Recently, Derek Humphry wrote about the words we use to discuss end-of-life concerns in the US, focusing on the appropriateness of the term “suicide.” He did so, in part, to stimulate a discussion about the words we use. Like Humphry, I have no personal problem with the use of the term suicide–it accurately describes death by our own hand–but I resist it for several reasons.
Thanks to everyone who made suggestions to deal with Jane’s presumptive problems (see previous post). If Jane had an independent social worker–one not in her healthcare system–that person might respond to Jane’s difficulties with something like the following:
If we use “existential suffering” as a stand-in for all of the related terms we use, it will help us discuss what we may mean by them. Certainly, distress, dread, angst, anxiety, anguish, or crisis all suggest suffering at least in a mental or psychological sense, a kind of suffering that all people encounter at one point or another in their lives, or even daily. Some existential suffering can be mitigated through changes in circumstances or with the help of others, but when one is dying, whether slowly or rapidly, one may wish to forego the suffering whether or not there may be temporary relief for it.
A Dutch contribution to how we look at death and dying is provided by Cornelis J. “Jack” van Dyjk.
In this third part of a series analyzing the arguments against medical-assistance-in-dying (MAID) by opponents of physician-assistance in hastening a person’s death in the face of a terminal illness, Lamar Hankins looks at a major reference for most MAID opposition articles – a 2008 Michigan Law Review article, “Physician-Assisted Suicide in Oregon: A Medical Perspective,” by psychiatrist Herbert Hendin and neurologist Kathleen Foley. Both oppose what they term “assisted suicide.”
In Part 1 of this series, I addressed ten criticisms of MAID laws, particularly those in Oregon and Washington, though most such laws are modeled largely on Oregon’s law. In Part 2, I look at criticisms of MAID laws concerning economic pressures, coercion, depression, inadequate resources for MAID clients, doctor shopping, inadequate Medicaid rules, ableism, and the failure of the drugs prescribed to MAID clients. My hope is that we can learn from opponents of MAID laws how to make the laws better.
With this post, I begin a multi-part series about the views of those who oppose medical-assistance-in-dying (MAID) or have written critically about MAID laws. I think there are some good ideas that we can learn from these critics to help us improve MAID laws, though that is not their intent. They will oppose MAID under any law, no matter how carefully written.
Since the 1970s there have been debates about whether “patients” have the right to refuse various forms of life-saving or life-sustaining medical treatment, ranging from blood transfusions to ventilators and feeding tubes. More recently the debate has moved into the area of dementia and which, if any, kinds of treatment may be refused under the terms of a directive written in advance of loss of decision-making capacity. The issue of forced feeding is addressed by several articles in the July/August issue (48:4) of the Hastings Center Report, one of the nation’s preeminent bioethics publications.
Many older people decide for themselves that they don’t want to be wholly dependent on others, and they don’t want to be remembered as someone in that circumstance. Others do not want to be an increasing burden on their family, a decision that is theirs, irrespective of whether the family feels that they are a burden. Such old and increasingly infirm individuals may get little, if any, pleasure from living with myriad physical dysfunctions, and all that such health problems entail. They are the ones who should decide whether their lives are any longer worth living.
Disability rights groups that oppose self-determination for people who seek physician-assisted dying (PAD ) argue that such people should not have the right to decide for themselves when their lives are no longer tenable. Nevertheless, the disability rights groups do make points related to PAD that are worth considering; for one, they have helped me realize that over the last ten years I have become disabled.
