law

Neutrality Kills

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Compassion & Choices, conscience rights, law, medical ethics, nursing

In 1997, Oregon became the first state to pass a physician-assisted suicide law. This came after the Oregon Medical Association changed its position from opposition to neutrality. 21 years later and after multiple failed attempts, the California state legislature approved the latest physician-assisted suicide law after the California Medical Association changed its opposition to neutrality.

The message sent-and received- was that if doctors themselves don’t strongly oppose physician-assisted suicide laws, why should the public?

Now the American Medical Association is set to reconsider changing its traditional opposition to assisted suicide to neutrality. This would be another, even more far-reaching disaster in terms of national impact.

For years, the euthanasia/assisted suicide activists of Compassion & Choices have successfully lobbied groups like the California Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, The American College of Legal Medicine, American Medical Student Association and American Medical Women’s Association and The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine to support legalized physician-assisted suicide or at least take a “neutral” position.

As a former home health and hospice nurse, I am particularly outraged that the latest organization to crumble to Compassion & Choices is the Visiting Nurses Associations of America.

According to its website, Compassion & Choices says that the VNNA had Compassion & Choices as part of the their Public Policy Leadership Conference “where they discussed their federal agenda for 2016 and the important role that members of the VNAA play in end-of-life care.”

With millions of dollars from donors to advance its agenda, a supportive media that ignores dangerous facts, popular ethicists who change positions with the polls and a legal system that has helped to undermine protections for the medically vulnerable, it may seem that Compassion & Choices is getting closer to achieving its goal of forcing doctors and nurses to supply medically assisted death on demand.

For example, a 2014 survey of over 21,000 American and European doctors responding to an ethics survey conducted by Medscape (a password-protected website for medical professionals) showed that-for the first time-a majority of doctors polled supported assisted suicide.

However, here are a few ways any of us can help turn around this dire situation:

  •  Educate yourself on the facts and consider joining others to publicly oppose medically assisted suicide/euthanasia in our courts, legislatures and media outlets.
  • Demand that suicide prevention and treatment must be made available to all, not just the young and physically healthy.
  • Ask your health care professionals about their position on assisted suicide/euthanasia and support only health care providers who will not assist suicide or refer for it.
  • Discover and reach out to at risk individuals and their families who may be in your neighborhood or church. Loneliness and isolation can be debilitating.
  • Consider volunteering at a local nursing home or facility. Some churches have even started programs to encourage church members to visit one hour, once a week with one patient.

None of us can afford to be neutral- or silent-when it comes to this life or death issue.

Assisted Suicide and the Psychiatrist

nancyvalko assisted suicide, euthanasia, law, medical ethics

When a person is suicidal, it is standard to get a psychiatric or psychological evaluation to help treat the suicidal person-except in states that have physician-assisted suicide laws. In those states when a suicidal person wants assisted suicide, there is only a so-called “safeguard” that leaves it up to the opinion of the assisted suicide doctor as to whether or not such an evaluation is necessary.

Not surprisingly, very few such consultations are done since assisted suicide advocates insist that suicide is rational when a person is terminally or incurably ill.

But even if such an evaluation is done, would it be done according to the same standards as the evaluation of a suicidal person not seeking medically assisted suicide?

In my opinion, probably not.

PSYCHIATRIC AMBIVALENCE

In a recent Psychiatric Times article “Death and the Psychiatrist”,  editorial board member and ethics writer Dr. H. Steven Moffic struggles with the topic of medically assisted suicide:

The role of the psychiatrist is generally to determine whether psychiatric illness is contributing to the decision to die. The assumption is that the mental illness is treatable if it is diagnosed. Another related role is to assess competence to make a decision.

However, data indicate that psychiatrists are seldom called in by other physicians when they should be. Moreover, in the Netherlands and Belgium, physicians can now be called on to help mentally ill patients die.2 (Emphasis added)

Dr. Moffic goes on to note that:

Polls indicate that like the public, physicians and psychiatrists have mixed and ambivalent opinions about euthanasia, and—for moral reasons—few of us want any involvement.5” (Emphasis added)

And:

There are obvious financial considerations as Baby Boomers age and become ill. End-of-life medical costs are high and physician-assisted suicide offers a cheap, quick solution to conserve health care resources. (We in psychiatry know this all too well, since we were an early target of for-profit managed care cost savings.)13 (Emphasis added)

Yet he concludes:

Beyond the personal, what do I believe professionally about euthanasia? I lean toward the AMA position—that physician-assisted death could take us too far away from our healing role. Perhaps, though, a special cadre of physicians can be trained and dedicated to this role. (Emphasis added)

However, ambivalence does nothing to  stop or even limit medicalized suicide.

CONCLUSION

The traditional Hippocratic Oath was routinely taken by graduating medical students and promoted the standard of incorruptible virtue in the practice of medicine.  In the 1960s, that began to change and new Oaths were promoted as more up to date and relevant.

Significantly, one of the first parts of the Hippocratic Oath to be eliminated was:

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion. (Emphasis added)

Now we have medicalized deaths actually promoted as civil rights.

Without strong ethical standards, enforceable laws and honorable health care providers,  how can we be expected to just automatically trust our health care system?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ethics and Alzheimer’s-Part Two: Feeding Tubes

nancyvalko advance directives, dementia, end-of-life, food and water, law, medical ethics

In 1988 during the Nancy Cruzan case involving a young, non-terminally ill woman in a so-called “persistent vegetative state” whose parents wanted her feeding tube withdrawn so she would die, I was asked if I was going to feed my mother who had Alzheimer’s disease. At the time, my mother had no problems with eating but I knew the real question was about a possible feeding tube later on.

Ironically, I had just written an  op-ed on the Cruzan case titled “Feeding is not Extraordinary Care  and I pointed out that if the withdrawal of food and water from people with severe brain injuries was accepted, the pool of potential victims would expand.

I was thinking about people like my mother and, sadly, I was right.

In 1993, just 3 years after Nancy Cruzan died a long 12 days after her feeding tube was removed, a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the future architects of Obamacare, acknowledged that the actual proof purported to show that the Cruzan case met Missouri law requiring “clear and convincing evidence” that Ms. Cruzan would not want to live in a so-called “vegetative” state rested only on “fairly vague and insubstantial comments to other people”.

However, he noted that

“…increasingly it will be our collective determination as to what lives are worth living that will decide how incompetent patients are treated. We need to begin to articulate and justify these collective determinations.” (Emphasis added.) Source: The American Journal of Medicine January 1993 Volume 94 p. 115

ALZHEIMER’S AND FEEDING TUBES

When I was asked about whether I would feed my mother with Alzheimer’s, I gave the same answer I gave when my baby daughter Karen with Down Syndrome and a heart defect was critically ill in 1983: Their anticipated deaths must be from their conditions, not from deliberate starvation and dehydration.

In the end, neither one needed a feeding tube. My daughter’s kidneys and other organs shut down and, since food or water would cause worse fluid overload, Karen was not given extra fluid and her heart gave out a short time later. In my mother’s case, she eventually needed to be spoon-fed until she quietly died in her sleep.

As a former hospice and ICU nurse, these scenarios are very familiar to me. Multiple organ failure sometimes occurs with critical illness and dying patients often gradually lose their appetites as they approach death. In those cases, we would give what little these people want or need until death. But for people not dying or near death, we made sure that they had at least basic  medical care and the life essentials of food, clothing and shelter. This is-or used to be-simple common sense.

ALZHEIMER’S AS A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH

The easiest way to get people to accept death by starvation/dehydration is to get them to choose it for themselves even before they have a problem.

Thus, media stories of people and their families suffering tremendously because of Alzheimer’s are very persuasive. People fear becoming an economic and emotional burden on their families. Not surprisingly, many people then willingly check off feeding tubes and other medical treatments in their advance directives.

Position papers like that from the American Geriatrics Society and the Alzheimer’s Association can also paint a dark picture:

The Association asserts that research evidence support no medical benefit from feeding tubes in advance dementia and that feeding tubes may actually cause harm in the advanced state of Alzheimer’s. Additionally, it is ethically permissible to withhold nutrition and hydration artificially administer by  vein or gastric tube when the individual with Alzheimer’s or dementia is in the end stages of the disease and is no longer able to receive food and water by mouth

The presumption is that such a death is peaceful and painless when a person is assumed to be unaware in a “vegetative” or late Alzheimer’s state. However, Bobby Schindler has written an account of the reality  of a prolonged starvation/dehydration death on his sister Terri Schiavo that was hidden from the public.

“JOE’S” CASE

Several years ago, I cared for a man with early stage Alzheimer’s who had a serious pneumonia needing a ventilator for a couple of days. Afterwards, Joe (not his real name) was alert and cooperative but the ventilator tube unexpectedly affected his ability to swallow and speak easily. His family asked about a feeding tube and special swallow therapists to try to retrain his throat muscles so that he could eat and drink safely. That is how an even older friend of mine in the same situation but without Alzheimer’s was successfully treated recently.

However in Joe’s case, a neurologist was first called to evaluate Joe’s mental status. I was there as the doctor asked him questions like “How many fingers am I holding up?” The man answered the questions correctly but the neurologist immediately wrote for nothing by mouth including crucial blood pressure medications. He also then recommended no feeding tube to the family. No swallow therapy was ordered. Joe was never asked about this.

When I questioned the neurologist and pointed out that the man had given correct answers by nods and holding up the correct number of fingers when asked, the neurologist responded by saying that the man did not hold up his fingers “fast enough”!

This is the tragic reality when we judge some lives as not worth living.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

One of my oldest friends, “Dr. Mary” (not her real name), is a pro-life doctor who asked me years ago to be her power of attorney for health care if she became incapacitated. She had never married and had no close relatives. She told me what she wanted, especially in light of the Nancy Cruzan case, and signed an advance directive available through our archdiocese.

My friend now has presumed Alzheimer’s dementia and she is now in the later stages. She can still feed herself, albeit somewhat messily. She no longer remembers my name or her friends’ names but she is delighted when we come.

At almost 90 and with inevitable death approaching, she now has a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order but her nursing home is well aware that this does not mean any reduction in care or attention.

Along with her other friends who visit and help, our goal now is to make Dr. Mary as happy and safe as possible. If she needs spoon-feeding, she will get it. All of us hope that Dr. Mary will never need a feeding tube but she will not be denied one if necessary.

But best of all, Dr. Mary will continue to receive our love until her Lord calls her home.

Parent Power

nancyvalko disability, family, futility, law, medical ethics, Simon's Law

During the last few months, I have been writing about efforts by some legislators in Missouri and now Kansas to block the passage of Simon’s Law, a bill that exposed and sought to change the secret futility polices in hospitals that led to the death of Simon Crosier, a baby with Trisomy 18. I even wrote my own testimony in support of the bill.

But now in a stunning development, Dr. John Lantos wrote an opinion editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) admitting that withholding life-sustaining treatment from babies with Trisomy 13 and 18 was really a value judgment rather than a medical judgment:

Thirty years ago, pediatric residents were taught that trisomy 13 and 18 were lethal congenital anomalies. Parents were told that these conditions were incompatible with life. There was a tacit consensus that life-sustaining treatment was not medically indicated. Clinical experience usually was consistent with this self-fulfilling prophecy.

But with social media, this changed.  Parents share stories and videos, showing their happy 4 and 5 year old children with these conditions. Survival, it turns out, is not a rare as once thought.”

This survival is even more impressive in light of a related JAMA article titled “Outcomes of Surgical Interventions in Children with Trisomies 13 and 18”   which stated that although “The median age of survival was 13 and 9 days, respectively, in children with trisomies 13 and 18”:

Among children with trisomies 13 and 18 who lived to 6 months, survival at age 10 years was 51% and 60%, respectively.

Note that what is changing the former medical perception of “incompatible with life” is not any new medical advance but rather loving parents who refused to accept the predicted death sentences for their babies, insisted on treatment and then used Facebook and other social and regular media to show off their children’s real lives. I call this Parent Power and it is based on love.

That power may help bills like Simon’s Law to finally pass.

DOWN SYNDROME (Trisomy 21)  AND PARENT POWER

I personally  learned about parent power when my daughter Karen was born in 1982 with Down Syndrome and a severe heart defect. 20+ years before Karen’s birth,  children with Down Syndrome were routinely institutionalized as accepted medical practice. But by the time Karen was born, almost all newborns with Down Syndrome went home with their parents and eligible early childhood programs.

What caused this dramatic change?

Again, it was primarily parent power.

Parents like Kay and Marty McGee not only ignored the standard medical advice to institutionalize their daughter but also fought for support and help for their daughter and others like her. They eventually founded the National Association for Down Syndrome in 1960 (http://www.nads.org/about-us/history-of-nads/ )

By working with other parents and reaching out to willing educational, legal and medical professionals, they helped change medical attitudes, the educational system and public acceptance of people with Down Syndrome who are now achieving goals once thought impossible.

Although it continues to be a long-term effort to ensure non-discriminatory medical treatment for people with Down Syndrome or other disabilities, people with Down Syndrome who were once predicted to die at an early age now have a life expectancy of 60 years and are achieving goals once thought impossible.

THE FIGHT  IS STILL FAR FROM OVER

Unfortunately and on the heels of the welcome editorial comment on babies with Trisomy 13 and 18, comes the news about the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of little Israel Stinson.

Two-year old Israel died after a judge suddenly and unexpectedly rescinded a court order that prevented a California hospital from removing the ventilator from little Israel before his parents could get an opinion from another neurologist after conflicting medical opinions about whether or not Israel was brain dead.

In this case, parent power was overturned by a single judge after the family thought that Israel was protected by a court order.

Not only is this personally tragic for Israel and his parents but this development also serves to devastate the crucial trust needed in our medical and legal systems.

 

 

 

Ethics and Alzheimer’s –Part One: Why I Can’t “Walk to End Alzheimer’s”

nancyvalko family, law, medical ethics

In the 1980s, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive mental deterioration due to generalized degeneration of the brain.  It was quite a shock to the family and at that time, there was an unfortunate stigma attached to Alzheimer’s that led  some family members to insist that mom’s illness be kept secret.

At one point, my mother even wound up in a psychiatric unit before we found a good geriatrician, a doctor who specialized in care for older people as well as dementia. My mother eventually died of cancer while in the later stages of Alzheimer’s but she was able to be cared for at home until she died in her sleep the day she went to a nursing home.

After my mother’s death, I was glad to later learn about groups like the Alzheimer’s Association   and the development of community resources to help people with Alzheimer’s and their families. It would have been helpful with my mother.

Since it started in 1980, the Alzheimer’s Association is now international and the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer’s research . The organization’s public profile has exploded through media coverage of celebrity supporters and fundraising efforts like the “Walk to End Alzheimer’s”,  the world’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s disease care, support and research.

However, I cannot walk for Alzheimer’s because of its support of embryonic stem cell research as well as concerns about the organization’s position statements on issues like medical treatment and tube feedings. I will be addressing those issues in future blogs.

I do not intend to just single out this organization or portray it as “bad”.

I have been a volunteer for several organizations whose causes have directly touched family members and friends. However,  I do examine each organization to determine how and where its fundraising is used before I volunteer to help.

ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION STATEMENT “RESEARCH USING HUMAN STEM CELLS”

This 2011 position statement on their website states:

 “The Alzheimer’s Association policy supports and encourages any legitimate scientific avenue that offers the potential to advance this goal, including human embryonic stem cell research; and, we oppose  any restriction or limitation on research, provided that appropriate scientific review, and ethical and oversight guidelines and compliance are in place.” (Emphasis added)

Raising funds for research resulting in a cure of any disease is laudable, but without ethical boundaries, such research can cross the line. Embryonic stem cell research necessarily involves the destruction of human lives in their earliest stages and should not be allowed on even just humanitarian grounds, much less funded.

Ironically, embryonic stem cells have been a great disappointment in human research and even very harmful in some cases while ethical, non-embryonic stem cells are achieving great breakthroughs, for example in treating  cataracts of the eye and even paralysis.

As a nurse, I have known for decades  about  the ethically obtained stem cells from bone  marrow donors  that now every year save  the lives of  tens of thousands of people with cancer and other diseases.

In fact, my own grandson’s life was saved 3 years ago because of a bone marrow transplant!

So while I appreciate the Alzheimer’s Association’s  effort to help people with Alzheimer’s and their families find practical resources for help and support , I cannot walk to raise research money for a group that not only supports embryonic stem cell research but also opposes any restrictions.

CONSCIENCE RIGHTS, CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTERS-AND MORE

nancyvalko abortion, conscience rights, law, medical ethics

A new Illinois law was just signed by Governor Bruce Rauner with dire implications for pro-life health care providers.

As an August 9, 2016 National Catholic Register article titled  “Illinois Law Threatens Conscience Rights, Crisis-Pregnancy Centers” explains, this new law changes the former state Health Care Right of Conscience Act to require that pro-life doctors, nurses and even staff at crisis pregnancy centers  present abortion as a legal treatment option and are required to refer, transfer or give information about where to go for an abortion when a woman says she wants one.

While the terminology about other health care options is vague, the law specifically cites:

“family planning, counseling, referrals, or any other advice in connection with the use or procurement of contraceptives and sterilization or abortion procedures…”

Incredibly, this Illinois law  also defines conscience rights as merely religious:

 “Conscience” means a sincerely held set of moral convictions arising from belief in and relation to God, or which, though not so derived, arises from a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by God among adherents to religious faiths

Ironically, as Kathy Bozyk, who operates the Southside Pregnancy Center in Chicago notes, while she is required by the law to discuss the alleged benefits of abortion and refer women to abortion providers, abortion businesses are not required to make referrals to crisis-pregnancy centers.

Instead, abortion groups like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) continue to actively fight crisis pregnancy centers, accusing them of false and misleading information as well as threatening women’s safety. They are a strong force working to get laws like this passed.

PUSHBACK

There is an unfortunate and surprising assessment of the law in the NCR article from Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois:

According to the article, Mr Gilligan said that although the Conference was disappointed that the governor signed the law, the Catholic Conference was able to negotiate, with opposing parties, a revision to the original bill that the state’s 43 Catholic hospitals can live with, saying with regard to the requirement to refer, transfer or provide written information on where to find an abortion facility :

He said co-sponsors of the bill said even simply ripping out the pages of a phone book with names of all the local OB-GYNs in a certain area would be enough to comply.

If accurate, is this a helpful or even realistic response?

Fortunately, we have courageous, front-line  health care providers like Kathy Bozyk who refuse to comply, Illinois Right to Life continuing its opposition and pro-life legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) who filed a lawsuit in state court against Governor Rauner on behalf of The Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford and the Chicago-based Thomas More Society that plans a lawsuit.

It’s important to note that this Illinois law comes on the heels of a December California law forcing pro-life pregnancy centers and state-licensed medical clinics to distribute information on where and how to obtain a state-funded abortion or face fines of $1000 a day.

So it is imperative that  all of us throughout our nation work to ensure that strong conscience rights be upheld, strengthened, correctly defined and even expanded to include all health care ethics issues, especially in the face of possible or actual assisted suicide laws.

Conscience rights are essential to help us protect our patients from a healthcare system that is increasingly succumbing to a “culture of death” mentality.

Conscientious Objection, Conscience Rights and Workplace Discrimination

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Canada, conscience rights, education, end-of-life, euthanasia, law, medical ethics

The tragic cases of Nancy Cruzan and Christine Busalacchi , young Missouri women who were claimed to be in a “persistent vegetative state” and starved and dehydrated to death, outraged those of us in Missouri Nurses for Life and we took action.

Besides educating people about severe brain damage, treatment, cases of recovery and the radical change in medical ethics that could lead to the legalization of euthanasia, we also fought for healthcare providers’ rights against workplace discrimination for refusing to participate in deliberate death decisions. We talked to nurses who were threatened with termination.

Although Missouri had some protections against forcing participating in abortion, there were no statutes we could find where health care providers were protected against being forced to participate in deliberate death decisions. We were also told by some legislators that our chance of success was almost nil

Nevertheless, we persisted and after years of work and enduring legislators watering down our original proposal to include lethal overdoses and strong penalties, Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 404.872.1 was signed into law in 1992. It states:

Refusal to honor health care decision, discrimination prohibited, when.

404.872. No physician, nurse, or other individual who is a health care provider or an employee of a health care facility shall be discharged or otherwise discriminated against in his employment or employment application for refusing to honor a health care decision withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment if such refusal is based upon the individual’s religious beliefs, or sincerely held moral convictions.

(L. 1992 S.B. 573 & 634 § 7)

Fast Forward to Today

In 2016, we face groups like Compassion and Choices that have pushed assisted suicide legislation through in some states and hoping for an eventual sweeping Supreme Court decision making assisted suicide a constitutional right like abortion.

Some European countries like Belgium and Holland have virtual euthanasia on demand for even non-terminally ill people of any age. In Canada, their Supreme Court has forced assisted suicide on that country and now the province of Quebec has lethal injection kits available to any doctor.

Not surprisingly, conscience/workplace rights for health care providers are being vigorously fought both in those countries and here in the US.

For example, Compassion and Choices’ Barbara Coombs Lee, one of the architects of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, claims that strong conscience-right protections encourage “workers to exercise their idiosyncratic convictions at the expense of patient care” at the end of life.

Hope on the Horizon?

In May, a hospital in Poland stopped performing abortions after every single doctor signed a pledge refusing to do them.

Now, several hospitals in Santa Barbara  and Palm Springs as well as Providence medical centers are opting out of the new California assisted suicide law.

Personally, I believe that if people are given a choice when they are sick, they would naturally prefer a hospital that is committed to care rather than assisted suicide.

Thus, conscientious objection, workplace discrimination/conscience rights laws and the power of institutions dedicated to ethical health care can help turn the tide against assisted suicide laws or at least save some lives and mitigate some of the damage caused by assisted suicide laws. It may take a long time before killing sick or disabled people is again seen as abhorrent and unethical but the effort will be worth it.

As I have said before, “NO!” is a powerful and potentially lifesaving word.

Canada and Assisted Suicide for Psychiatric Patients

nancyvalko assisted suicide, Canada, disability, family, law, medical ethics, mental health, nursing

My first husband and the father of my children was a caring man and dedicated psychiatrist who himself eventually became disabled by mental illness. Early in our marriage, I helped him write his medical journal articles and we planned to eventually include me in his psychiatric practice to work with the families of his patients. As a nurse, I always believed that families were ideally the best support system for patients and our goal was to improve the care and outcomes of people with mental illness.

Tragically, my husband’s mental illness worsened despite intensive treatment. He ultimately abandoned our family and lived the next 26 years in and out of hospitals and assisted living places before he died of natural causes in 2014.

Thus I have a unique perspective on the legal, medical and personal aspects of mental illness.

At one point, a family member sympathetically suggested that it might be better for everyone if he committed suicide. I was horrified. You don’t give up on sick people and I told this person that I would do anything in my power to stop him if he tried to kill himself. Suicide would be the ultimate tragedy.

Canada and Its New Assisted Suicide Law

In February 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Carter v. Canada case to legalize physician-assisted suicide for competent, consenting adults whose suffering is due to a “grievous and irremediable” medical condition and gave Parliament a year to develop a regulatory regime along these “parameters.”

The Parliamentary Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted “Dying” suggested that the “grievous and irremediable” criterion includes nonterminal medical conditions, including psychiatric disorders.

The federal government’s Bill C-14, on the other hand, defined “grievous and irremediable” as an “advanced state of irreversible decline in capabilities” in a person for whom “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable.”  The Senate ultimately passed the bill but the controversy about assisted suicide for psychiatric patients is still raging.

In a June 21, 2016 commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal “Should assisted dying for psychiatric disorders be legalized in Canada?”, authors Scott Y.H. Kim MD PhD and Trudo Lemmens LLM DCL warn against this.

As they note:

In Belgium and the Netherlands, medical assistance in dying has been provided to people with chronic schizophrenia, posttraumatic stress disorder, severe eating disorders, autism, personality disorders and even prolonged grief.

The authors conclude that:

Because of the necessarily broad criteria used to regulate assisted dying (in Canada), legalizing the practice for psychiatric conditions will likely place already vulnerable patients at risk of premature death.

However, others like Belgium psychiatrist Joris Vandenberghe, MD, PhD disagree:

“I think the current approach taken by the Canadian government is a bit too strict because it doesn’t fully recognize the enormous impact that psychiatric disorders can have on patients,” Dr Vandenberghe told Medscape Medical News. (Emphasis added)

However, even Dr. Vandenberghe recognizes the problems while still calling for more “safeguards”:

“I am generally not opposed to our euthanasia legislation and agree that patients suffering from psychiatric conditions should not be excluded from our legislation. However, extra precautions are urgently needed.

“I’m not happy with the way things work here [in Belgium]. Sometimes euthanasia is used with insufficient reluctance on the part of the healthcare professionals involved. We’re missing opportunities for treatment, and we need more safeguards,” said Dr. Vandenberghe.

So for me, the answer lies in a thorough evaluation of a patient prior to euthanasia. There really is no time pressure in psychiatric disorders, and if you have a multidisciplinary committee involved in the evaluation, you can take care of lot of the concerns we now have about euthanasia in the setting of psychiatric illness.”

The reality is that very few psychological or psychiatric referrals are even now made for anyone considering assisted suicide either in the US or in Europe. The answer is not more “safeguards” for assisted suicide practitioners to disregard while enjoying virtual legal immunity but rather an emphatic “No!” from the public as well the legal and medical systems. We also need an unbiased media to publicly expose the real facts about legalized medical killing.

 Conclusion

I have seen both the legal and medical systems often fail people with mental illness like my ex-husband who desperately need treatment and safety.

On the medical side, I begged for direction from my ex-husband’s doctors about what I could do to help him but I was told that there was nothing I could do or not do since the doctors were seeing him regularly. I was not allowed to even know his diagnosis without his permission.

On the legal side, I had problems getting supervised visitation even after a hostage situation.  Due to almost constant harassment, I had multiple orders of protection violated without adequate legal response. And despite being on mental illness disability, my ex-husband was allowed to file and lose several frivolous lawsuits-until he ran out of money.

It was a heartbreaking situation.

However, I always hoped that my ex-husband would improve so that he could at least have a better relationship with his children. Even though that did not happen, I am grateful that he did not die by suicide, assisted or otherwise.

Unfortunately, my family’s experience is not unique among families with a member who is mentally ill.

If our medical and legal systems are already often failing people with mental illness and their families, how can we allow them the power to “assist” our loved ones’ suicide?

That would be the ultimate betrayal of an already stigmatized and vulnerable group of people.

Tolerating Evil

nancyvalko abortion, assisted suicide, Canada, euthanasia, law, medical ethics

Years ago, one of my daughters was caught after she did something she knew was wrong. “But it looked so good!” she wailed. I told her that if evil looked like it really was, no one would choose it.

I thought of this incident when I read Kathleen Parker’s June 10, 2016 USA op-ed titled “Freedom to kill and permission for sick people to die”.

In the article, Ms. Parker reveals her struggle:

“Here, I should confess my own ambivalence. Basically, I’d like to have the means to end my own life on my own terms when my body has clearly called it quits. I’m just not sure I like the idea of the state and doctors lending a hand.”

Many people can find physician-assisted suicide alluring when they ponder their own potential demise. As a former hospice nurse myself, I recognized this in some of my patients even before assisted suicide was legalized. However, with care and treatment, we were able to help these patients live as well as possible before death. And I never saw a patient go on to die by suicide or assisted suicide.

It is a myth that a personal choice for assisted suicide will not affect others or have far-reaching consequences.

Ms. Parker’s conclusion recognizes this:

“As more than a dozen other states consider similar legislation, it isn’t irrational to wonder whether, in tampering with our medical culture of healing, we aren’t inviting unintended consequences that we’ll live — or die — to regret.”

The truth of her conclusion became starkly obvious when a few days after California’s new assisted suicide law took effect,  one doctor immediately opened up a dedicated assisted suicide clinic in San Francisco.

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..

Like the past so-called “back alley” abortionists, Shavelson defends 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.”

We cannot afford to be ambivalent or tolerant about evil, whether it is abortion, assisted suicide, terrorism, etc. Evil never limits itself because evil always seeks to expand unless it is stopped

We only have to look at Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries where assisted suicide has already expanded to direct euthanasia and, in some of those countries, even without consent and for virtually any psychological, emotional or physical condition.

Could Brittany Maynard Have Been Saved?

nancyvalko assisted suicide, end-of-life, law, suicide

This week, CBS’ “60 Minutes” TV show reported that FDA has just granted “breakthrough status” for an innovative treatment for glioblastoma brain cancer that was first reported by 60 Minutes on March 29, 2015.

Brittany Maynard had glioblastoma and died by physician-assisted suicide on November 1, 2014, just 5 months before the original TV segment aired.

Brittany Maynard was a young newly wed who, with enormous media publicity and the support of the pro physician-assisted suicide group Compassion and Choices, announced her intention to commit assisted suicide and asked for donations to the Brittany Maynard Foundation to raise money to help Compassion and Choices fight for legalization of physician-assisted suicide throughout the US.

Using Brittany’s story and foundation, Compassion and Choices was finally successful after years of failed attempts to get a physician-assisted suicide law passed in California.

Did Brittany, her doctors or Compassion and Choices know about the promising clinical trials for glioblastoma reported by “60 Minutes” before Brittany took her life with a physician ordered lethal overdose?

Although reported medical breakthroughs are frequent and often over-hyped or prove disappointing, information is available at ClinicalTrials.gov, a registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world. This service was developed by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration and made available to the public in February 2000.

The Decision to Forego Treatment

According to Brittany’s own words:

After months of research, my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left…

And

I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that.

No one is ethically obligated to try any experimental or unduly burdensome treatment for such conditions but many people do so not only for a possible cure but also to potentially gain more time or to advance medical research. I saw this when I was an oncology nurse and also in my personal life.

For example, a few years ago, a friend developed a usually terminal lung cancer and agreed to try  an unusual and massive combination of chemotherapy and radiation. As explained by her doctors, the side effects were very tough on her but today she is happy, active and enjoying her life and her grandchildren. Her cancer continues to be in remission. Success stories like this were unimaginable of when I first became a nurse.

But while treatment of a serious or terminal condition can be a personal choice, killing oneself-with or without medical assistance-must not be treated as just another valid treatment “option”.

Hard Cases Make Bad Law

“Hard cases make bad law” is an old legal adage that means that an extreme case is a poor basis for a general law that would cover a wider range of less extreme cases. This is particularly true when it comes to physician-assisted suicide where the slippery slope expanding the pool of potential victims has become a superhighway.

I also remember when AIDS, not glioblastoma, was the “hard case” used to justify physician-assisted suicide in the 1990s because it was also considered terminal.

But by 1998, the CDC issued the first national treatment guidelines for the use of antiretroviral therapy in adults and adolescents with HIV  Today, AIDS is no longer considered an automatic death sentence and those with AIDS can even achieve normal lifespans.

But how many despairing people in the 1990s resorted to suicide, assisted or not, when the treatment for AIDS was so close?

Conclusion

Hope can be life-enhancing as well as life-saving.

Sadly, as one brain tumor expert poignantly wrote, Brittany Maynard’s “suicide was a blow to fellow brain tumor patients who were living in hope”.