assisted suicide

The Changing Rules for Organ Donation

nancyvalko assisted suicide, brain injury, disability, medical ethics, organ donation

BACKGROUND

Whether we are renewing our driver’s licenses, reading the news or watching TV, it’s almost impossible to miss the campaign to persuade us to sign an organ donation card.

But do we really know what we are signing?

While internet organ donor registration sites like Donate Life America and organdonor.gov still maintain that vital organs can only be harvested (the technical term for removal) after brain death (a controversial issue itself ), a whole new category of organ donors initially called NHBD (non-heart beating organ donors) and later changed to DCD (donation after cardiac death) was added in the 1990s.  This new pool of organ donors are patients who are severely brain-injured but not brain dead, on ventilators (breathing machines) and considered hopeless in terms of survival or predicted “quality of life”.

Organs from these patients are taken when families agree to stop the ventilator and allow doctors to take the person to an operating room where the patient’s organs are removed when (or if) the patient’s heartbeat and breathing stops for 2-5 minutes within a 1-2 hour time frame. If the patient does not die within the time frame, the transplant is cancelled because the organs are potentially damaged and the patient is then returned to a room to die without further treatment.

At first, there was some criticism of DCD on legal, medical and ethical grounds, especially after a 1997 segment of the TV show “60 Minutes” exposed the case of a young gunshot victim whose organs were taken by DCD but the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy said he believed the injury was survivable.

Nevertheless, this new kind of organ donation was deemed ethically acceptable in 2000 by the US Institutes of Medicine while unfortunately also finding “opinion is divided on the option of non-heart-beating donation for the patient who is ventilator dependent but conscious and who wants to stop life-sustaining treatment.“

As of 2015, DCD comprised 8.9 percent of all transplants in the US but the procedure is still little-known to the public.

THE DEAD DONOR RULE AND IMMINENT DEATH DONATION

In 2016, UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing), the organization that manages the nation’s organ transplant system under contract with the federal government, issued its decision on Imminent Death Donation, a policy that would take DCD a step farther to become virtual organ donor euthanasia.

Because “a substantial minority” of DCD donors fail to die fast enough in the 1-2 hour time frame for organ donation, UNOS was considering re-framing the issue as “the recovery of a living donor organ immediately prior to an impending and planned withdrawal of ventilator support expected to result in the patient’s death” to ensure better quality organs and avoid an unsuccessful procedure. (Emphasis added)

Not only would this language change DCD donors from dead donors to living donors, but this also effectively destroys the definition of Dead Donor Rule that states:

“The dead donor rule is an ethical norm that has been formulated in at least two ways: (1) organ donors must be dead before procurement of organs begins; (2) organ procurement itself must not cause the death of the donor. (Emphasis in original)

Although living organ donation can be ethical when a healthy person freely decides to donate an organ like one kidney to someone who has lost kidney function, this imminent death donation is entirely different because the donor’s organ is taken before a planned and expected death.

Writing in a 2013 New England Journal of Medicine article “The Dead-Donor Rule and the Future of Organ Donation”, a group of prominent doctors gave this rationale for abandoning the dead donor rule:

“Respect for autonomy requires that people be given choices in the circumstances of their dying, including donating organs. Nonmaleficence requires protecting patients from harm. Accordingly, patients should be permitted to donate vital organs except in circumstances in which doing so would harm them; and they would not be harmed when their death was imminent owing to a decision to stop life support. That patients be dead before their organs are recovered is not a foundational ethical requirement.” (Emphasis added)

The following year, a polling study in the Journal of Medical Ethics concluded that  the American public is “largely in support of organ removal even though it causes death in this scenario.” (Emphasis added)

CONSEQUENCES

Although UNOS ultimately decided to shelve last year’s proposal to approve Imminent Death Donation “because of its potential risks at this time, due to a lack of community support and substantial challenges to implementation”, that decision may only be temporary:

“In the future, it may be possible to adequately address those challenges through additional research or careful policy development or revision.”

However, apparently no bad ethical idea ever really dies when it comes to increasing the number of organs to transplant and now UNOS is currently considering “Living Organ Donation by Persons with Certain Fatal Diseases who Meet the Criteria to be Living Organ Donors”.

Thanks to the disability advocacy group Not Dead Yet (NDY), I was recently alerted to this new  proposed organ donation policy change and read UNOS’ public comment proposal that describes such patients as having “a progressive, incurable, chronic disease that is fatal and will ultimately be terminal” and gives examples like Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis.

In its statement opposing the policy change, NDY points out:

“Yet the Committee seems to want to create a special subgroup of living donors to whom the normal rules governing living donations do not apply and whose deaths are of less concern than the deaths of other donors because these living donors are presumably anticipated to die soon anyway. The recommendations would promote overt and lethal discrimination between donors based on disability and perceived health status…

One example of the Committee’s biased double standard is while OPTN policy is not to accept persons as living donors if they show evidence of suicidality, it urges an exception for people with certain fatal diseases so as not to preclude people with plans for assisted suicide (where legal) from first undergoing a living organ donation. (pg. 10) …Surely, public confidence in the organ procurement system will not be enhanced by any policy proposal that hints toward a future in which organ euthanasia is accepted and promoted.” (Emphasis added)

CONCLUSION

Unfortunately, the short time frame for public comments on this new policy is now closed and UNOS apparently does not send out alerts to the general public. Also, to the detriment of the public, the media tends to publicize feel-good stories about donation rather than explore controversial policies.

Personally, I am for ethical donation of organs and tissues. Years ago, I volunteered to donate a kidney to a friend and our youngest grandson was saved in 2013 by an adult stem cell transplant.

But I do not have an organ donor card nor encourage others to sign one because I believe that standard organ donor cards give too little information for truly informed consent. Instead, my family knows that I am willing to donate tissues like corneas that can be ethically donated after natural death and will only agree to that donation.

The bottom line is that what we don’t know-or allowed to know-can indeed hurt us, especially when it comes to organ donation. We need to demand transparency and information before such policies are quietly implemented.

 

Can There Really Be a “Safer” Physician-assisted Suicide?

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, end-of-life, medical ethics, mental health, suicide

In August, I wrote a blog “Physician-assisted Suicide and the Palliative Care Physician”  about Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter,  a palliative care doctor in California who approved of physician-assisted suicide, would want it for herself but had still had serious some qualms about actually writing for the lethal overdose herself.

In the end, Dr. Zitter decides that assisted suicide can be rendered “safe” by being rare and practiced by specially trained medical practitioners as “just one tool in the toolbox of caring for the dying-a tool of last resort.”

Thus, Dr. Zitter, perhaps unknowingly, gives support to the Compassion and Choices goal of “normalizing” and “integrating” physician-assisted suicide into standard medical practice. Note  their own description of their activities:

“We help clients with advance directives, local service referrals and pain and symptom management. We offer information on self-determined dying when appropriate and provide emotional support through a difficult time. We employ educational training programs, media outreach and online and print publications to change healthcare practice, inform policy-makers, influence public opinion and empower individuals. Compassion & Choices devotes itself to creative legal and legislative initiatives to secure comprehensive and compassionate options at the end of life.” (Emphasis added)

Now in her new article “De-Medicalizing Death”, Dr. Zitter is excited about a new University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Health Centers’ program where “only” 25% of patients went on to commit physician-assisted suicide after an “intake process…conducted by trained psychotherapists (psychologists and clinical social workers) instead of physicians”.

Ironically, current physician-assisted suicide laws tout the “safeguard” that “If, in the opinion of the attending physician or the consulting physician, a patient may be suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment, either physician shall refer the patient for counseling.” (Emphasis added),  But that only means evaluating a patient’s competence, not the diagnosable mental disorders that afflict more than 90 percent of people who die by suicide, is required. Thus, it should not be surprising that only 3.8% of people using physician-assisted suicide in Oregon were even referred for psychiatric evaluation in 2016, unlike the standard of care for other suicidal people.

Also, the UCLA new intake process for physician-assisted suicide that so excites Dr. Zitter paradoxically undermines the common media depiction of a terminally ill person in unbearable pain desperate for immediate relief:

“The intake consisted of an extensive set of questionnaires designed to assess all possible sources of distress. Any patient with physical or psychiatric needs was referred on to the appropriate services. But as the UCLA committee expected, most of what patients needed was to discuss their feelings about their approaching death and process their grief and sense of loss. This mirrors data from the entire state of California as well as Oregon, which suggest that the distress prompting patients to request these lethal medications primarily stems from their fear over losing control at the end of life. It is not, as many may think, due primarily to physical suffering.” (Emphasis added)

And

“Anne Coscarelli, psychologist and founding director of the Simms/Mann–UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, described the conversations that came from this intake process as revelatory and comforting for the patients. Several patients ultimately completed legacy projects, such as video or written messages and stories, for their children and grandchildren. This invitation to talk, which opens up a discussion that most of us are taught to avoid, turned out to be a game-changer”. (Emphasis added)

And, I would add, this “game-changer” ultimately resulted in most patients NOT dying by assisted suicide.

As a former hospice and oncology nurse, this kind of listening and support is very familiar to me. We gave our patients such care along with symptom control and our patients died with real dignity with their families supported as well.

Personally, I was never even once tempted to help end any of my patients’ lives.

CONCLUSION

Dr. Zitter is like many people. The idea of controlling one’s own death or avoiding watching a loved one slowly die is very seductive. But, as Dr. Zitter has unwittingly discovered, suicide is the loneliest kind of death and very amenable to intervention.

On the other hand, the legalization and approval of physician-assisted suicide reinforces the underlying despair that leads even many healthy people to think death is the solution to their problems.

When “Losing autonomy” and “Less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” are the top two end of life concerns of Oregon’s assisted suicide victims in 2016, we have a bigger societal problem than an alleged lack of enough lethal overdose prescriptions.

We need true caring and support, not abandonment to suicide of any kind.

Response of the National Association of Pro-life Nurses to the recent policy Statement of the American Nurses Association on voluntary holding of Food and Hydration

nancyvalko assisted suicide, euthanasia, food and water

I am a proud member of the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses (NAPN) myself. There is also a Facebook page for NAPN. Please share this, especially if you know a nurse or someone who is thinking about becoming one.

September 28, 2017

NAPN Response

The National Association of Pro-life Nurses (NAPN) is deeply saddened to learn of the recent position statement of the American Nurses Association (ANA) regarding the withholding of food and hydration as a means of hastening death.

Our organization had hoped that the announcement of the study of the issue would result in a better decision, but based on the ANA revised code of ethics of 2015, it does not come as a surprise. The ANA continues to show its complicity in promoting the culture of death.

The new position claims that “people with decision making capacity have the right to stop eating and drinking as a means of hastening death.” (Termed VSED for “Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking.)

Unfortunately, for us as pro-life nurses, that means that the ANA will expect that nurses will comply with this decision and “honor” this decision, making us complicit with this form of suicide. As with other positions, the ANA will not come to the defense of any nurse holding a conscience objection to this policy. The ANA has effectively given up its previous position, weak as it was, of opposing assisted suicide.

The entire list of recommendations regarding food and water reads:

 “ANA Recommends that:

  • Nurses recognize those situations when nutrition and hydration can no longer benefit a patient, and adhere to clinical standards that include providing nutrition and hydration only to patients for whom it is indicated.
  • Patients with decision-making capacity—or their surrogates, who are relying on the patients’ preference or have knowledge of the person’s values and beliefs—will be supported in decision-making about accepting or refusing clinically appropriate nutrition and hydration at the end of life.
  • Nurses will have adequate and accurate information to understand patients’ cultural, ethnic, and religious beliefs and values regarding nutrition and hydration at the end of life. Patients’ views and beliefs should be respected.
  • Nurses will support patients and surrogates in the decision-making process by providing accurate, precise and understandable information about risks, benefits and alternatives.
  • Decisions about accepting or forgoing nutrition and hydration will be honored, including those decisions about artificially delivered nutrition as well as VSED.
  • People with decision-making capacity have the right to stop eating and drinking as a means of hastening death.” (All emphasis added)

The ANA statement goes on to admit that “There is some consensus (though not universal agreement) that VSED can be an ethical and legal decision”, but in regard to conscience rights, the document only states that “Nurses who have an informed moral objection to either the initiation or withdrawal of nutrition or hydration should communicate their objections whenever possible, to provide safe alternative nursing care for patients and avoid concerns of patient abandonment.” (Emphasis added)

Communication of the nurse’s objection to compliance “whenever possible” leaves the pro-life nurse adherent to the patient’s wishes if there is no other nurse to assume the task of the Grim Reaper. In cases where this is impossible, charges of “abandonment” can be filed resulting in loss of employment and or license and even to lawsuits.

The statement that “providing nutrition and hydration only to patients for whom it is indicated” is problematic in view of the removal of feeding tubes from the severely brain-injured like those said to be in the so-called “persistent vegetative state” and not dying could be starved to death with impunity. (Emphasis added)

The ANA claims to be the “voice of nursing” and “the nation’s only full-serviced professional organization that represents the interests of the nation’s 3.6 million registered nurses.” Yet, in reality, when the ANA last released its membership numbers in 2011, actual membership was less than 7% of registered nurses in this country.

The 2015 Annual Report does cite a 9% increase in membership, but no figures are available.  They certainly do not speak for the numbers of us who do not share their disregard for the lives of the vulnerable.

At the very least, we health care professionals need our conscience rights honored and protected so that we can truly and ethically care for our patients. With positions like that of the ANA, nurses with a true respect for the sanctity of human life and the protection of it in all its forms are placed in a distinct disadvantage and are pressured to abandon our profession of caring.

For further information, please contact the Executive Director, Marianne Linane, at director@nursesforlife.org.

 

 

Another Threat to Conscience Rights for Medical Professionals

nancyvalko assisted suicide, conscience rights, medical ethics, nursing

2012 New York Times:  “Instead of attempting to legalize physician-assisted suicide, we should focus our energies on what really matters: improving care for the dying — ensuring that all patients can openly talk with their physicians and families about their wishes and have access to high-quality palliative or hospice care before they suffer needless medical procedures. The appeal of physician-assisted suicide is based on a fantasy. The real goal should be a good death for all dying patients.” (Emphasis added)

2016, Journal of the American Medical Association: “CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are increasingly being legalized, remain relatively rare, and primarily involve patients with cancer. Existing data do not indicate widespread abuse of these practices. (Emphasis added)

The writer of these conflicting views on assisted suicide is Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., PhD., a very influential doctor who is Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the architects of Obamacare. He is considered an expert on medical ethics who speaks and writes prolifically for both medical journals and general media outlets.

NO CONSCIENCE RIGHTS?

Unfortunately, Dr. Emmanuel is now opposing conscience rights for those of us who object to participating in deliberate death decisions like abortion and assisted suicide.

In his April, 2017 New England Journal of Medicine article “Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care” , Dr. Emanuel writes:

“Health care professionals who conscientiously object to professionally  contested  interventions  may  avoid  participating  in them directly, but, as with military conscientious objectors, who are required to perform alternative service, they cannot completely absent themselves from providing  these  services.  Conscientious  objection  still  requires  conveying  accurate  information  and  providing  timely  referrals to ensure patients receive care.”

….

“Health care professionals who are unwilling to accept these limits have two choices: select an area of medicine, such as radiology, that will not put them in situations that conflict with their personal morality or, if there is no such area, leave the profession. “

……

Although the political process may continue unabated, and courts may deem conscience clauses to be legal, it is incumbent on professional societies to affirm professional role morality and authoritatively articulate the professional ethical standards to which all licensed health care professionals must adhere. Laws may allow physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care workers to deny patients treatment or to refuse to care for particular populations, but professional medical associations should insist that doing so is unethical.”

(All emphasis added)

 

CONCLUSION

Please reread that last sentence “Laws may allow physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care workers to deny patients treatment or to refuse to care for particular populations, but professional medical associations should insist that doing so is unethical.”

Some may think this cannot happen in the U.S. or that actions like assisted suicide only occur privately in a patient’s home but, as I wrote in my last blog “Outrage: The American Nurses Association Approves Physician Assisted Starvation Suicide”, the American Nurses Association recently published a position statement “Nutrition and Hydration at the End of Life” that states:

” Decisions about accepting or forgoing nutrition and hydration will be honored, including those decisions about artificially delivered nutrition as well as VSED.”

and

“People with decision-making capacity have the right to stop eating and drinking as a means of hastening death.”

(All emphasis added)

In reality, nurses face an even greater risk than doctors who refuse to participate or refer patients making death decisions.

After assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon, the Oregon Nurses Association quickly issued guidelines for nurses that included these two points for “Nurses Who Choose Not to Be Involved”: “You may not:”

  • Subject your patients or their families to unwarranted, judgmental comments or actions because of their decision to continue to provide care to a patient who has chosen assisted suicide.

  • Abandon or refuse to provide comfort and safety measures to the patient.”  (All emphasis added)

Abandonment is a very big deal in nursing. To be accused of abandoning a patient can result in termination, loss of license or even a lawsuit.

But even if you are not a health care professional, you should be concerned about ethical health care professionals being forced out of health care by taking Dr. Emmanuel’s advice that there are only “two choices: select an area of medicine, such as radiology, that will not put them in situations that conflict with their personal morality or, if there is no such area, leave the profession. ”

Can any of us really trust a health care system that only accepts medical professionals who are just as willing to help end our lives as they are to  care for us?

Physician-assisted Suicide and the Palliative Care Physician

nancyvalko assisted suicide, law, medical ethics, palliative care

 

“SHOULD I HELP MY PATIENTS DIE?”

This is the title of an August 5 op-ed in the New York Times by Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter, an ICU and palliative medicine specialist in California who speaks and writes extensively on end of life care.

Dr. Zitter writes that she felt uncomfortable when first asked to help with a patient who wanted assisted suicide under the new California law and first polled 10 palliative care colleagues and found that they were also uncomfortable:

“It wasn’t necessarily that we disapproved, but we didn’t want to automatically become the go-to people on this very complex issue, either.”

Dr. Zitter then saw the patient, a man in his early 60s with a terminal illness in “no obvious (physical) distress” who felt abandoned by his sister and said he wanted to die because “I’m just sick of living” and “fed up with my lousy life.”

Even though the man met the legal criteria for assisted suicide, Dr. Zitter was relieved when he agreed to a 4 week course of antidepressant medication and follow up with his primary doctor. She later learned that the man died without assisted suicide 3 months later.

But despite escaping responsibility for a death in this case, Dr. Zitter admits:

“I want this (assisted suicide) option available to me and my family. I have seen much suffering around death. In my experience, most of the pain can be managed by expert care teams focusing on symptom management and family support. But not all. My mother is profoundly claustrophobic. I can imagine her terror if she were to develop Lou Gehrig’s disease, which progressively immobilizes patients while their cognitive faculties remain largely intact. For my mother, this would be a fate worse than death.” (Emphasis added)

Dr. Zitter then decided to get help sorting out her support for assisted suicide and reservations about personally participating by contacting Dr. Lonnie Shavelson.

Dr. Zitter was impressed with Dr. Shavelson who allegedly performs a “time-consuming” assessment of the patient’s medical illness, mental and emotional state and family dynamics. Dr. Zitter was also impressed that he claims does not offer the lethal medications to most of the patients who request them because of concerns like coercion, that they would live longer than 6 months, or were experiencing severe depression.

Ironically, this is the same Dr. Shavelson I wrote about last year in my blog “Tolerating Evil”  after San Francisco’s Mercury News did an article on him on June 6, 2016.

As I wrote then:

“Dr. Lonnie Shavelson, 64 and a long-time supporter of assisted suicide, was an emergency room doctor for 29 year and then spend 7 years at an Oakland clinic for immigrants and refugees before taking a 2 year break.

His new assisted suicide business could be quite lucrative. Although Medicare will not pay for assisted suicide costs, Shavelson says he will charge $200 for an initial patient evaluation. If the patient is deemed qualified under California law, Shavelson said he would charge another $1800 for more visits, evaluations and legal forms.”

At that time, Dr. Shavelson defended his business by claiming that “the demand (for assisted suicide) is so high, that the only compassionate thing to do would be to bring it above ground and regulate it.”

Finally, Dr. Zitter called palliative care colleagues around the state and was heartened by the mostly positive responses to participating in the assisted suicide law. Dr. Meredith Heller, director of inpatient palliative services at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco told Dr. Zitter that “Surprisingly, the vast majority of cases here have gone smoothly.” (Emphasis added)

But rather than worrying about the cases that don’t go smoothly, Dr. Zitter’s concerns now are primarily about shaping policies and protocols “to account for the nuanced social, legal and ethical questions that will continue to arise” and training “the clinicians who are best qualified and most willing to do this work and then train them appropriately”. She is also concerned about the problems with reimbursement for such assisted suicide “services”, especially for the poor.

CONCLUSION

When I started working in hospice many years ago, I loved it. When palliative care was introduced for symptom control, I cheered it.

But as time wore on, I became alarmed and left when I saw the efforts to change the traditional hospice philosophy from never causing or hastening death to just “choice”.

Dr. Zitter seems to be a compassionate physician who really doesn’t want to be involved in physician-assisted suicide herself but ultimately feels compelled to support it because it is California law and because she might want assisted suicide for herself or her claustrophobic mother in some possible future scenario.

Dr. Zitter apparently tries to reassure herself-and thus the public-that assisted suicide can be “safe” by being rare and practiced by specially trained medical practitioners.

However, when the most basic medical  ethics principle of never killing  patients is eliminated, the foundation of medicine itself crumbles. Medical professionals become little more than highly trained technicians compelled to follow any new law or policy regardless of its detrimental impact on their patients, society or themselves.

In the end, assisted suicide cannot be regulated or carefully practiced into a “safe” medical procedure. The only way to thwart the expansion and consequences of assisted suicide is to prevent or end its legalization.

 

 

Don’t Tell John McCain to Fight His Cancer?

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, end-of-life, medical ethics

Arthur Caplan, PhD is an influential ethicist who recently wrote a Medscape (password protected) article titled “Don’t Tell John McCain to Fight his Cancer” after the news broke about Sen. McCain’s brain cancer and many of his colleagues and others encouraged him to fight hard against his cancer.

Caplan does acknowledge that the these people mean well but writes:

“Cancer could not care less whether you are a fighter or not. What evidence there is does not show that adopting a fighting stance helps in terms of survival. I have seen many fighters die of cancer, and some who chose not to be seen as fighters live longer than others who did.

And there is an implication that if you are not a fighter, then you must be a coward or worse. This suggests that the only option available to anyone who is courageous is to choose to fight—to utilize every surgery, complementary medicine, chemotherapy, and experimental option.”

Senator McCain has a glioblastoma, which Caplan calls “a very nasty brain cancer” where the “odds of beating this cancer are long.” Caplan says the senator is brave “however he chooses to treat it or not”.

But as you might remember, this is the same cancer that Brittany Maynard, a young newlywed, had when her scheduled physician-assisted suicide was heavily publicized in 2014 to raise money for Compassion and Choices’ campaign to legalize assisted suicide throughout the US.

Unfortunately, Ms. Maynard’s case also made ethicist Caplan an outspoken supporter for legalizing physician-assisted suicide in the US-the ultimate surrender to illness-because of allegedly strong state regulations that he believes would not lead to the shockingly expansive legal assisted suicide/euthanasia situations in Holland and Belgium.

(Ironically and a few months after Ms. Maynard’s assisted suicide, CBS’ “60 Minutes” TV show aired a segment on a promising new experimental treatment for glioblastoma  that appeared to eliminate the cancer without destroying brain tissue in some patients. Ms. Maynard was not mentioned.)

DEALING WITH A DISMAL CANCER PROGNOSIS

For several years in the 1980s and 90s, I worked in oncology (cancer) and hospice with patients both in the hospital and in their homes.  Over the years, I also personally cared for several relatives and friends who had cancer.

Here are two stories, one about a friend and the other about a relative. One chose to try to beat her cancer and the other decided against aggressive treatment.

A friend in her 60s I will call “Carol” started coughing constantly a few years ago and saw a doctor who diagnosed a widespread lung cancer with a poor prognosis. Carol decided to try as hard as possible to beat the cancer. Friends and family were invaluable in getting her through a tough time with surgery, chemo and radiation. At one point, she was in very rough shape and we all were worried.

But against all predictions, Carol is now hale and hearty with a cancer that is in remission. She enjoys traveling all over the US, visiting family and friends. She seems to have more energy than the rest of us do. Carol remains realistic about the possibility of her cancer returning but is living her life to the fullest day by day.

I also had an older aunt diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2000. She refused the extensive surgery option because of the low rate of success and difficulty. Back then, the chemo option offered had only a 20% chance of remission and the side effects could be severe.

She decided against both options to live in her own home with help from us and hospice for several months until a week before her death when she needed 24 hour care. Although always a quiet person before her cancer diagnosis, my aunt found great satisfaction in sharing her story and serving as an inspiration to others. Her eventual death was peaceful.

Both of these women made informed decisions and each “fought” cancer in their own way. I salute them both.

CONCLUSION

Ethicist Caplan has a point when he states that “Cancer could not care less whether you are a fighter or not”. People should never feel guilty or worried that they didn’t fight hard enough when they face death from cancer. But neither should they feel discouraged from trying to prevail over their cancer.

A realistically hopeful attitude for a good life whatever the length of time, especially along with support from others, can turn a tough situation into a life newly appreciated and well-lived whatever the final outcome of a cancer diagnosis.

Why is Baby Charlie Gard’s Government-appointed Guardian a Euthanasia Activist? Does It Matter?

nancyvalko assisted suicide, conscience rights, euthanasia, medical ethics

So now we learn that Baby Charlie Gard’s guardian is a euthanasia activist who is Chairman of Compassion in Dying, an “end-of-life” advocacy group with a sister organization that supports assisted suicide.

This should not be a surprise.

In a July 19, 2017 New York Times op-ed “Charlie Gard and Our Moral Confusion”, Kenan Malik, who wrote a book on morality and ethics on moral issues, argues:

“In Charlie’s case, the judges decided that it is in his interest to die even with a possibility of treatment. Mr. Conway, in contrast, wants to be allowed to die in dignity, but the law will not permit it. His motor neuron disease is incurable, and he is not expected to live beyond 12 months. His condition is painful, and will become more so. He wants doctors to be able to give him a lethal injection when he decides that it is time to end his life. Under British law, it would be a criminal offense for a doctor to do so.”

“Death with dignity” is the catchphrase and death is considered the ideal end in both of these cases when viewed through the prism of so-called “dignity”.

Unfortunately, this “death with dignity” must be enforced through laws and courts and even down to the medical personnel involved.

“DEATH WITH DIGNITY” AND ITS’ OTHER VICTIMS

In June, a Canadian home health nurse was faced with the option of participating in assisted suicide with her patients or resigning. She resigned and yet another dedicated nurse was lost to the principle of a right to “death with dignity”.

However, Mary Jean Martin was afforded no dignity or rights herself. She was at the mercy of a new health care law that now mandates participation in medical lethal overdoses, an act considered medical murder before.

Ms. Martin called being forced to choose between her conscience and her job a “violation of my human rights.” She wrote:

“Why has my right to peacefully follow my own beliefs within a free and inclusive society been suddenly taken away from me?” she said.

“After 30 years as a nurse these laws make me feel no longer proud of being either a health care professional in this country or Canadian citizen,” she added.

The forced normalization of assisted suicide/euthanasia radically changes medicine for the healthy as well as the ill when only medical professionals willing to participate in assisted suicide/euthanasia are allowed to practice their professions.

CONCLUSION

Whether the issue is denial of food and water to brain-injured people, futility determinations overriding patients’ and families’ decisions, denying potentially beneficial experimental treatment or forcing medical personnel to participate in lethal overdoses, etc., the word “choice” in these cases is a misnomer when only the choice for death is considered “dignified”.

 

Baby Doe and Karen-35 Years Later

nancyvalko assisted suicide, disability, euthanasia, food and water, law, medical ethics, nursing

When I started nursing school 50 years ago, medical ethics was not a course but rather common sense principles incorporated into our education. There was no controversy about not harming patients, integrity, equality of treatment regardless of status, etc.

So, of course, abortion and euthanasia were unacceptable and even thinkable in those days.

I particularly remember one teacher who told us about the hypothetical situation of a child with Down Syndrome whose parents wanted to let their baby die and how we naturally had to put the interests of the child first. This kind of protection for patients was routine both ethically and legally in those days.

In 1982, I remembered that situation when Baby Doe,  a newborn baby boy with an easily correctable hole between his esophagus (food pipe) and trachea (windpipe), was denied this lifesaving surgery by his parents and a judge because he also had Down Syndrome. Six days later, Baby Doe starved and dehydrated to death while his case was being appealed to the Supreme Court after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled 3-1 against saving him.

My husband, a doctor, and I were appalled when we first read about Baby Doe in the newspaper and my husband suggested that we adopt the baby ourselves and pay for the surgery.

I said yes but with some reluctance since I was already pregnant with our third child and our other children were just 5 and 3. But who else was better situated than us to care for a child with a disability who needed surgery?

In the end, we were too late to save Baby Doe. We found out that Baby Doe’s parents had already rejected the many other families who tried to adopt him.

Five months later, I gave birth to my daughter Karen who also happened to have Down Syndrome and a life-threatening condition that needed surgery.  Karen was born with a complete endocardial cushion defect of the heart  that the cardiologist told us was inoperable. We were told to just take her home and our baby would die within 2 weeks to 2 months.

I was heartbroken and cried for 3 days in the hospital before I finally got mad. My obstetrician never came back to check on me in the hospital even though I had a C-section and I demanded a second opinion on her heart condition in case the cardiologist was biased against children with Down Syndrome.

I insisted on leaving the hospital early with my daughter because I wanted as much time as possible with her and especially because I realized that I needed to research Karen’s heart condition to effectively advocate for her.

I joined the St. Louis Down Syndrome Association which helped me enormously, especially with my research and emotional support. Fortunately, it turned out that the initial prognosis was wrong and the cardiologist told us that Karen’s heart could be fixed with just one open-heart operation at age 6 months.

I was elated until the cardiologist told me that he would support my decision to operate “either way”, meaning I could refuse surgery just like Baby Doe’s parents.

I was furious and told him that the issue of Down Syndrome was irrelevant to Karen’s heart condition and that my daughter must be treated the same as any other child with this condition. I also added that if he were biased against people with Down Syndrome, he could not touch my daughter.

To his credit, this doctor recognized the injustice and because of Karen, he eventually became one of the strongest advocates for babies with Down Syndrome.

Unfortunately, I ran into other medical professionals caring for Karen who were not so accepting. One doctor actually told us that “people like you shouldn’t be saddled with a child like this” and another doctor secretly wrote a DNR (do not resuscitate) order against my instructions at the time. It was then that I realized that my so-called “choice” to save my daughter was really a fight.

Tragically, Karen died of complications of pneumonia when she was just 5 ½ months old and just before her scheduled open-heart surgery. I will always miss her but I am so grateful that I was her mother. Karen changed many lives for the better, especially mine.

I became active in the Down Syndrome Association, promoted President Reagan’s “Baby Doe” rules ,  provided babysitting/respite for many children with various disabilities, and even got a chance to talk to then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop about setting up a national hotline for new parents of children with disabilities to find resources.

But most importantly, I was determined to find out what had happened to medical ethics  over the years since nursing school that resulted in the Baby Doe tragedy and hopefully help reverse the mindset that people with disabilities were “better off dead”.

What I discovered was a landmark 1979 book titled “Principles of Biomedical Ethics” written by Tom Beauchamp PhD, a professor of philosophy, and James Childress PhD, a theologian and also a professor of philosophy. Neither one had a medical degree.

They devised these four principles for medical ethics:

  • Autonomy – The right for an individual to make his or her own choice.
  • Beneficence – The principle of acting with the best interest of the other in mind.
  • Non-maleficence – The principle that “above all, do no harm,” as stated in the Hippocratic Oath.
  • Justice – A concept that emphasizes fairness and equality among individuals.

Although all these principles were considered equal, it wasn’t long before autonomy became the cornerstone principle in ethics and law, ultimately leading not only to Baby Doe but also to the legalization of assisted suicide/euthanasia.

Ironically, all these principles have been used to justify cases like Baby Doe’s as well as assisted suicide/euthanasia.

Beneficence and non-maleficence have become a ways to see death as an actual blessing to real, perceived or potential suffering. Ominously, the justice principle has become the rationale for rationing under the guise of supposedly not wasting scarce healthcare resources .

CONCLUSION

35 years after Baby Doe, some things like medical technologies and education for people with disabilities are better but many things like assisted suicide/euthanasia have pushed the ethics of death even farther and are a threat to all of us and our loved ones.

The Baby Doe tragedy should have been a fire alarm for the evils we see today but it is never too late or impossible to try to promote a culture of respect for all lives.

An Interview with an Assisted Suicide Doctor

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It’s not often that we get a glimpse into the assisted suicide movement from the perspective of a medical professional who actually participates in terminating the lives of the terminally ill. Most seem to prefer anonymity.

But in a fascinating American Society of Clinical Oncology Post interview “Examining the Impact of ‘Death With Dignity’ Legislation”, oncologist Charles D. Blanke MD, FACP, FASCO talked not only about his recent medical journal article “Usage of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act” but also his surprises and concerns about the almost 20 year old Oregon law.

‘SURPRISING FINDINGS”

When Dr. Blanke was asked if anything had surprised him about the findings in his article, he replied

“I was a bit surprised by how rarely the prescribing or consulting physicians refer patients for a psychiatric consultation. According to our study, only 5% of patients received these referrals. In national surveys, many psychiatrists say that depression among terminally ill patients would disqualify them from participating in physician-aided death.

I was also surprised to learn how rarely a physician is present when the patient takes the medication—in only 17% of cases is that so. My guess is that physicians aren’t asking what their patients would prefer, because when I’ve asked my patients if they would like me to be present when they take the medication, 100% say “yes. (Emphasis added)

When asked about the spike in the numbers of lethal prescription in the last two years of his study,  Dr. Blanke replied that:

“There are several factors, including greater national awareness of this issue and the fact that there are several other states now with this legislation in place. Also, some of the medical societies that formerly opposed the law, such as the American Medical Association, have softened their stance and agreed to study whether they should be neutral on physician-assisted death.” (Emphasis added)

Note: Actually, the AMA has not officially changed it opposition to physician-assisted suicide although assisted suicide supporters hope for this. However, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has taken no official position on physician-assisted suicide, which is actual neutrality.

PALLIATIVE CARE, INFORMED CONSENT AND CONSCIENCE RIGHTS

Sadly, while Dr. Blanke says he is a big supporter of palliative care, he went on to also state:

“However, I strongly feel that there are some patients you simply cannot palliate. They have concerns about their quality of life and their ability to do the things they enjoy, they are suffering relentlessly, and they want to take back some control over their life. Physician-aided death not only doesn’t cause harm, in my estimation, it can give people that extra bit of control over their life, including the 33% of patients who fill the prescription but never take it. Just having the prescription on hand gives patients an immense feeling of control and comfort. (Emphasis added)

On informed consent, Dr. Blanke does acknowledge that:

“There certainly is worry that a family member might push the medication on a patient because of financial concerns, but that scenario is harder to measure. Rarely, you do get a sense that there may be some outside pressure on patients to take the medication” (Emphasis added)

Instead, Dr. Blanke says that in his experience, it usually is the patient who wants the lethal overdose and the family members who oppose it.  Ironically, assisted suicide laws do not require even notification of family members-at least until after death.

And on conscience rights for those medical professionals who refuse to participate or refer, Dr. Blanke  states that:

“Physicians have an ethical obligation—not to offer the option, if they are personally opposed to it—but to understand what the process entails, to be knowledgeable enough to explain to patients the pros and cons of their decision, and to refer them to a physician if they still want to pursue physician-assisted death….Sticking your head in the sand and refusing to take part at all during this critical time in a patient’s care does a huge disservice to that patient.” (Emphasis added)

Yet, responding to a question on the ethical or moral dilemmas assisted suicide laws pose for oncologists, Dr. Blanke states:

“We have patients who are suffering horribly, and we are helping to end their suffering, so I don’t see how that can be construed as harming our patients.

However, physicians are also faced with the reality of giving a patient a medication that is guaranteed to kill that patient, and regardless of your position on these laws, taking that action is very challenging for any human being, let alone a physician. ” (Emphasis added)

 

CONCLUSION

Over the years, I have seen some of my health care colleagues-like the general public-begin to tentatively approve assisted suicide in the usual polling question about a hypothetical case in which a person is terminally ill and in “unbearable pain”. (Ironically, Oregon’s law does not even mention “pain” or “suffering” as a necessary criteria to be approved  for assisted suicide.)

But I found there are very few fellow professionals who are actually willing to perform or even witness such a death. This is apparently why Compassion and Choices, the former Hemlock Society, also needs to provide help in finding doctors to write lethal prescriptions.

We must realize that there are no winners when assisted suicide is legalized-not the patient, the health care system, society or even the assisted suicide practitioner.

How Can Belgian Catholic Psychiatric Hospitals “Adjust” for Euthanasia?

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I was in disbelief when I read Michael Cook’s article “Belgian Catholic psychiatric hospitals ‘adjust’ their view of euthanasia”.  I had to read the translated version on the Brothers of Charity order’s statement itself  myself to see if this was “fake news”.

Thankfully, Brother Rene Stockman, the superior general of the Brothers of Charity order, spoke out and said he was devastated by the news and then did three things:

“(F)irst we informed the whole congregation that as general superior we cannot accept this decision, because it is going totally against our charism of the charity. Secondly, we informed the Belgian Bishops conference about the situation and I am in contact with the president, Cardinal De Kesel. Also the Nuncio is informed. Thirdly, we informed the Vatican and all the information has been given to the Secretariat of State. In the meantime we continue to offer our clear arguments why we can never accept euthanasia.”

Brother Rene also warned that:

“In reality, only a few brothers are still involved in the government of the organization, so the majority are lay-people. Yes, there was a lot of pressure, but pressure doesn’t mean that we have to capitulate”

And

“Indeed, the presence of the brothers is not nearly sufficient, but also secularization is also poisoning the congregation in Belgium.”

Ironically, this comes less than 2 years after a pro-assisted suicide UK news service documentary titled “24 and Ready to Die” about Emily, a depressed young Belgian woman, was released but ended with the young woman changing her mind at the last moment.    Despite this, the documentary continued to support euthanasia even though one psychiatric “expert” who treated Emily was obviously wrong when she claimed that Emily’s suffering was so bad that it was “not compatible with life” and that her life did not have “sufficient quality”.

Emily is not the only one to change her mind. A 2014 Belgian study of 100 psychiatric patients  asking for euthanasia  showed that  “8 postponed or cancelled the procedure”. The study’s authors rationalized that these cancellations were “because simply having this option gave them enough peace of mind to continue living”! (Emphasis added)

Fortunately in 2016, the American Psychiatric Association passed a resolution opposing assisted suicide for the mentally ill.

Conclusion

As at least 3 European countries now allow assisted suicide for people with psychiatric problems and other countries like Canada are debating similar measures. Ethicists now write articles like ”Euthanasia for Reasons of Mental Health”  exploring the concept of including people with mental illness.

In the meantime, families like mine will continue to struggle with safety and treatment issues for our severely and chronically mentally ill relatives. We want real help for our loved ones, not assisted suicide or euthanasia. It is not compassionate, supportive or humane to have our loved ones “put down” like dogs.