just what is needed is just another opinion from an ATTORNEY about suicides and chronic intractable pain… and how people dealing with intractable chronic pain – especially those not getting adequate pain management — WOULD NOT CONSIDER COMMITTING SUICIDE. The article has no place to place a comment and there was no web link to reach out to the author.
And some “data” from Oregon
Oregon data indicate that among the leading reasons people request lethal prescriptions are psychosocial factors such as perceived lessening of autonomy or feeling they are a burden.
Imagine that…. a person not receiving adequate pain management could in no way could “feel like a burden” to their family ?
Wasn’t it Oregon a couple of years ago that was proposing that Oregon Medicaid would no longer pay for any opiates for chronic pain pts ?
Opinion: It’s not end-of-of life care. It’s assisted suicide, and it needs to be stopped
It defies imagination that Connecticut is contemplating legalizing assisted suicide when COVID-19 deaths have exceeded 500,000 nationwide. The virus has laid bare the inequities and prejudices of our health system. Low-income people and people of color are dying at disproportionately high rates. Connecticut has the highest COVID-19 nursing home death rate in the Northeast. An appalling 91 out of every 100,000 nursing home residents in Connecticut have died. Early in the crisis, members of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics wrote chillingly that “typical medical options may soon not be available to everyone.”
Yet, as concerned health care providers said, “Guidelines that evaluate patients by age or ‘comorbid conditions [that] impact survival’ or ‘underlying medical diseases that may hinder recovery’ implicitly rely on value judgments about these patients’ quality of life and deny these patients justice in our health care system.”
The Connecticut assisted suicide bill would let a doctor write lethal prescriptions for people deemed to have a life expectancy of less than six months if they so request, and would grant broad legal immunity to everyone involved in their deaths. Terminology about an “end-of-life option” or “aid in dying,” confusing assisted suicide with palliative care, or soaring rhetoric about choice and self-determination belies the fact that the only course of action facilitated is death.
There is a sharp distinction between a patient deciding when not to have life-prolonging treatment — which a patient has every right to do — and a doctor actively and knowingly prescribing lethal drugs to directly cause the patient’s death. As Dr. Joseph Marine, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has stated, assisted suicide “is not medical care. It has no basis in medical science or medical tradition. … The drug concoctions used to end patients’ lives … come from the euthanasia movement and not from the medical profession or medical research.”
It is a misconception that people turn to assisted suicide due to uncontrollable pain.
Oregon data indicate that among the leading reasons people request lethal prescriptions are psychosocial factors such as perceived lessening of autonomy or feeling they are a burden.
An “end of life option” law forecloses options in a very basic sense. It arbitrarily uses health status to exempt people from the suicide prevention services others receive (while discounting the possibility of errors in diagnosis and prognosis as well as the potential for support services to address the person’s concerns).
Assisted suicide sends the wrong message to people with disabilities. It is telling that in Washington state, one of few states that, like Oregon, has legalized assisted suicide, just 4 percent of the people who have used the act were given mental health evaluations.
Although the law proposed for Connecticut would mandate that a person receive “counseling” to determine mental status before obtaining lethal drugs, that is just to determine if there is “impaired judgment.” The law also allows for licensed clinical social workers, in addition to psychologists or psychiatrists, to do the mental health consultation. There is also no requirement that a person be evaluated just prior to taking these drugs. Mood and outlook can fluctuate radically based on physical factors like oxygen level as well as situational factors such as dread of being isolated in a nursing home because of the lack of in-home support.
Disinterested parties need not be present to ensure the drugs are self-administered and taken freely. The difficulties created by the pandemic have caused domestic abuse to skyrocket. There are bound to be at least some cases in which a person is steered or coerced into taking the pills by someone whose life might be emotionally, practically or financially easier if he died sooner rather than later.
In this grim time, a Boston University study has found that COVID-19-related stressors have caused one out of three adults to be depressed. The lead author wrote eloquently, “We would hope that these findings promote creating a society where a robust safety net exists.”
Legalizing assisted suicide would do the opposite. It would increase the shredding of the social fabric. Now is not the time for the state to enact this type of law. If we are honest about the inherent dangers, there will never be such a time.
Lisa Blumberg is a Hartford-area lawyer, writer and disability rights activist.
Filed under: General Problems
Oregon’s death with dignity is, in part, really nasty oncologist’s way to rid their practice of helping their practice of “near the end and horribly in pain” cancer patients. Instead of helping these patients cross over with as little pain and stress as possible, which these patients and their families come to them for, it is a quick and horrible way to trick them into cutting off their dignity and abandoning them at their darkest moment.
I have told this (truth) before but about 20 years ago my Husband was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. He was about 75. He is 91 now. It could have been an honest mistake because we were told a few years ago his cancer appears to be dead. You don’t have cancer anymore. Likely it happened because they found a hemangeoma on t-8 and refused to biopsy it labeling it metatastic cancer.. No one wanted to take him on saying he was too old. We went to a surgeon who told him “the only…surgery I would do is to cut off your penis.” I asked why he said it in such an ugly way and he retorted.. because it is ugly surgery.
About then his phone rang. He talked right in front of us. The conversation went something like this: “…yes, I understand. Your Dad can’t breath because he is dying… No your Father and I have a contract. It doesn’t matter what he wants now. He agreed to this. No. No. No…” As he hung up he looked to us. I was furious at his crude manner with this family. He said Sorry, I am on call. “I moved to Oregon because of this law.” I told my Husband we needed to leave because if you were dying and this cretin were your doctor I would take HIM OUT.
Pain and end of life diseases that are painful don’t need to be ugly. Some doctors use their MD to bully and cajole their patients to sign a lifespan agreement. “..you have cancer/pain/whatever and you will live x months and at the end I will help you with drugs, (to not be uncomfortable.” The patient (and family) at the other end of that phone call did not sound comfortable.) I overheard pain, fear, desperation and a doctor moving on to new more monied patients whom he could talk into another contract. Move them along, get their money and move in fresh meat.
If you sign that contract you can definitely have your Son stop the contract as long as you are alert and ask him to, even if you just motion with your finger. But if the doctor doesn’t inform you, if you are unaware you have that right, you are dead before you an call a lawyer.
My friends with unmanaged pain have strokes, heart attacks or suffer a self inflicted gunshot to their brain. Doctors have already let them down..
Back when they started making end of life laws, I vaguely remember a woman trapped in a body with tubes and bags, unable to communicate much and she lived that way for years with no end in sight. Pain was constant. She wanted to die. Honestly and with many years to think about it chose to die. In some cases I want to believe it is still that way. But manipulative doctors can make it a nasty trick. I don’t think it is that way anymore.
Some people should never be doctors. They should carry a shovel and follow herds of elephants. You don’t need humanity or compassion there…,
VERY FEW “doctors” are TRUE doctors. Their families or an inordinate hunger for easy money got them in med school and they promised themselves that the second they got out they would think of nothing but money. How fortunate it is that we have real doctors like Dr. Kline, etc. to convict these all of murder and sadism under God’s Sun Trust me your Father and mine are much better off distinguished from these bad seeds.
I find it funny that this clown is a disability rights activist .No I dont, But I find her laughable that she can write about people looking to die because the pain is to much.. Ya think if she really was a “disability activist” she would be fighting for patients to get the proper pain medicine so they wouldnt want to die? Im gonna guess she hasnt done one thing for people with disability’s