“New legislation and court judgments are further expanding access to MAID, some bringing new and different twists.”
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“There should be a JLMA form: Just Leave Me Alone, for those of us who concede that we’re actually going to die some day and work to keep our end-times as inexpensive and comfortable as possible.”
“Having a sense of the possibilities in advance is essential to minimize surprises, make specific requests for end-of-life symptom management, and decide the possible paths available to you.”
“Why would an anti-MAiD activist try to force a patient about whom they know nothing, to live by the activist’s personal values rather than the patient’s own?”
When determining an ethical standard of discussing physician aid in dying (PAD) during medical decision-making, it is important to begin with the caveat that physicians are not ethically obligated to assist a patient in ending his or her life, even if the physician informs the patient of the right to do so.
As more states legalize PAD and the practice becomes more ethically accepted, it is important to determine a standard of care to guide physicians.
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
Unconscious, Michael lingered for hours. His waiting children had no one to call for advice, but Michael had left instructions for this eventuality. Sobbing, his son Bill lovingly carried out his father’s wishes.
“The rest is up to you,” he finally said, ending the conversation for good. He didn’t have any more guidance, and certainly no more patience to talk about it. I was surprised. To me, it felt slightly irresponsible to leave all these decisions to other people.
“We reached the goal for patients like me, who aren’t terminal but degenerative, to win this battle, a battle that opens the doors for the other patients who come after me.”
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