Pages tagged "United States"
US Disability advocate: "say no to legalized assisted suicide, now and forever"
Aug 03, 2015
This testimony was published on the Not Dead Yet website on June 23, 2015. Chairperson Alexander, Members of the Committee on Health and Human Services:I am the director of Massachusetts Second Thoughts: People with Disabilities Opposing the Legalization of Assisted Suicide. We were the progressive voice in Massachusetts that helped defeat the assisted suicide ballot question in 2012, and again in the legislature last year. Our opposition is based in universal principles of social justice that apply to everyone, whether disabled or not. Drawing on those same principles, we supported the medical marijuana ballot question in 2012 of the relief it brings to many disabled people.
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California assisted suicide bill died a peaceful death.
Jul 08, 2015
Alex SchadenbergExecutive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition California assisted suicide bill SB 128 has died a peaceful death in the California House after Democrat legislators opposed it based on opposition from the disability community and the Latino community.The assisted suicide lobby has organized more than 25 attempts to legalize assisted suicide in States this year with all of them failing. These campaigns were financed with the money raised by the assisted suicide lobby through the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide campaign last year.
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California Assisted Suicide Bill is Dying
Jul 06, 2015
California Assisted Suicide Bill is Dying This article was published by Wesley Smith on his blog on July 5, 2015.I have been hearing this news for a few weeks, but it looks like CA's assisted suicide bill may be dying. From the Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle:
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There's always hope - brain tumour treatment breakthrough
Apr 01, 2015
By Paul Russell: Euthanasia and assisted suicide enthusiasts peddle a wide range of slogans to further their goals and to influence the public towards the thought that perhaps being legally able to help someone to die or to kill them is a benefit both to the individual and to society at large.That they should 'sloganise' their campaigns is entirely unremarkable; it's what every organisation pushing for some change or some recognition would do. That their slogans are paper-thin veneers over precisely the opposite outcome is where the danger really lies.Take for example the slogan of 'choice'. This modern concept of 'choice' is closely aligned to autonomy - our right to self-determination and self-direction. Its use is beguiling precisely because 'choice' in general terms is prized as an integral part of freedom broadly understood.However, in the context of euthanasia or assisted suicide, the 'choice' to be made dead is not really a choice at all; it is the end of choice precisely because it excludes all other possibilities in such a definite and irredeemable fashion. It excludes any and all other choices.How many times have we heard stories of people who have 'defied-the-odds' and outlived a difficult prognosis by months and years and even experiencing remission to return to a full 'normal' life? There have even been cases of misdiagnosis resulting tragically in assisted suicide. Making the 'choice' to be dead denies any other possibility and extinguishes both life and hope.Brittany Maynard had glioblastoma multiforme; a debilitating brain tumour that, in its final stages, grows at an alarming rate interfering with brain function and ultimately resulting in death. Medscape online notes that, 'No current treatment is curative'.Maynard ended her life using Oregon's assisted suicide laws on the 1st of November last year. Maynard became the poster girl for the assisted suicide movement in the USA and even post-death is being used to promote assisted suicide across the Union and especially in her home state of California.The use of people like Brittany Maynard to promote a cause like this is deeply disturbing. We will never know, at the end, how free a decision it was for her to suicide given the likelihood that her public profile and her announced intention to die at the end of October last sets a trajectory and an expectation.What we can now say most clearly is that she did have other choices which she excluded by her death and which, according to the a US CBS Network Sixty Minutes report on the 29th of March, could possibly have included remission.In an extensive and beautifully constructed report, 60 Minutes' anchor, Scott Pelley and a camera crew followed patients in a stage 1 immunotherapy trial on patients with glioblastoma reporting that the introduction of a variant of the polio virus into the tumour cells is acting to trigger the body's immune system into attacking the tumour which, in early cases, has seen the tumour disappear completely over time.Even Duke University's head of the trial, in the report, says he is edging closer to the possibility of using the word 'cure'.While yet in the early stages of the trial process, tests on many other forms of cancer are returning favourable results.This is great news. But as with all such medical breakthroughs, its announcement will come as 'too late' for some and will no doubt bring widely mixed emotions to those who have lost loved ones to this same form of tumour. Whether Brittany Maynard may have been able to access this trial is pure conjecture.This breakthrough ultimately says to the euthanasia and assisted suicide argument that changing the law based on one individual's circumstances at one solitary point in history is a denial of hope. It serves to highlight that the pro euthanasia and assisted suicide movement, in many subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, is saying that this person (Maynard) and these persons (extending the individual to a category of persons) have no hope and, because of their circumstances, aren't actually entitled to have any hope.It's not really about 'choice'. It never was and never will be so. It's really about the denial of life and of hope by the reduction of the human person to simply an object of pity and a victim of circumstance.Hope, on the otherhand, can be a sustaining force even in the most difficult of circumstances. In the Sixty Minutes report they follow a mother of two who is hanging on to the hope that she will see her sons graduate, marry and then have her grandchildren. But even in seemingly bleak circumstances the hope of seeing another sunrise or another visit from a friend or loved one cannot be underestimated as a force to sustain equilibrium, joy and life.
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Oregon debating bill to expand assisted suicide.
Mar 04, 2015
By Alex SchadenbergInternational Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition An Oregon, assisted suicide Bill HB 3337 is being debated in the State House to expand the assisted suicide law.Currently people in Oregon are eligible to die by assisted suicide if they are defined as terminally ill. The assisted suicide act states:
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Suicide Option Would Undermine My Cancer Battle
Mar 03, 2015
An assisted suicide bill has been presented in the Connecticut state legislature. This opinion piece by Maggie Karner appeared in the Courant Newspaper. Maggie Karner has been diagnosed with a terminal brain cancer - a glioblastoma. The same diagnosis as Brittany Maynard who used her circumstances to support assisted suicide. Maggie, who would qualify under the new bill, sees it differently.'Like many Connecticut residents, I have wondered whether I would want my doctor to offer suicide as a treatment for deadly cancer. The out-of-state proponents of the bill regarding physician-assisted suicide suggest having the ability to end your life legally is comforting. But I can tell you from personal experience that it is nearly as troubling as the cancer itself.'
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Assisted suicide increased by 44% in Oregon - 2014 report.
Feb 16, 2015
Assisted suicide increased by 44% in Oregon - 2014 report.By Alex Schadenberg International Chair, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition The 2014 Oregon assisted suicide report indicates a 44% increase in assisted suicide deaths and a 28% increase in lethal prescriptions. In 2014, at least one person who died by assisted suicide obtained the lethal dose in 2012, (439 days before death) even though the law requires the person to be within 6 months of death.The 2014 annual report is similar to prior years. The preamble implies that the deaths were voluntary (self-administered), but the information reported does not address that subject.
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Assisted Suicide is discriminatory, a violation of Americans with Disabilities Act
Feb 12, 2015
The Colorado assisted suicide bill was defeated in the Colorado Public Health and Human Services Committee on February 7 by a bipartisan 8 - 5 vote. The Colorado Independent published this article by the disability rights group Not Dead Yet: Assisted Suicide is discrimination, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. on February 6. Not Dead Yet:Legalized assisted suicide sets up a double standard: some people get suicide prevention while others get suicide assistance, and the difference between the two groups is the health status of the individual. This is blatant discrimination and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
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Colorado votes down assisted suicide initiative
Feb 09, 2015
Friday, 7th February. A House Committee of the Colorado Legislature voted down an assisted suicide bill proposed by Democrat, Joann Ginal. In a vote of 8 to 5 the decision came after a full day of testimonies from the public.Another Democrat, Dianne Primavera voted against the legislation citing a very personal experience with cancer. She had been originally told by her doctor that she would not live longer than 5 years, yet, after seeking out another doctor, whose opinion differed, she is still alive (and voting!) 28 years later.This highlights one of the problems with making a 'choice' to suicide in the face of a difficult prognosis.
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New Scientific discovery: Pain can be "turned-off"
Nov 30, 2014
By Alex SchadenbergExecutive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Most people recognize that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide will lead to abuse with some people dying without request or being coerced into euthanasia, with support for euthanasia based on the fear of living with uncontrolled pain. The control of pain has significantly improved since the late 1960's when Cicely Saunders began to develop modern hospice techniques in the UK.On November 26, Science Daily reported on a great new scientific discovery concerning the control of pain. Researchers at the St Louis University Medical Center published results of research in the medical journal Brain showing that the researchers may have found a way to block pain pathways which could lead to the effective control of neuropathic pain. Neuropathic pain is usually what has developed when people have uncontrolled pain.
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