Most dementia directives call for voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) at a prescribed point late in the progression of dementia. In most cases, this requires eliminating hand feeding based on the proposition that hand feeding is a medical treatment or medical care.
A 30-year old Florida Supreme Court decision may provide support for the use of a dementia directive that provides for voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED).
Part 1 of this multi-part analysis identifies eight Dementia Directives by authorship and discusses overall characteristics of each. This second part analyses the approaches to drafting such directives to help readers think about the elements of each.
This post begins a multi-part series about dementia directives, analyzing their provisions and their purposes.
Last week, I referred a caller to the Final Exit Network (FEN) to John B. Kelly, a Not Dead Yet opponent of right-to-die (RTD) laws. The person was inquiring on behalf of his brother (I'll call him Carl) about the education and training services that FEN offers to applicants who want to hasten their deaths. The brother was trying to learn if FEN could help Carl, who was despairing of his condition.
Whether intentionally or inadvertently, a recent article in the Washington Post, written by a reporter with Kaiser Health News, provides confusing, incomplete, misleading, and perhaps inaccurate information about the choices a person with dementia may have. It dismisses legal issues by citing opinions from non-legal professionals.
Not only is Canada further advanced than all states in the US with respect to Medical Aid In Dying (MAID or MAiD), it also has surpassed the US for those who want to Voluntarily Stop Eating and Drinking.
This week's post discusses the 2018 VSED death of Rosemary Bowen at age 94, based on the 16-minute film about her experience.
Prof. Thaddeus Mason Pope explains the newly-effective Nevada advance directive that allows dementia patients to voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED) after loss of cognitive capacity, and suggests how it may be used in some other states.
In its new "Dementia Values & Priorities Tool," Compassion and Choices (C&C) helps people clarify their wishes if they acquire dementia. They offer a satisfactory, though limited, list of dementia-related symptoms (discussed in Part 1). In Part 2, I have identified a few other (or slightly different) symptoms that are important to me in the event that I lose the ability to hasten my own death because of dementia or some unexpected reason, such as a stroke or other event that renders me incapable of carrying out a hastened death. Part 2 concludes an analysis of C&C's approach to dementia.
