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Disability Activists Urge Georgia Legislators to "Get it Right" on Assisted Suicide

Today, Georgia disability activists, including members of Not Dead Yet, reacted to the Georgia Supreme Court ruling that overturned a 1994 law on assisted suicide on First Amendment grounds. The overturned statute only criminalized the advertising of suicide assistance and, in effect, left unadvertised suicide assistance free from legal prosecution. The Court found that the main effect of the law was to criminalize certain speech, since the advertising was made illegal, with or without an actual commission of assisted suicide.

"When we heard the state attorney say, during oral arguments, that the law was never meant to apply to friends and families 'assisting' suicides but only to publicity hounds, we were pretty sure that the Court was going to throw this law out, one way or another," said Linda Pogue, a local disability rights advocate.

"You can't really blame the court, given the statute they were handed," disability activist Rebecca Tuttle added. "Most of us were under the mistaken impression that Georgia had in fact made suicide assistance illegal, helping to ensure that old, ill and disabled people get equal suicide prevention and equal protection of the law."

"We call on the Georgia legislature to tackle this issue again as soon as possible and get it right this time," Eleanor Smith, a member of Not Dead Yet of Georgia.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identify feelings of hopelessness, social isolation, and financial loss as known risk factors for suicide.

"Due to the constant social and physical barriers society puts in our way, old, ill and disabled people can be even more prone to falling into suicidal despair at times," said Diane Coleman of national Not Dead Yet. "When you look at these factors in suicidal thoughts of old, ill and disabled people, it's clear that our suicides are every bit as tragic and preventable as the rest of the population, and Georgia law should provide equal protection in the form of equal suicide prevention, not suicide assistance."

 

 

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• Ga. court overturns assisted suicide restrictions (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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• Georgia Supreme Court Strikes Assisted Suicide Law (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)

As Tests to Predict Alzheimer's Emerge, So May Debates Over the Right to Die

I beleive i have talked about this but, when i was "activly" traveling with the disability rights groups ADAPT  & NDY (Not Dead Yet) we went to Michigan to protest outside a hemlock sociaty gathering. I was young and never thought about what the person who was sick or un able to do this thing called life anymore. Now I totally support what ever the person chooses. Kavorikian was not a bad man. Yes tons of activists did not care for him but after watching a documentary on him before he passed away last week i saw what he was about and agreed with him.

~Handi

 

 Jack Kevorkian's fervid fascination with death made him a deeply unattractive human being. Yet he forced us to confront questions that, much as we might want to, we cannot ignore. Do some of us face fates worse than death, such that it can be rational and reasonable to request help in committing suicide? And should others of us help them to die?

Recent scientific advances make these questions relevant to millions more Americans. Tests are coming that promise to detect the beginning of Alzheimer's before symptoms of dementia have developed, when the individual is still lucid and competent. One test in the works uses Amyvid, a chemical that (in conjunction with neuroimaging technology) can detect brain plaques before the classic symptoms of Alzheimer's can be observed. According to the FDA, Amyvid is not yet ready for prime time, but when it or another similar agent is, millions of baby boomers at risk for Alzheimer's will be potential consumers of it.

Because currently there is no cure for Alzheimer's, early detection of the development of the disease could not promote early treatment. Rather, as researchers and clinicians have noted, early detection could help patients and their families "plan for the future." Seldom though, do these researchers and clinicians say what this planning might involve, let alone explicitly acknowledge that it could include patients planning their own deaths.

It's understandable that we have put off a frank discussion about the possibility of such plans. Talking about death is dauntingly hard in general, and seeking one's own is usually considered a sign of mental illness. The idea that currently functional individuals who test positive for Alzheimer's might plan to die before the disease devastates their brains, and might seek the assistance of their friends, family or physicians, will strike many as monstrous.

After all, people who test positive cannot know with certainty what Alzheimer's will be like for them. They cannot know whether the disease might actually bring a new form of happiness, a release from the shackles of normal cognition. They cannot know whether it might be deeply meaningful for their children or partner to care for them. They may be unable to imagine how heartbreakingly hard, if not impossible, it could be for a loving family member to help them die.

 

Moreover, none of us can know what sort of slippery slope that request might put our society on; one day we're giving assistance in dying to Alzheimer's sufferers, the next we're doing the same for people who are depressed or disabled or poor or just old.

It is vitally important for us to explore all of the reasons against allowing or assisting Alzheimer's patients to end their lives. And it is equally important to begin to explore the reasons on the other side. It is time to listen to and take seriously those people who, upon seeing their own parents spend years, even decades, suffering with Alzheimer's, say that they refuse to expose their partner or children to the same. 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.

When it becomes possible to detect Alzheimer's disease before it has progressed, these arguments will no longer be academic. The question for our society, including our legal system, medical practitioners, religious institutions and patient support groups, is whether we will dismiss those who make these arguments as depressed and misguided or whether we will engage with them on their terms.

One of the prices we pay for our new powers of prediction is difficult conversations about still more difficult choices. 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. Asking policy makers, clinicians, disease advocates and others to start taking this possibility seriously doesn't mean we have any neat answers to the myriad, profound questions it raises. We don't. We do believe, however, that we have an ethical obligation to face these questions, in solidarity with the millions of individuals and families who otherwise will have to face them alone.

 

Times/Healthland

HBO Documentary:How To die in Oregon

Premiers Thursday May 26th at 8pm on HBO

(check local Listings)

 

Synopsis

In 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. As a result, any individual whom two physicians diagnose as having less than six months to live can lawfully request a fatal dose of barbiturate to end his or her life. Since 1994, more than 500 Oregonians have taken their mortality into their own hands. In How to Die in Oregon, filmmaker Peter Richardson gently enters the lives of the terminally ill as they consider whether – and when – to end their lives by lethal overdose. Richardson examines both sides of this complex, emotionally charged issue. What emerges is a life-affirming, staggeringly powerful portrait of what it means to die with dignity.

Reviews

“The rare film that dares to detail the physical, emotional and philosophical challenges attendant to human mortality, Peter D Richardson’s beautifully intimate documentary, HTDIO uses the titular states Death With Dignity Act to portray terminally ill patients who choose to end their lives painlessly and legally. Aptly harrowing, but inspiring as well, the film finds an unforgettable subject in Cody Curtis, a 54 year-old woman whose liver cancer forces her to weigh life and death on evertipping scales. HBO’s exquisite docu, winner of Sundance’s grand jury prize, wisely favors the personal over the political, meriting impassioned
responses wherever it plays.”

– Rob Nelson, Variety

 

HBO/Documentaries

How to die in Oregon

Allowing assisted suicide would 'pressurize disabled to kill themselves'

 

Disabled people say they fear a new law on assisted dying will pressure them into taking their own lives.

Celebrities including the author Sir Terry Pratchett and the actor Sir Patrick Stewart have backed a campaign to allow terminally ill patients to receive help to die.

But a new poll found 70 per cent of disabled people were concerned that such a reform would create pressure on vulnerable patients to “end their lives prematurely”.

The survey for Scope, the leading disability charity, also found 3 per cent of the 500 disabled people questioned in the ComRes poll feared that they would personally come under pressure to commit suicide if the law were changed.

The findings follow a row over the BBC’s plans to broadcast a programme showing a man taking his own life at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland. The documentary is to be presented by Sir Terry, who has Alzheimer’s and is a supporter of euthanasia. It is due to be aired this summer.

Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope, said: “Assisted suicide is a complex and emotional issue, and there are loud and passionate voices on both sides of the debate.“But while high profile lawyers, doctors and celebrities such as Terry Pratchett and Patrick Stewart grab the headlines, the views of the thousands of ordinary disabled people who could be affected by this issue are rarely listened to.

“Our survey findings confirm that concerns about legalising assisted suicide are not just held by a minority, but by a substantial majority of those this law would affect.

“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.”

Mr Hawkes called on the Government to establish a new independent commission to explore the question of whether assisted dying should be legalised.

The Scope/ComRes survey also disclosed that 56 per cent of disabled people felt the legalisation of assisted suicide would be detrimental to the way that they are viewed by society as a whole.

High profile supporters of the Dignity in Dying campaign to reform the law include the author Ian McEwan and former England cricketer Chris Broad, whose late wife committed suicide after suffering from motor neurone disease. The campaign calls for a change in the law to legalise assisted suicide for mentally competent, terminally ill adults.

An unofficial “commission”, chaired by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, and organised by the think-tank Demos, is currently holding an inquiry into the issue.

The head of end-of-life care for the NHS in the West Midlands told the commission that the current law was not fit for the 21st century and called for patients to be given more choice over how they die.

 

The Telegraph

Related articles

• BBC accused of being 'cheerleader for assisted suicide' over Terry Pratchett documentary (dailymail.co.uk)
• Suicide drugs will go on sale at chemist if euthanasia is legalised, claim experts (dailymail.co.uk)
• Trek actor joins suicide debate (bbc.co.uk)