Ed

NZ Herald 12 November 2017
Family First Comment: And this is the problem with euthanasia. Doctors can get it wrong – so we just can’t take the risk!
“A groom who had been told he had just weeks to live used his wedding to tell guests that he wasn’t dying and had actually been misdiagnosed.”
www.rejectassistedsuicide.nz
A groom who had been told he had just weeks to live used his wedding to tell guests that he wasn’t dying and had actually been misdiagnosed.

Jack Kane, 23, proposed to his girlfriend Emma Clarke, 23, after being told that he had a cancerous tumour on his spine.

He had been struggling with severe back pain and hypersensitivity in his legs, eventually finding that he could not move at all. He was later told he just weeks to live, according to The Telegraph UK.

Their wedding was arranged to take place in a ceremony at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough eight days after his emotional proposal.But in that time doctors discovered that the “terminal” cancer was actually a rare neurological condition called neuromyelitis optica, also known as Devic’s disease.

The couple told their immediate family but decided to keep it a secret from the rest of their 130 guests.

Mr Kane eventually told them during his speech. The moment was caught on video and shows Mr Kane sitting in his wheelchair. He begins to sob as he says: “The doctors have done some further tests and they came back positive – I am not terminal.”
READ MORE: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11943130&ref=twitter

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MercatorNet 7 November 2017
Family First Comment: Disturbing to see what’s happening in Belgium.
“Death by euthanasia in Belgium is, generally, no longer regarded as an exception requiring special justification. Instead, it is often regarded as a normal death and a benefit not to be restricted to without special justification.”

Belgium’s debate over euthanasia for psychological suffering is heating up. Last week 42 psychiatrists, psychologists and academics published an open letter calling for a national debate on euthanasia and mental illness.

Euthanasia because of unbearable and futile psychological suffering is very problematic. It is about people who are not terminal and, in principle, could live for many years. Therefore, extreme caution is appropriate both clinically and legally. The essence of the case seems to us that in estimating the hopelessness of one’s suffering, the subjective factor cannot be eliminated …

The current law, the signatories say, is far too vague and flexible:
“The law does not indicate the exact criteria for unbearable and psychological suffering. Any complaint about any carelessness in this area will only end in a legal ‘no man’s land’.
“More and more, no matter how many criteria there are, it depends simply on how an individual psychiatrist interprets or tests them, aided by the doctor’s own assumptions and the patient’s account of his symptoms.”

Some people are dying unnecessarily, the signatories claim. To stand silently on the sidelines is a crime of neglect.

The danger inherent in euthanasia for psychological suffering is a topic which seems to bore the Belgian media. But it was jolted out of its slumber by an exclusive article (in English) from Associated Press which also appeared in the Washington Post. This prompted a number of articles in the local press.
READ MORE: https://www.mercatornet.com/mobile/view/is-euthanasia-for-psychological-suffering-changing-belgian-medicine

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World Medical Association 27 October 2017
Family First Comment: When the professionals who would have to implement a proposed law vehemently oppose it, there are serious questions to be asked about the merit of the law.
www.rejectassistedsuicide.nz
The WMA and its national member medical associations, which include the Australian Medical Association, have strongly reiterated their long-standing opposition to physician assisted suicide and euthanasia on the basis that they constitute the unethical practice of medicine.
The WMA calls on Australia’s Victorian Upper House to reject the Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill.
The Association cites its Declaration on Euthanasia which states: ‘Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient’s own request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical’.
It also refers to its Statement on Physician Assisted Suicide which declares: ‘Physician assisted suicide, like euthanasia, is unethical and must be condemned by the medical profession. Where the assistance of the physician is intentionally and deliberately directed at enabling an individual to end his or her own life, the physician acts unethically’.
And further it quotes its Resolution on Euthanasia, which notes that the practice of euthanasia with physician assistance has been adopted into law in some countries and that ‘The World Medical Association reaffirms its strong belief that euthanasia is in conflict with basic ethical principles of medical practice, and strongly encourages all national medical associations and physicians to refrain from participating in euthanasia, even if national law allows it or decriminalizes it under certain conditions’.
Finally, the WMA has expressed its concern that should the Victorian Bill be passed into law, it will create a situation of direct conflict with physicians’ ethical obligations to patients and will harm the “ethical tone” of the profession. It also warns that vulnerable people will be placed at risk of abuse and that a precedent will be set that physician assisted suicide and euthanasia are ethically acceptable.
https://www.wma.net/news-post/world-medical-association-reiterates-strong-opposition-to-physician-assisted-suicide-and-to-australian-bill/

The Age 9 October 2017
Family First Comment: A great article – from a medical professional (not an ACT MP!) who knows the truth
“A request to die is uncommon, and is often driven by poorly controlled pain or nausea, as well as fear, loss of function and hopelessness. Usually when pain and other symptoms are under control, good nursing care is on hand, and psychological support has been provided, patients no longer want their death to be hastened. For family members watching a loved one die, the experience can be agonising. However, with appropriate involvement of palliative care, the preparation and education of family members about the normal processes of dying (such as irregular breathing and fluctuating consciousness), and with the administration of pain relief, there is minimal physical suffering.
Most patients with incurable cancer battle to the end. They exhaust all evidence-based active treatment options and clinical trials before being told that supportive care measures are now best.
A request to die is uncommon, and is often driven by poorly controlled pain or nausea, as well as fear, loss of function and hopelessness. Usually when pain and other symptoms are under control, good nursing care is on hand, and psychological support has been provided, patients no longer want their death to be hastened.
For family members watching a loved one die, the experience can be agonising. However, with appropriate involvement of palliative care, the preparation and education of family members about the normal processes of dying (such as irregular breathing and fluctuating consciousness), and with the administration of pain relief, there is minimal physical suffering.
When a patient seeks assisted dying, it is often when they are first told they have a limited life expectancy and before they are truly unwell. They are so distressed by such difficult news that they anticipate what is to come and can be consumed with fear and an urge to regain control. They may respond by seeking assisted dying at a time of their choosing. In overseas jurisdictions where this is legal around 80 per cent of those who access it have cancer.
Under the assisted suicide model proposed for Victoria, no psychiatric assessment or specialist palliative care assessment of intending patients are required. There is no need to involve the patient’s treating doctors as two new doctors with no mandated end-of-life expertise assess and authorise lethal medicine without any follow-up care.
Informing family members is optional. The entire process can be completed and drugs taken within 10 days – little time for change of mind about an irreversible act. Everyone is presumed to have decision-making capacity unless they obviously don’t. Determination of a patient’s life expectancy involves an educated guess by doctors and the confidence intervals can be wide.
READ MORE: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/i-wont-intentionally-help-my-patients-to-end-their-lives-20171009-gywz7j.html?platform=hootsuite

Washington Post 24 October 2017
Family First Comment: What the NZ media won’t tell you…..
“…none of the 27 states where such measures were introduced this year passed them into law…. Federal lawmakers, too, are pushing back against the controversial idea. A spending bill passed by the House last month would block the District’s assisted suicide law, which went into effect in February. Eleven House members – including six Democrats — have introduced a resolution condemning the practice. “It undermines a key safeguard that protects our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, including the elderly, people with disabilities and people experiencing psychiatric diagnoses,” the resolution says. “Americans deserve better.”
New Zealand deserves better also
www.rejectassistedsuicide.nz
Three years ago, Brittany Maynard’s viral video launched the issue of medically assisted suicide into the national spotlight. But while advocates have notched a few wins since then, they’ve also run up against some strong, bipartisan resistance.
Two states — California and Colorado — have made it legal for doctors to prescribe life-ending medication to terminally ill patients since Maynard, diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, publicized her decision to end her life. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in six states, including Vermont, Oregon, Washington and Montana, as well as the District.
Yet none of the 27 states where such measures were introduced this year passed them into law, according to tracking done by Compassion and Choices, a group that backs assisted suicide. The bills were either quashed in committee or passed one legislative chamber but not the other. That was the case even in states run by Democrats, including Connecticut, Rhode Island and Hawaii.
New York’s highest court upheld the state’s ban on assisted death in September, ruling unanimously that the terminally ill patients who brought the case don’t have a constitutional right to obtain life-ending drugs from a doctor.
Federal lawmakers, too, are pushing back against the controversial idea. A spending bill passed by the House last month would block the District’s assisted suicide law, which went into effect in February. Eleven House members – including six Democrats — have introduced a resolution condemning the practice.
“It undermines a key safeguard that protects our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, including the elderly, people with disabilities and people experiencing psychiatric diagnoses,” the resolution says. “Americans deserve better.”
Doctors’ groups remain overwhelmingly opposed to assisted suicide. Although the California Medical Association switched its stance from opposing to neutral in 2015, other state medical associations remain opposed. So does the American Medical Association, which considers it to be “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” and poses “serious societal risks.”
A top concern about legalizing assisted suicide is that it could put financial pressure on patients to choose that option instead of treatment, if their insurer covers life-ending medication but not life-extending therapies. Another is that it could be chosen by patients just as they’re most susceptible to depression while they’re fighting aggressive illnesses.
READ MORE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2017/10/24/the-health-202-legalizing-assisted-suicide-has-stalled-at-every-level/59ee109330fb045cba000973/?utm_term=.81323a137fe2

Stuff co.nz 24 October 2017
Family First Comment: Don’t get too excited. The last time Winston Peters asked MPs to give referendum to the people on a contentious issue (allowing a referendum on same-sex marriage) he lost 33 – 85.
Politicians don’t like sharing the power.
#democracy?
The issue of whether to legalise voluntary euthanasia looks increasingly likely to go to a public vote after details of the Labour-NZ First coalition agreement were revealed.
Contained in the agreement made public on Tuesday was a commitment to hold a conscience vote in Parliament when it came time to decide whether MPs or the general public should determine the fate of ACT leader David Seymour’s End of Life Choice bill.
Seymour’s bill, which gives people with a terminal illness or a grievous and irremediable medical condition the option of requesting assisted dying, was drawn from the members’ ballot in June.
NZ First has since put forward a Supplementary Order Paper that provides for a referendum on the issue.
When MPs eventually meet to decide whether there should be a referendum, they will now be able to vote individually, rather than along party lines.
Ken Orr, spokesman for anti-euthanasia group Right to Life, said the issue was too complex to be put to a public vote, and could lead to a “slippery slope” of assisted dying policies.
“We don’t think it’s a matter that should be decided by individuals in the community,” he said.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/euthanasia-debate/98192372/labournz-first-coalition-deal-increases-odds-of-voluntary-euthanasia-referendum

No Euthanasia.org 11 October 2017
From all around Australia, 383 health professional have signed a statement rejecting assisted suicide and euthanasia, reaffirming the role of doctors, nurses and allied health as saving lives and providing real care and support for those who are suffering.
Read their statement below:
We endorse the views of the World Medical Association that physician assisted suicide and euthanasia are unethical, even if made legal. We endorse the Australian Medical Association position that “doctors should not be involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life.”
We also endorse the World Health Organisation definition of Palliative Care, which has been re-affirmed by the Australia & New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine, that Palliative Care aims to deliver impeccable holistic and person centred care without the aim of foreshortening life.
We are committed to the concept of death with dignity and comfort, including the provision of effective pain relief and excellence in Palliative Care.
We uphold the right of a patient to decline treatment.
We know that the provision of pain relief, even if it may unintentionally hasten death of the patient, is ethical and legal. Equally the withdrawal or withholding of futile treatment in favour of Palliative Care is also ethical and legal.
We believe that crossing the line to intentionally assist a person to suicide would fundamentally weaken the doctor-patient relationship, which is based on trust and respect. The power of the clinician/patient relationship cannot be over-estimated.
We are especially concerned with protecting vulnerable people who can feel they have become a burden to others, and are committed to supporting those who find their own life situations a heavy burden. We believe such laws would undermine the public perception of the dignity and value of human life in all its different stages and conditions. Government focus should be on the compassionate and equitable provision of Social Services, Health Care and Palliative Care.
Doctors and Healthcare Professionals are not necessary for the legalisation or practice of assisted suicide. Their involvement is being sought only to provide a cloak of medical legitimacy. Leave doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to focus on saving lives and providing real care and support for those who are suffering.
READ MORE: http://www.noeuthanasia.org.au/health_professionals_say_no

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Euthanasia: a failure of memory and imagination
MercatorNet 28 September 2017
Family First Comment: Part of a larger article on the problems of euthanasia – but shows the clear evidence that the slippery slope is well and truly greased by passing assisted suicide laws
Pro-euthanasia advocates also deny the reality of the slippery slopes it’s opened up in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The “logical slippery slope” – the expansion of the situations where euthanasia is allowed – has constantly enlarged. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is no longer restricted to competent adults with unbearable suffering able to provide informed consent. It’s now available to children, newborn babies with serious disabilities, and people with dementia and mental illness, such as depression, without physical illness. There are movements to legalise access to inflicted death for people “over 70 and tired of life” or who feel they have a “completed life”. Likewise, after just over a year of legalised euthanasia in Quebec, there are calls for it to be extended to “euthanasia on demand”, that is, that there should be no requirements for access by a competent person.
Instances of the “practical slippery slope” – euthanasia not in compliance with the law allowing it – are legion.
Safeguards are ineffective to prevent slippery slopes. As British moral philosopher Dame Mary Warnock has put it in another context, “you cannot successfully block a slippery slope except by a fixed and invariable obstacle”. In governing dying and death that obstacle is the rule that we must not intentionally kill another human being.
In short, once euthanasia becomes normalised slippery slopes are unavoidable and the number of deaths resulting from euthanasia constantly substantially increases. Belgium has had a 41 percent increase in four years 2011 to 2015. In 2002, when euthanasia was legalized in Belgium, there were 24 cases, in 2015 there were 2022. In Flanders in 2013, 4.6 percent of all deaths were by euthanasia and an additional 1.7 percent (approximately 1000 deaths) were without request. Unreported deaths were not included in these statistics. In the Netherlands, the number of deaths from euthanasia has increased by at least 10 percent per year since 2007 and is now 1 in 25 of all deaths, not including unreported deaths, probably at least 1000 deaths per year.
READ MORE: https://www.mercatornet.com/careful/view/euthanasia-a-failure-of-memory-and-imagination/20485?utm_source=MercatorNet&utm_campaign=2a114f22a7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e581d204e2-2a114f22a7-124861319

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Media Release – American College of Pediatricians 20 September 2017
Family First Comment: A superb response from medical professionals in the USA.
“Physicians recognize that every attempted suicide is a desperate cry for help. Depression, even suicidal depression, is eminently treatable. Depression in the context of terminal illness is likewise treatable. It is absurd to carve out “terminal” as a special class for which physicians must suspend their ethical standards of medical care.”
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and the American Association of Prolife Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) applaud our 150,000 colleagues in the American College of Physicians (ACP) for boldly opposing the contradictory practice of physician-assisted suicide in their recently released position statement, Ethics and the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide. 
Assisting in or directly causing the death of our patients violates the long standing medical ethics principle of “first do no harm.” Killing is diametrically opposed to the given role of physicians as healers.  Disguised as promoting “patient autonomy,” these laws permit physicians a very active role in ending lives. 
Assisted suicide laws presume the novel possibility of a benevolent role for physicians in “carrying out a patient’s wishes” to be killed. Physicians are not mere vending machines or indentured servants obligated to provide whatever is requested regardless of the ethics involved. Doctors are obligated to make an independent judgment of the propriety of their every act. Only a very twisted form of logic would argue that physicians’ duty of beneficence makes them appropriate agents of suicide.  
Dr. Donna Harrison, Executive Director of AAPLOG noted that physician-assisted suicide fractures the trust between a doctor and her patient, and facilitates the exploitation of our most vulnerable patients. 
“When the physician tasked with healing also carries a license to kill, how can any patient trust her physician to place her health and best interests first?” She continued, “Also, the potential for abuse of our elderly and disabled patients increases since assisted suicide laws allow abusive caregivers to legally obtain lethal drugs.”  
Physicians recognize that every attempted suicide is a desperate cry for help. Depression, even suicidal depression, is eminently treatable. Depression in the context of terminal illness is likewise treatable. It is absurd to carve out “terminal” as a special class for which physicians must suspend their ethical standards of medical care. 
Dr. Cretella, President of ACPeds stated, 
“As physicians, we are privileged to accompany our patients through joyful times of vigorous health, as well as times of sorrow and illness. We cure sometimes, but provide care and comfort always. Physicians are healers not killers.” 
The physicians of the ACPeds, AAPLOG, and the ACP stand firmly united in opposition to the practice of physician-assisted suicide.
 
 

One of the main reasons that politicians have rejected previous attempts to decriminalise assisted suicide / euthanasia is that they realised that ‘safeguards’, while sounding good, would not guarantee the protection required for vulnerable people including the disabled, elderly, depressed or anxious, and those who feel themselves to be a burden or are under financial pressure. The international evidence backs up these concerns, and explains why so few countries have made any changes to the law around this issue. There are contradictory messages when society rightly wants to take a zero-tolerance approach to suicide, yet at the same time wants to approve a person taking their life. The potential for abuse and flouting of procedural safeguards is a further strong argument against assisted suicide. The solution is to ensure a palliative care regime that is fully funded and world class. That’s where the politicians’ focus should be. The recent inquiry into assisted suicide / euthanasia had 16,000+ submissions (80% of all submissions) opposing assisted suicide / euthanasia.
READ MORE: www.RejectAssistedSuicide.nz

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