assisted suicide

They are Lying to Us!

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Canada, culture, medical ethics

In my last blog “Legal Safeguards, Burdensome Obstacles and Conscience Rights”, I wrote about influential lawyer Thaddeus Pope’s article “Medical Aid in Dying: When Legal Safeguards Become Burdensome Obstacles” that listed  four ways to address such  “burdensome safeguards” in medically assisted suicide laws: “Expanding From Adults to Mature Minors”, “Expanding From Contemporaneous Capacity to Advance Directives” to pre-choose assisted suicide before becoming incompetent, “Expanding From Terminal Illness to ‘Reasonably Predictable’” and “Expanding From Self-Ingestion to Physician Administration”. (Emphasis added)

Other “burdensome obstacles” Mr. Pope has also cited include the waiting time between requests for assisted suicide and the administration of the lethal overdose for some patients and the physician requirement because of problems finding willing doctors.

While groups like Compassion and Choices and a mostly sympathetic mainstream media continue to tout allegedly strong “safeguards” in assisted suicide laws that allegedly prevent abuse, these “burdensome obstacles”- which already have been mostly eliminated in countries like Canada and Holland- are now beginning to fall here in the US and other new countries. Few of us are aware of this.

HAWAII

A case in point is Hawaii, whose legislature rejected assisted suicide just last year.

This year, a new bill, HB 2739, called the “Our Care, Our Choices Act” was recently fast-tracked in the legislature with testimony scheduled for February 27, 2018. It would allow advanced practiced registered nurses as well as doctors to be the “attending provider” for assisted suicide.

Despite the ubiquitous at least six problems with US assisted suicide laws that I have written about before, the Hawaii legislators claimed “robust safeguards” such as, “if appropriate”, the doctor (or nurse) can refer the terminally ill patient for  “counseling” to be performed by “a state-licensed psychiatrist or psychologist” but just for “determining that the patient is capable of making medical decisions and not suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment”. This is not the same as the usual psychiatric/psychological evaluation required for other suicidal people. (Emphasis added)

(I submitted my testimony on this bill which is at the end of this blog.)

After “an emotional 5-hour hearing” February 27th, a joint House panel voted in favor of an amended version of HB 2739 that will now head to a vote of the full House in the near future.

The amended bill includes the welcome removal of advanced practice registered nurses as “attending providers” but added social workers to the psychiatrists or psychologists designated as the counselors to determining the patient’s “capability” and allows “counseling” by telehealth instead of in person. Finally, the new bill would also lengthen the time between oral requests for assisted suicide from 15 to 20 days.

Hopefully this terrible new assisted suicide bill will be defeated like last year’s.

But, as usual, Compassion and Choices continues to describe HB 2739 as just:

“Medical aid in dying is an end-of-life medical practice in which a terminally ill, mentally capable individual who has a prognosis of six months or less to live requests, obtains and—if his or her suffering becomes unbearable—self-ingests medication to die peacefully in their sleep.”

We all need to know that we are being lied to about assisted suicide and fight against such laws!

My Testimony on Hawaii’s HB 2739

February 26, 2018

Please Do Not Approve HB 2739, From a Mother and a Nurse

 As the mother of a physically healthy suicide victim who used an assisted suicide technique and as a registered nurse who has cared for suicidal people both personally and professionally for over 40 years, I implore you not to approve the dangerous HB 2739, the “Our Care, Our Choice Act”.

Despite the euphemism of “aid in dying” instead of medically (since advanced practice registered nurses can be “the attending physician”) assisted suicide and the demand for it as a fundamental right, this bill puts both desperate people and our health care system in danger. I want to address both issues.

My Daughter Marie Killed Herself Using an Assisted Suicide Technique

In 2009, I lost a beautiful, physically well 30-year-old daughter, Marie, to suicide after a 16-year battle with substance abuse and other issues. Her suicide was like an atom bomb dropped on our family, friends and even her therapists.

Despite all of our efforts to save her, my Marie told me that she learned how to kill herself from visiting suicide/assisted suicide websites and reading Derek Humphry’s book Final Exit. The medical examiner called Marie’s suicide technique “textbook final exit” but her death was neither dignified nor peaceful.

Marie was not mere collateral damage in the controversy over assisted suicide. She was a victim of the physician-assisted suicide movement, seduced by the rhetoric of a painless exit from what she believed was a hopeless life of suffering.

SUICIDE CONTAGION

Adding to our family’s pain, at least two people close to Marie became suicidal not long after her suicide. Luckily, these two young people received help and were saved, but suicide contagion, better known as “copycat suicide”, is a well-documented phenomenon.

After Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law took effect in 1997, the rate of suicide increased. In 2015, the state’s health department said “The rate of suicide among Oregonians has been increasing since 2000” and as of 2012 was “42% higher than the national average”; suicide had become “the second leading cause of death among Oregonians aged 15 to 34 years.” These figures are in addition to deaths under the Oregon assisted suicide law, which legally are not counted as suicides.

My Marie was one of the almost 37,000 reported US suicides in 2009. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death among Americans with more than 44,000 people dying by suicide in 2015, more than 1.4 million people reported making a suicide attempt in the past year and almost 10 million adults reported thinking about suicide in the past year. Suicide costs society over $56.9 billion a year in combined medical and work loss costs.

Our urgent health care crisis is the staggering and increasing number of suicides, not the lack of enough medically assisted suicides.

The Effect of Medically Assisted Suicide on Our Health Care System

 MY STORY

Several years after Oregon’s law was passed, I was threatened with termination from my job as an intensive care unit nurse after I refused to participate in a deliberate overdose of morphine that neither the patient nor his family requested after an older patient experienced a crisis after a routine surgery.

The patient had improved but did not wake up within 24 hours after sedatives used with a ventilator were stopped. It was assumed that severe brain damage had occurred and doctors recommended removing the ventilator and letting the patient die.

However when the ventilator was removed, the patient unexpectedly continued to breathe even without oxygen support. A morphine drip was started and rapidly increased but the patient continued to breathe.

When I refused to participate in this, I found no support in my hospitals “chain of command” and I could not pass off this patient to another nurse so I basically stopped the morphine drip myself, technically following the order to “titrate morphine for comfort, no limit.”

The patient eventually died after I left but ironically, a later autopsy requested by the family showed no lethal condition or brain injury as suspected.

The physician who authorized the morphine demanded that I be fired.

I’ve known other doctors, nurses and therapist who have similarly put their jobs on the line to protect their patients. Unfortunately, we are fast becoming pariahs in the face of medically assisted suicide legalization.

Society has long insisted that health care professionals adhere to the highest standards of ethics as a form of protection for society. The vulnerability of a sick person and the inability of society to monitor every health care decision or action are powerful motivators to enforce such standards. For thousands of years doctors (and nurses) have embraced the Hippocratic standard that “I will give no deadly medicine to any one, nor suggest any such counsel.” Should the bright line doctors and nurses themselves drew to separate killing from caring now be erased by legislation?

As a nurse, I am willing to do anything for my patients — except kill them. In my work with the terminally ill, I have been struck by how rarely these people say something like, “I want to end my life.” And the few who do express such thoughts are visibly relieved when their concerns and fears are addressed and dealt with instead of finding support for the suicide option. I have yet to see such a patient go on to commit suicide.

In 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court approved MAID (medical aid in dying aka medically assisted suicide) and lethal injection suicides began in Quebec, one of Canada’s largest provinces. Now, “only 5 of more than 2,000 Canadian patients who used medical aid in dying self- ingested the lethal medication.”

But a December, 2017 Canadian medical journal article “First Results from a Unique Study” done in Laval, Canada showed that although prior to the law, 48% of doctors said they would participate, 30% with conditions and only 28% said they would never participate, afterwards, 77% of the physicians getting MAID requests refused to actively participate, all of them using the conscientious objection clause, even though the study claimed the majority (72%) were in favor of MAID with only 13% of the doctors neutral or ambivalent. The most common reason given for refusal was “too much of an emotional burden to bear”.

Do assisted suicide supporters really expect us doctors and nurses to be able to assist the suicide of one patient, then go on to care for a similar patient who wants to live, without this having an effect on our ethics or our empathy? Do they realize that this can reduce the second patient’s will-to-live request to a mere personal whim – perhaps, ultimately, one that society will see as selfish and too costly? How does this serve optimal health care, let alone the integrity of doctors and nurses who have to face the fact that we helped other human beings kill themselves?

Conclusion

Medically assisted suicide is a dangerous proposition and HB 2739 goes beyond even Oregon’s law by approving advanced practice registered nurses as providers. Other countries have gone farther to include chronic psychiatric conditions, birth defects and even just old age.

We must not discriminate on the basis of health and choice when it comes to desperate people seeking suicide. We must treat all of our citizens with equal concern.

Legal Safeguards, Burdensome Obstacles and Conscience Rights

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Canada, conscience rights, law, medical ethics, nursing

After I wrote last week’s blog “The New Federal Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” , I was surprised by this criticism: “arguing conscience can make doctors (and others) look whiney, as opposed to heroic” and give assisted suicide supporters “an easy platform to describe them as selfish and out of touch ideologues who want to make their parents suffer.” But this comment did make me think.

Actually, I felt horror, intense sadness and fear when, as I wrote in the blog, I was “threatened with termination (after the fact) for refusing to participate in an unethical health care decision years ago.” I was trying to save my patient from being deliberately terminated with an overdose of morphine that neither he nor his family requested but I found no support in the “chain of command” at my hospital. I could not pass this patient to another nurse so I basically stopped the morphine drip myself, technically following the order “titrate morphine for comfort, no limit”.

Especially as the sole support of three children with no family support, I feared losing my job but I could not participate in good conscience for my patient’s sake. I did not feel either heroic or whiney.

Ironically, a later autopsy requested by the family showed no lethal condition or brain injury as suspected when the patient had a crisis after routine surgery.

I’ve known other doctors, nurses and therapists who have similarly put their jobs on the line for the real reason for conscience rights: protection of patients. We are a thinning white line in the face of expanding demands for deliberate death as a civil right while our US and other countries’ professional organizations are changing or considering changing their positions against medically assisted suicide and euthanasia.

If we who refuse to terminate our patients are harassed or eliminated from our professions and future potential students discouraged from choosing such a profession, patients will be denied the choice of such medical professionals and a final barrier will be broken in the lethal flood to follow.

WHEN “LEGAL SAFEGUARDS” BECOME “BURDENSOME OBSTACLES”

Already there are impatient calls to expand medically assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Thaddeus Pope, JD, PhD, the influential Director of the Health Law Institute and Professor of Law at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota and writer of the Medical Futility Blog, wrote an article last December titled “Medical Aid in Dying: When Legal Safeguards Become Burdensome Obstacles” for the American Society of Clinical Oncology Post. (According to ASCO, it “has taken no official position on medical aid in dying”.)

Mr. Pope notes the “uniformity and similarity” of the six current medically assisted suicide statutes but brings up four so-called “safeguards” affecting the “next-generation issues: the justifiability of prevailing eligibility criteria and procedural requirements” that will allegedly need to be addressed. (Emphasis added)

The first is “Expanding From Adults to Mature Minors” which Mr. Pope characterizes as “unduly restrictive” in part because “Many states already allow terminally ill mature minors to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment”. (Emphasis added)

Mr. Pope’s second issue is “Expanding From Contemporaneous Capacity to Advance Directives”, stating that “All six statutes require that the patient concurrently have both a terminal illness and decision-making capacity. But this dual mandate excludes many patients who have no other exit options” such as those with “advanced dementia”. (Emphasis added)

The third issue he cites is “Expanding From Terminal Illness to ‘Reasonably Predictable’” because:

“(T)his rigid time frame excludes patients with grievous and irremediable conditions that cause suffering intolerable to the individual. Some medical conditions may cause individuals to irreversibly decline and suffer for a long period before dying. Instead of demanding a strict temporal relationship between a medical condition and death, these statutes might be more flexible and instead require that death be ‘reasonably predictable’.” (Emphasis added)

Mr. Pope’s final issue is “Expanding From Self-Ingestion to Physician Administration”:

“First, it excludes patients who lose the ability to self-administer before they otherwise become eligible. Second, self-ingestion is associated with complications. For example, around 3% of these patients had difficulty ingesting or regurgitated the medication. Other patients regained consciousness after ingestion.” (Emphasis added)

And, as in most of the previous issues, Mr. Pope approvingly cites the rapidly expanding assisted suicide situation in Canada:

“Canadian patients avoid all these problems (with self-ingestion), because physicians usually administer the medication. As a result, only 5 of more than 2,000 Canadian patients who used medical aid in dying self-ingested the lethal medication.” (Emphasis added)

Ironically, there is one so-called “safeguard” that Mr. Pope would like to see tightened:

“that the prescribing or consulting physician refer the patient “for a mental health specialist assessment” if “there are -indications of a mental disorder.” Yet prescribing and consulting physicians have referred only 5% of medical aid in patients who are dying. Leading experts argue that this rate is probably too low relative to the expected rate of impaired judgment. Others are “surprised by how rarely the prescribing or consulting physicians refer patients for a psychiatric consultation.” (Emphasis added)

This discrimination in suicide assessment is not acceptable for any suicidal person-except now, of course, for a person requesting medically assisted suicide.

CONCLUSION

Without a strong resistance movement, these proposals are only just the next step in the death agenda. So far, much of the public, government officials and medical professionals have been shielded from the real truth by euphemisms and false reassurances from assisted suicide supporters, a mostly sympathetic mainstream media and often spineless professional and health care organizations. We all must educate ourselves to speak out before it is too late.

The New Federal Conscience and Religious Freedom Division

nancyvalko abortion, assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, conscience rights, medical ethics, Planned Parenthood

As a nurse threatened with termination for refusing to participate in an unethical health care decision years ago, I have a special interest in conscience rights for health care professionals.

Over the past several decades, new threats to conscience rights have widened from refusing to participate in abortions to other deliberate death decisions like withdrawal of feedings from people with serious brain injuries, VSED (voluntary stopping of eating and drinking), terminal sedation and physician-assisted suicide.

Thus, I am pleased that the Trump administration just announced the new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division  in the department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to enforce “federal laws that protect conscience and the free exercise of religion and prohibit coercion and discrimination in health and human services”. The division specifically mentions “issues such as abortion and assisted suicide (among others) in HHS-funded or conducted programs and activities” and includes a link to file a conscience or religious freedom complaint “if you feel a health care provider or government agency coerced or discriminated against you (or someone else) unlawfully”.

Predictably, both Compassion and Choices and Planned Parenthood immediately condemned the new department.

In a recent fundraising email, Compassion and Choices states that:

 “This office (OCR) is not about freedom; it’s about denying patient autonomy. Under their proposed rules, providers are encouraged to impose their own religious beliefs on their patients and withhold vital information about treatment options from their patients — up to, and including, the option of medical aid in dying. And your federal tax dollars will be used to protect physicians who make the unconscionable decision to willfully withhold crucial information regarding their care from a patient and abandon them when they are most vulnerable.” (Emphasis added)

Planned Parenthood is just as adamant and includes other issues in their reaction:

“OCR is an important office within the HHS that’s meant to protect health care for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people and underserved women. But the creation of the new “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” paves the way for discrimination against people for a variety of reasons — be it their gender identity, sexual orientation, or decision to access a safe, legal abortion.” (Emphasis in original)

A SHORT RECENT HISTORY OF FEDERAL CONSCIENCE RIGHTS PROTECTIONS

In response to declining numbers of doctors willing to do abortions in the 1990s, efforts began to mainstream abortion into the health professions such as requiring abortion training for OB/GYNs, shifting training and practice into teaching hospitals and  integrating abortion into regular health care.

The National Abortion Federation along with Medical Students for Choice, pushed for change and in 1995, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education ruled that OB/GYN residency programs must include abortion training or lose accreditation.

That was overturned the next year with the Coats Amendment passed by Congress but  efforts to marginalize pro-life medical professionals continued, especially with newly passed physician-assisted suicide laws and well-publicized withdrawal of feeding tube cases like Terri Schiavo’s.

In 2008, the Christian Medical Association compiled a list of dozens of real-life cases of discrimination in health care, including doctors, medical students, nurses and pharmacists.

That same year, President Bush strengthened the HHS rules protecting the conscience rights of doctors and nurses to refuse to perform abortions.

In 2011, the Obama administration dismantled key provisions of the Bush administration conscience rights rules.

That same year, 12 New Jersey nurses faced firing for refusal to participate in abortion and had to rely on groups like Alliance Defending Freedom to bring a  lawsuit defending their rights. They were finally vindicated in 2013.

Right now, Wisconsin is considering a physician-assisted suicide bill that states a doctor’s refusal to prescribe the lethal drugs or refer the patient to a willing doctor “constitutes unprofessional conduct”.

Obviously, conscience rights cannot depend just on litigation, conflicting state laws or professional organization positions like the American Medical Association’s  or American Nurses Association’s that don’t vigorously defend conscience rights.

As explained on the Dorsey Health Care group website ,

“In January 2018, OCR announced a proposed rule to strengthen conscience-based protections for individuals and entities with objections to certain activities based on religious belief and moral convictions.”

“OCR now proposes to return much of 45 CFR part 88 to its 2008 Bush-era form, adding a requirement that certain recipients of HHS funds certify they comply with conscience protection laws and notify individuals of their rights thereunder”, enhance investigative and enforcement abilities and expands its enforcement authority to more conscience-protection laws than the 2008 or 2011 iterations. It will also “handle complaints [both formal and not], perform compliance reviews, investigate, and seek appropriate action,” including terminating funding and requiring repayment. OCR states “that a more centralized approach to enforcement of conscience protections is necessary in part due to rapidly rising complaints.” (Emphasis added) Comments on this proposed rule can be submitted by March 27, 2018.

CONCLUSION

Health care professionals with pro-life views have been under attack for decades. It’s more than just not being “politically correct”; the very existence of such health care professionals threatens the appropriation of health care by groups dedicated to promoting abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia as civil rights.

Without strong conscience rights protections like a successful Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, they will succeed in making health care termination-friendly.

But in the end, enforcement of the most basic civil right of health care professionals to provide care for patients without being required to participate in life-destroying  activities should not be determined by politics or popularity polls but by the acceptance of the universal principle of respect and protection for human life.

 

Swedish Citizen Unmasks a Main Physician-assisted Suicide Propaganda Point

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, euthanasia, law, media

Oregon, the first US state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, is routinely promoted by advocates as having the model law for assisted suicide. Now the debate has come to Sweden.

The Swedish National Council of Medical Ethics, an advisory board to the Swedish government and parliament, published a November 20, 2017 report, “Assisted Death: A Knowledge Compilation” (an English translation is coming) “to promote a more fact-based debate on assisted dying” and states that the Council “does not take a stand on assisted dying in the report”.

However, Fabian Stahle, a Swedish private citizen who read the report, found a problem.

In his article “Oregon Health Authority Reveals Hidden Problems with the Oregon Assisted Suicide Model” , he notes that:

“As a basis for their reassurance of no slippery slope in the Oregon model, the authors of the Swedish report note that there is one question that is ‘the crucial issue’: is anyone with a non-terminal, chronic disease granted medical assisted death?” (Emphasis in original)

But Mr. Stahle notes that the report says elsewhere that the six-month limit on expected survival time applies, “if no treatment is given to slow down the course of the disease” (Emphasis in original)  and thus “might complicate the the whole idea that the law only applied to the ‘untreatable’ sick where nothing could be expected to extend life beyond six months”.

So Mr. Stahle says he did his own investigation by contacting the Oregon Health Authority himself.  Craig New, Research Analyst with the Oregon Health Authority  replied and told him that:

“…your interpretation is correct: The question is: should the disease be allowed to take its course, absent further treatment, is the patient likely to die within six months” (Emphasis added)

Fabian Stahle went further by asking if the doctor suggests to a eligible patient a treatment that possibly could prolong life or transform a terminal illness to a chronic illness or even cure the disease but the patient refuses, would that patient still be eligible for physician-assisted suicide.

He gave the example of a patient with a chronic disease like diabetes who refuses life-sustaining medication/treatment and becomes likely to die within 6 months and asked if that person would be eligible for assisted suicide.

Oregon’s Mr. New answered yes and that if the patient does not want treatment, that would also be their choice-along with the choice for assisted suicide.

As Fabian Stahle observes, this “allows a sanctioned path to suicide, aided by a physician, for anyone with a chronic illness who is likely to die within six months if they chose to stop treatment.” (Emphasis in original)

Fabian Stahle then asked about patients with a chronic disease whose health insurance company is not willing to pay for the treatment/medication.

Oregon’s Mr. New responded that:

“I think you could also argue that even if the treatment/medication could actually cure the disease, and the patient cannot pay for the treatment, then the disease remains incurable.” (Emphasis added)

And thus the patient is considered eligible for assisted suicide under Oregon’s law. This is especially outrageous.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Unfortunately, much of the public just accepts the Compassion and Choices propaganda that physician-assisted suicide is a safe “choice” with strict regulations for terminally and incurably ill people who are going to die soon anyway. Unfortunately, a mostly sympathetic mainstream media concurs and portrays assisted suicide as a “humane” last resort for extreme cases.

But now, Fabian Stahle, a Swedish private citizen, has done what few people do today even with such a life and death issue: He actually investigated the topic and contacted the Oregon Health Authority to clarify what “terminal” and “incurable” really legally means in Oregon’s “model” law.

Of course, there are many other problems with physician-assisted laws but Mr. Stahle focused on the one cited by the Swedish National Council of Medical Ethics as ‘the crucial issue’: is anyone with a non-terminal, chronic disease granted medical assisted death?”

Mr. Stahle is right to question this. The latest Oregon report on their assisted suicide law shows a range of diseases from cancer to undefined “other illnesses” as well as 43 people whose “ingestion status” of the prescribed overdose is unknown and obviously not followed up to see if or when they died.

Having written medical news analysis articles in the past for a national newspaper, I am appalled by the routine lack of investigative interest in life or death issues like assisted suicide from today’s mainstream media. The public needs and deserves better.

I wish Fabian Stahle was eligible for a Pulitzer Prize.

“MAID” in Laval, Canada

nancyvalko assisted suicide, conscience rights, medical ethics

The December 2017 issue of the Canadian medical journal Le Specialiste contains a fascinating but disturbing English language article “First Results from a Unique Study” on pages 36-40.

2015 was the year when the MAID (medical aid in dying, aka physician assisted suicide and even lethal injections in Quebec) Act  took effect. The article is about physicians and MAID in the city of Laval in Quebec, Canada that has a population of about 435,000.

The study made news when it reported that after 18 months, conscientious objections from physicians against providing MAID were far more frequent than anticipated. Prior to the law, 48% of doctors said they would participate, 30% with conditions and only 28% said they would never participate.

Afterwards, 77% of the physicians getting MAID requests refused to actively participate, all of them using the conscientious objection clause, even though the study claimed the majority (72%) were in favor of MAID with only 13% of the doctors neutral or ambivalent.

The most common reason given for refusal was “too much of an emotional burden to bear, followed by a perception of lack of clinical expertise, and a fear of being stigmatized by peers or by people in general for participating.”

Other reasons included not adding to an “already heavy clinical burden”, MAID being “a very time-consuming process” and “medical legal concerns”.

The seemingly obvious takeaway from these surprising refusals is that participating in the killing of patients is much harder in reality than approving gauzy claims of just relieving suffering.

CRITICISM OF “CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION”

However, the authors did another study “to explore what ‘conscientious objection’ meant to these (refusing) physicians.” Although less than half of the refusing doctors participated in this second study, the authors conclude that legal “conscientious objection” is mostly being used for “reasons other than moral or religious grounds”. They contend that reasons like “high emotional burden, a perception of incompetence to perform the procedure and time constraints” do not meet the classic definition of conscientious objection on moral or religious grounds. They also worry that with the currently low physician participation in MAID, there is a “risk of a looming crisis in access to timely MAID services”.

The authors cite arguments by those who oppose conscientious objection that the authors consider “just as valid” as arguments in favor of conscientious objection:

1. “Consequences for patients” leading to denial of access or delay in treatment.

2.  “Costs for healthcare systems: while the possibility of referring the patient to a colleague exists, this can generate additional costs and prove to be less efficient.” (Note that Canada has a government-controlled health care system.)

3. “A heavy burden on the shoulders of a reduced number of physicians who accept to perform” certain acts.

4.”The importance of professionalism” which means “caring for patients, no matter the type of care required”.

CONCLUSION

These  two studies have important implications regarding conscience rights for all health care providers, even those outside the MAID policies in Quebec.

Just last April, the very influential Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel co-wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine article “Physicians, Not Conscripts-Conscientious Objection in Health Care” that:

“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.”

and

“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. “ (All emphasis added)

It is ironic how deliberate death decisions defended on the basis of “choice” can easily become “no choice” for those health care professionals dedicated to really caring for patients instead of killing them.

And all of us-whether we are patients or health care professionals-must understand that legalizing physician-assisted suicide inevitably leads to further erosion of medical ethics and thus crucial protections for ourselves, our loved ones and society.

 

Six Things You Need to Know about Physician-Assisted Suicide

nancyvalko assisted suicide, disability, medical ethics, suicide

This article was originally published in The Public Discourse on December 19, 2017

Six Things You Need to Know about Physician-Assisted Suicide

by Nancy Valko, RN ALNC

Pull quote: Is the real healthcare crisis not enough physician assisted suicide laws? Or
is it the staggering and increasing number of people losing their battles
with mental illness and committing suicide?

It has been twenty years since Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law took
effect after a public referendum. Since then, four other states have
legalized physician-assisted suicide.

Polls seem to show strong public support for physician-assisted suicide. They ask questions like this one from a  2017 Gallup poll: “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain, do you think doctors should or should
not be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide if the patient
requests it?”

Unfortunately, most people have only a vague idea about what such laws
actually say and do. Here are six things you must know before you decide
whether to support or oppose physician-assisted suicide.

1. Pain or any other suffering is not a requirement for a person seeking
assisted suicide; “a disease that cannot be cured” can include manageable
conditions like diabetes as well as terminal illnesses like cancer.

None of the US laws are restricted to patients experiencing pain, which can
be addressed in ways that do not deliberately kill the patient. In 2016, for
example, almost half of patients using assisted suicide in Oregon cited their reason for seeking death as “Burden on family, friends/caregivers” while just 35 percent cited “Inadequate pain control or concern about it.”

2. Medical professionals participating in physician-assisted suicide are
immune from accountability and standards of due care.

“No person shall be subject to civil or criminal liability or professional
disciplinary action for participating in good faith compliance with”
Oregon’s law. Thus any licensed doctor (or other healthcare provider), with
or without experience and regardless of his or her medical specialty, can
write a lethal overdose prescription for a patient as long as he or she
claims to be in “good faith compliance.” As a legal standard, this test is
effectively meaningless, because it relies only on the physician’s word.

The physician is not required to be-and often is not-the patient’s primary
care doctor. Many physicians do not want to be involved in this process,
according to “Compassion & Choices,” an organization that promotes the legalization of physician-assisted suicide throughout the United States. When one doctor (or many) conclude that it would be irresponsible to give a lethal overdose to a patient, such
organizations encourage patients to find a doctor with lower standards.

No other medical intervention has such immunity protection from lawsuits or
criminal investigation. In addition, no other medical intervention is so
devoid of standards for the clinical expertise or education required of the
physician involved.

3. Physician-assisted suicide does not involve the stringent documentation
and oversight required for other medical interventions.

In all jurisdictions where physician-assisted suicide is allowed, to
prescribe a lethal overdose the doctor need only fill out the required state
forms that include a consultation with a second physician who agrees.
Neither doctor is required to have a professional relationship with the
patient before the physician-assisted suicide request.

Documentation of physician-assisted suicides relies on doctors’
self-reporting. There is no requirement that the actual taking of the lethal
overdose be witnessed by a medical professional or anyone else. This means
that there is no safeguard against medical complications, coercion by family
members, or other problems.

The Oregon law also specifies that, “Except as otherwise required by law, the information collected shall not be a public record and my not be made available for inspection by the public”, after which the original forms are destroyed.

Unfortunately, the immunity protections and secrecy surrounding even the minimal self-reporting in state-level assisted-suicide laws eliminate the possibility of future potential lawsuits or prosecutions for abuse. They keep alive the myth that there are strong safeguards in the law that eliminate problems like coercion or elder abuse.

4. The cause of death must be falsified.

States with physician-assisted suicide laws require that the cause of death is reported as death from an underlying condition rather than the lethal overdose, supposedly to ensure the patient’s privacy. But this clearly violates the standards set for coroners
and medical examiners by the Centers for Disease Control. Those standards require accuracy in determination of death because “The death certificate is the source for
State and national mortality and is used to determine which medical conditions receive research and development funding, to set public health goals, and to measure health status at local, State, national, and international levels.”

Falsified death certificates also quietly function to smooth over any problems with life insurance policies that have suicide clauses denying death benefits if the insured commits suicide within two years of taking out a policy. And since doctors are only required to “recommend that the patient notify next of kin” about the plan for assisted suicide, the rest of the patient’s family may never know the real cause of death. This means that they are also deprived of the chance to reassure their loved ones of their
support and willingness to help take care of them until their natural death.

5. Assisted suicide laws promote discrimination against suicidal people.

The usual standards for caring for a suicidal person include intensive management to prevent suicide attempts. These are changed in physician-assisted suicide: “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.” Only the evaluation of a patient’s competence, not the diagnosable mental disorders that afflict more than 90 percent of people who die by suicide, is required . It is shocking that only 3.8 percent of those seeking physician-assisted suicide in Oregon were referred for psychiatric
evaluation in 2016. Patients with dementia and with clinical depression that had existed for years before they contracted a physical illness have died under the Oregon law.

6. Suicide is contagious.

A 2015 article in the Southern Medical Journal titled “How Does Legalization of
Physician-Assisted Suicide Affect Rates of Suicide?” studied Oregon’s and Washington’s rates of non-assisted suicide after assisted suicide laws were passed. Despite claims that assisted suicide laws would reduce other suicides or only substitute for them, the authors reached the disturbing conclusion that “Rather, the introduction of PAS (physician assisted suicide) seemingly induces more self-inflicted deaths than it inhibits.”

This does not surprise me. In 2009 my thirty-year-old, physically healthy daughter Marie died by suicide. She killed herself using a technique she learned after visiting assisted suicide/suicide websites and reading Final Exit (1991) by Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society (an organization that merged with another group to form Compassion & Choices). The medical examiner called her suicide “textbook Final Exit.”

Adding to our family’s pain, at least two people close to Marie became suicidal not long after her suicide. Luckily, they were saved, but suicide contagion, better known as “copycat suicide,” is a well-documented phenomenon. Often media coverage or publicity around one death can encourage other vulnerable people to commit suicide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide rates have been
increasing since 2000 after decades of decline. Suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 44,000 people dying by suicide every year. Suicide costs society over $56 billion a year in combined medical- and work-loss costs, not to mention the enormous toll suicide takes on family and friends. Oregon’s suicide rate is more than 40 percent higher than the national average.

Is the real healthcare crisis not enough physician-assisted suicide laws? Or is it the staggering and increasing number of people losing their battles with mental illness and committing suicide?

No matter what Compassion & Choices says, physician-assisted suicide is not a civil right or just one of an assortment of morally neutral end-of-life options. It’s time to stand up and fight to keep the medical profession from abandoning its most fundamental ethical principles.

Nancy Valko, RN, ALNC, is a longtime writer and speaker on medical ethics issues who recently retired from critical care nursing to devote more time to consulting and volunteer work. She is also a spokesperson for the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses.

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Compassion and Choices Celebrates as the Massachusetts Medical Society Becomes the 10th State Medical Association to Succumb to the Physician-assisted Suicide Agenda

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, disability, medical ethics

In 1980, the Hemlock Society (now known as Compassion and Choices) was formed to  work for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide by proposing state legislative bills, voter initiatives and public advocacy.

These efforts failed until finally in May 1994, the Oregon Medical Association changed its position opposing physician-assisted suicide to neutrality.

Six months later, Oregon voters approved the very first US physician-assisted suicide law 51% to 49%.

Not surprisingly, now the Oregon Medical Association “supports the position that ‘death with dignity’ (aka physician-assisted suicide) is part of the doctor-patient relationship”.

Obviously, the neutrality of the medical association was a big factor in getting the first physician-assisted suicide law passed in the U.S. as well as its eventual integration into Oregon’s health care system.

Now, Compassion and Choices, the now well-funded promoter of assisted suicide and other death “choices”, is celebrating that:

“The Massachusetts Medical Society is the 10th American Medical Association chapter that has dropped its opposition to medical aid in dying and adopted a neutral stance on the practice, including nine of them in the last two years. The others are the California Medical Association in 2015, Colorado Medical Society in 2016, Maryland State Medical Society in 2016, Medical Society of the District of Columbia in 2016, Maine Medical Association in 2017, Minnesota Medical Association in 2017, Nevada State Medical Association in 2017, Oregon Medical Association in 1997 and Vermont in 2017.” (Emphasis added)

And that:

“Massachusetts’ ‘neutral engagement’ position is even better than a simply neutral position,” said Rebecca Thoman, M.D., campaign manager for Doctors for Dignity for Compassion & Choices. “It means if Massachusetts enacts a medical aid-in-dying law, the medical society will offer education and guidance to physicians who want to incorporate medical aid in dying into their practices.” (Emphasis added)

Ironically, as the Boston Globe reported in January 2017,:

“The vote before the Massachusetts Medical Society was whether to approve a survey — just a survey — of members’ attitudes toward “medical aid in dying.” …

In the end, the policy-making body decisively endorsed the survey and approved $25,000 to fund it — a sign that the Massachusetts Medical Society may be reconsidering its historic rejection of what it has called “physician-assisted suicide.’’ It comes as this movement to give terminally ill patients an option to end their life at a time of their choosing is gaining traction, propelled in part by some physicians’ groups dropping their longstanding opposition. (Emphasis added)

The surveys were ultimately sent to 25,000 doctors but only 12 to 13 percent were returned. Of those returned, approximately 60 percent of respondents wanted the medical society to rescind its opposition to physician-assisted suicide, while 40 percent wanted to keep the policy.

The most fundamental medical ethic of not killing or helping patients kill themselves must not be reduced to a popularity contest.

If this radical change in medical ethics results in the Massachusetts legislature legalizing physician-assisted suicide or by yet another voter referendum, the Compassion and Choices agenda to legalize assisted suicide throughout the U.S. will continue to accelerate to the detriment of the health care system, ethical health care providers and all medically vulnerable people.

Killing with Love?

nancyvalko abortion, assisted suicide, disability

Two disturbing news items in the UK recently caught my eye. Both involved actions considered criminal in the past, but now reconsidered as acts of love. Unfortunately, we have had similar cases here in the US.

MAN WON’T GO TO PRISON AFTER KILLING HIS DIABETIC FATHER WITH AN OVERDOSE OF MORPHINE

In a November 17, 2017 UK Telegraph article, a 59 year old chemist named Bipin Desai, admitted pouring morphine into his father’s fruit smoothie and then injecting the diabetic father with insulin. The judge directed the jury to find Mr. Desai not guilty of murder but rather of assisted suicide.

The judge told Mr. Desai that:

“Your acts of assistance were acts of pure compassion and mercy. Your father had a solid and firm wish to die. For him, being assisted to die would be fulfilling his wish of going to heaven to see his wife and being put out of his misery.”

Ironically, the father was not even terminally ill but rather “he had just had enough of life and there are no real authorities who deal with that situation.” (Emphasis added)

Mr. Desai was allowed to go free with a suspended nine month prison sentence for assisting his father’s suicide and told by the judge:

“You are free to now go with your family and start the process of rebuilding your life.”

And apparently still able to be an heir.

MOM WINS $12 MILLION IN WRONGFUL BIRTH LAWSUIT, SHE WISHES HER SON WAS NEVER BORN

Omodele Meadows of the UK was given $12 million dollars for the “wrongful birth” of her now 6 year old son Adejuwon.

Four years before she became pregnant, Ms. Meadows had a test to see if she had the gene linked to hemophilia because a relative had a child with the condition. Ms. Meadow’s test mistakenly showed that she did not have the gene.

After her son was born and found to have both hemophilia and autism (a condition that has no prenatal test, at least for now), she sued the doctor who gave her the results. Ms Meadows claimed that if she knew she had the gene for hemophilia, she would have had her son prenatally tested and aborted him.

The judge wrote:

“It cannot be easy for any mother to contend bluntly that her child should not have been born. ‘Her love for her son shone through from her written statements. ‘She had specifically sought to avoid bringing a child with hemophilia into the world, knowing the suffering that condition causes.” (Emphasis added)

The judge added that Ms. Meadows now loves her son dearly and had only brought the claim “to provide a better life for her son”.

Did anyone wonder what Baby Adejuwon will think if or when he finds out about the circumstances of his mother’s case?

CONCLUSION

Before the legalization of abortion and euthanasia, we had consensus that killing a person because he or she was ill or disabled was absolutely wrong and unjust.

Now we are urged to accept that killing can be a loving act and should not be criminalized. And, if a diagnostic mistake is made and an abortion avoided, parents who would have aborted should be compensated, even richly.

What does that tell people who are ill or who have disabilities as well as all of us who lovingly care for these people? What does this do to our laws, ideals and attitudes?

In our hearts, we all really know that caring for lives, not killing, is the right thing to do. When we insist on ignoring this truth, tragedies like these two cases will not only continue but also devolve into terrible social, medical and legal policies that will affect us all if we do not speak out now.

“When Dying (by Physician-assisted Suicide) Becomes Unaffordable”

nancyvalko assisted suicide, euthanasia

Although physician-assisted suicide is consistently portrayed in major media as just a matter of taking some pills and peacefully going to sleep and die, a November 9, 2017 article titled “When Dying Becomes Unaffordable” in Medscape (a free subscription resource for medical professionals) describes a very different and alarming scenario.

This article by Roxanne Nelson, RN BSN is primarily about outrage over pharmaceutical companies drastically raising the price for secobarbital, the most commonly used sedative drug dosage prescribed for physician-assisted suicide, from less than $200 to $3000 or higher. However, the article also reveals little-known problems with the oral overdoses themselves, the ironic connection with capital punishment, the rise of lethal injections in other countries and the expected increase in the assisted suicide business.

PROBLEMS WITH ORAL OVERDOSES

Physician-assisted suicide laws are silent on the actual drugs and dosages prescribed but taking the lethal overdose is not an easy matter, according to this article.

For the most commonly used drug secobarbital, a person has “to dismantle 100 capsules to obtain powder to mix into a lethal brew, a process that takes about 1 person-hour of effort“,  “generally mixed with juice of a sweet substance to mask the bitter taste” and “consumed at one time”. (Emphasis added) And, although unmentioned in the article, Oregon’s 2016 data summary on their physician-assisted suicide law reported that the minutes between ingesting the drugs prescribed and death ranged from 7 minutes to 9 hours. But even this related to documentation received on only 25 patients out of the 133 patients taking the overdose last year. The other 108 patients are listed as “information unknown” about the time between overdose and death.

According to the article, the second most commonly used sedative drug oral pentobarbital became unavailable in 2015, in part due to “the uncanny and uncomfortable parallel between executions and PAD (‘physician-assisted dying’, more accurately known as physician-assisted suicide)”. The intravenous form of this drug is used in lethal injection executions and the growing opposition to capital punishment along with limited therapeutic uses may have resulted in oral pentobarbital products “voluntarily withdrawn or discontinued by the manufacturers” and no longer available in the US.

According to the article, physicians in Washington have tried two cheaper and available assisted suicide “cocktails” (the article’s term) containing overdoses of two cardiac drugs, morphine and a sedative after finding that just an alcohol and sleeping pills combination made patients complain of a “burning sensation”.

The first lethal “cocktail” trial called DDMP resulted in 20% of patients taking longer than 4 hours to die but a stronger “cocktail” called DDMP2  is now said to kill the majority of patients within 2 hours.

So far the new lethal “cocktail has been given to about 60 patients and, with 10 more cases, the doctors intend to submit an article on their findings.

LETHAL INJECTION ASSISTED SUICIDE

Ms. Nelson also writes positively about other countries like Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands that use lethal injections to allow “more leeway and options as to the selection of drugs, cost, and mode of delivery.”

And, at least in Ontario, patients prefer the injection:

“For example, in Ontario, Canada ― a country where patients have a choice ― there have been very few cases of self-administration, less than 1%, according to James Downar, MD, CM, MHSc, a critical care and palliative care physician at the University Health Network in Toronto.”

And

“There is a strong desire to avoid the oral route here, given the failure rate,” (All emphasis added)

“NUMBERS ARE SMALL BUT SLATED TO GROW”

In this chilling final section of the article, Ms. Nelson predicts that with the recent passage of California’s physician-assisted suicide law in 2015 and more states considering such laws, “the number of individuals choosing this option will be significantly higher.”

And she concludes with this ominous prediction:

“As more laws are passed across the United States, the need for an effective and affordable medication or drug combination becomes increasingly imperative. Even if covered by insurance, artificially inflated drug costs place a burden on the healthcare system and on society in general, so a safe and inexpensive option would benefit everyone.

Currently, unless the generic and widely available drugs used in DDMP2 fall victim to price gouging or some other unforeseen issue, it appears that a viable option has become available.” (Emphasis added)

CONCLUSION

People, sick or healthy, have been dying by self-inflicted suicide since time began but we never encouraged or approved it until the last 25 years. Having medical professionals involved does not make suicide better.

We don’t solve problems by helping people kill themselves and if we don’t reject physician-assisted suicide, we will inevitably find ourselves-like Canada and other countries-expanding to lethal injections and other groups of people who are judged “better off dead”.

This is truly what we cannot afford.

Defending Physician-assisted Suicide

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, medical ethics, mental health, nursing, suicide

In a recent letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal,  Dr. David Grube, national medical director of Compassion and Choices, defended physician-assisted suicide by stating:

“I knew that the people who requested it didn’t want to end their life. They loved life but realized they had an incurable, terminal disease and didn’t want to suffer needlessly as the inevitable end of life approached.

The proof is that more than one-third of terminally ill Oregonians who obtain the medication never take it, but they get great comfort in knowing they have access to it if they need it, which helps them suffer less.” (Emphasis added)

Is this really the crucial argument to upend our medical and legal ethics to legalize physician-assisted suicide?

Especially when more than 33% of people approved for assisted suicide don’t use the lethal overdose prescriptions, this should be a wake-up call for assisted suicide activists as well as suicide prevention groups and the rest of society.

As a former oncology (cancer) and hospice nurse who cared for many terminally ill patients including relatives over decades, I encouraged my patients and family members to talk about all their concerns. I found very few who wanted to end their lives out of fear of future suffering. I  reassured my patients and relatives that we would make them as comfortable as possible and support them until their natural death. Not one died by suicide and all died with true dignity.

But this was before physician-assisted suicide began to be legalized, glamorized and  promoted by activists, especially through sympathetic media outlets.

WHERE IS THE FOLLOW UP ON THE PATIENTS WHO DON’T TAKE THE LETHAL OVERDOSE?

What happened to these patients who decided not to take the lethal overdose? Did they unexpectedly improve or find their symptoms adequately treated? Was the terminal diagnosis wrong? Did they find the physical, emotional and spiritual support to continue living?

Unfortunately, those writing state assisted suicide reports are apparently not interested in this important information that could help save other lives.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE UNUSED LETHAL OVERDOSE?

Another concern is what happens to the lethal overdose that the patient does not take?

In any home health situation, every unused dose of a controlled medication must be accounted for and disposed of carefully. We know how important it is to keep such medication out of a child’s reach or from misuse by a family member or friend. Keeping overdoses for possible future ingestion is obviously dangerous, especially when our nation is in the middle of an opioid crisis that now kills almost 100 Americans every day.

However when it comes to unused lethal overdoses in assisted suicide, Death with Dignity’s advice is that:

“Anyone who chooses not to ingest a prescribed dose or anyone in possession of any portion of the unused dose must dispose of the dose in a legal manner as determined by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency or their state laws, if any.”

CONCLUSION

When even assisted suicide supporters admit data suggests that the “distress prompting patients to request these lethal medications primarily stems from their fear over losing control at the end of life” but claim that the more than 33% who don’t take the prescribed lethal overdose should still have it to supposedly “get great comfort in knowing they have access to it if they need it”,  physician-assisted suicide is further exposed as a terrible response to human fear and despair.

As our National Association of Pro-life Nurses states, patients need us to take their hands, not their lives.