact. For example, in the first few years, it would report how long the death doctor knew the patient who died by assisted suicide and it was often two weeks or even less, meaning that assisted suicide practice was sometimes mere Kevorkianism. Once opponents began hitting that button, the information ceased being publicized in a truly accessible manner.

Assisted-Suicide Doctor Invokes Law He Built

Daily Beast: Peter Goodwin is dying. He has corticobasal degeneration, a condition that resembles Parkinson’s disease, but takes a much more aggressive and lethal course. And so, in the very near future—maybe weeks, maybe months—Goodwin, a resident of Oregon, will use that state’s controversial Death With Dignity Act to end his own life. That Goodwin should find himself in this situation is a novelistic twist, considering that he was one of the doctors responsible for getting the law passed in the first place.

The Death With Dignity Act became legal in Oregon in 1997. Since then, more than 500 terminally ill patients have used its provisions to end their lives with their doctor’s help. The number of patients who opt for this course has increased every year since the law went into effect.

“I’ve been sort of surprised and disappointed by how slowly this process has grown, mostly because, of course, it runs in the face of most religious faiths. Because death really is the territory of the religious hierarchy, and the religious hierarchy is very intolerant to this new idea,” Goodwin says. “But why it hasn’t caught on with the mass of people is surprising for me.” And he does seem genuinely surprised. For Goodwin, this is a simple issue of personal freedom and autonomy. “And that’s what our country is based on,” he says. Since the law went into effect, Goodwin himself has assisted in the death of many patients.

Editor: A "novelistic twist" would be if a person who campaign against assisted suicide opted for it. Or, better yet, if a person who campaigned for it ultimately rejected it as a solution to his or her suffering.

Ga. court overturns assisted suicide restrictions

AP: Georgia's top court struck down a state law that restricted assisted suicides, siding on Monday with four members of a suicide group who said the law violated their free speech rights. It means that four members of the Final Exit Network who were charged in February 2009 with helping a 58-year-old cancer-stricken man die won't have to stand trial, defense attorneys said.

Georgia law doesn't expressly forbid assisted suicide. But lawmakers in 1994 adopted a law that bans people from publicly advertising suicide, hoping to prevent assisted suicide from the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the late physician who sparked the national right-to-die debate. The law makes it a felony for anyone who "publicly advertises, offers or holds himself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose." The court's opinion found that lawmakers could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction of free speech, or sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide that were followed by the act.

‘Biased’ assisted suicide report under fire from critics

‘Biased’ assisted suicide report under fire from critics | News | The Christian Institute: The report, which was produced by the UK Commission on Assisted Dying, says that adults who are thought to have less than a year to live should be able to ask doctors for drugs which would end their life. But Dr Peter Saunders, campaign director of the pro-life group Care Not Killing, said: “This investigation was unnecessary, biased and lacking in transparency, and its report is seriously flawed. It is being spun as a comprehensive, objective and independent review into this complicated issue. It is anything but.”

Related: 'Strong case' for assisted suicide in UK

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Massachusetts Medical Society Reaffirms Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

Massachusetts Medical Society | MMS Physicians Reaffirm Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Massachusetts Medical Society, the statewide association of physicians with more than 23,000 members, today voted to reaffirm its opposition to physician-assisted suicide, with its House of Delegates voting by a wide margin to maintain a policy the Society has had in effect since 1996.

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Doctors in the UK who provide medical reports for patients seeking assisted suicide abroad could be prosecuted

Christian Medical Comment: MDU warns that doctors who provide medical reports for patients seeking assisted suicide abroad could be prosecuted: The Medical Defence Union Journal has published a case study to emphasise the point that doctors who supply medical records to patients who are intending to commit suicide could well be prosecuted.

The article lists 16 criteria which make prosecution more likely in any case of assisted suicide. One of these is that ‘the suspect was acting in his or her capacity as a medical doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional, a professional carer [whether for payment or not], or as a person in authority, such as a prison officer, and the victim was in his or her care’

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