USA: A graceful exit

Description:

This is a film review of A Finished Life: The Goodbye and No Regrets Tour, the new documentary by Michelle Boyaner and Barbara Green. Greg Gour, a 48-year-old gay man with AIDS, stops his AIDS treatment program in 2006, because he cannot cope with the side effects any longer. His partner and all their friends had long since died. Gour ends all treatment, quits his job, closes up his apartment, and drives to his Mom's house in Pennsylvania to say goodbye. Along the way, he stops at various locales to visit with old friends, siblings, and ex-boyfriends. At the end, Gour ends his life using helium inhalation.

The review ends with the words: Greg Gour, whose road trip ended in 2006, leaves behind a powerful legacy with A Finished Life. He did everything he ever wanted to do. With grace, dignity, and humor, he exits stage left. On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, let us remember those who have left us, and those still here for whom the battle continues.

The Sacramento Bee piece below adds: He said he knew, after nursing others through the final stages of AIDS, that he would take his own life rather than subject himself and his family to a long and agonizing death. Gour became a spokesman for Assembly Bill 651, a controversial measure that would make it legal for doctors to prescribe drugs for terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths.

[Note: Some other recent stories related to this topic are in the Links: section below.]

[Note: there are stories in the Overflow: section below.]

Links:

To read the full article click on one of these links, both of which go to the same destination. A short link is provided for the convenience of readers. Also, readers may search and browse past advisories on the web (see bottom.)

  • http://tinyurl.com/yfm7maf

  • http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=dvd

    Also see:

  • Assisted-Suicide Advocate Ends AIDS Fight His Way [Death with Dignity National Center]
    http://www.deathwithdignity.org/news/news/sacramentobee.05.09.06.asp

    This is a long article by Laura Mecoy of the Los Angeles Bureau of The Sacramento Bee, first printed on May 9, 2006. Well worth reading, it starts Burbank - Dying from AIDS, Gregg Gour spent his last three months traveling cross-country and overseas to deliver a final farewell to family and friends and to advocate for assisted-suicide legislation. Then, with the meticulous planning that was a hallmark of his life, the 48-year-old former accounting supervisor from Los Angeles took his life Sunday night in a Burbank motel room. "Don't cry for me," he said in a final e-mail to family and friends. "At last I'm free."

    Gour became a spokesman for Assembly Bill 651, a controversial measure that would make it legal for doctors to prescribe drugs for terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths.

  • Practicing Pedal Power [The Body]
    http://www.thebody.com/content/whatis/art32706.html

    July 1998. Up until the fall of 1996, the amount of bike-riding Gregg Gour had done in his life had probably added up to about 10 miles. Since then, Gour has ridden well over 2,000 miles to fight AIDS — and the 5'8" 40-year-old weighing 173 pounds has the legs to prove it.

Source:

Nahmod, David Alex. "A graceful exit". Bay Area Reporter. 26 November 2009. <www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=dvd>. Bay Area Reporter, 395 Ninth Street, San Francisco CA 94103, U.S.A.

Tags:

Tags (or keywords) briefly indicate some major topics of the report.

  • AIDS

  • suicide

  • U.S.A.

Notes:

  • New date for Bill C-384 debate: According to Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (writing in LifeSiteNews) the new scheduled date for the debate on C-384 is Tuesday, February 2, 2010 with the vote taking place on February 3.

  • The case of Rom Houben deserves more coverage than I can find. Houben, a Belgian, was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state 23 years ago, but his doctors now believe he was conscious the whole time. There is more heat than light available on the Internet. Three overflow stories in this issue may be useful: Coma recovery case attracts doubters, Carte blanche, and Jacob M. Appel: The Rom Houben Tragedy and the Case for Active Euthanasia.

Overflow:

Stories that EuthaNEWSia did not get to:

  • Coma recovery case attracts doubters [The Associated Press]
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hgsMsAOMKbccOJb8x-r1pkC1PPCQD9C7BE400

    Two Associated Press medical writers review the case of Rom Houben.

  • Carte blanche [The Blog of Jacqueline Jencquel]
    http://www.wmaker.net/jencquel/Carte-blanche_a335.html

    Jacqueline Jencquel links to a French-language interview by the Belgian paper, lesoir.be, with Jacqueline Herremans and Francois Damas. The machine translated title is "The moving story of Rom Houben does not challenge the law on euthanasia". A Google translation into computer English is available at http://tinyurl.com/yldb49y. Extract: Advances in resuscitation are extraordinary and constant. But doctors intensivists are aware that the consequences of their exploits are often tragic for the patients themselves and their families. Vegetative states would not exist without the intensive care units that keep alive the severely brain-damaged patients.

  • Jacob M. Appel: The Rom Houben Tragedy and the Case for Active Euthanasia [Huffington Post]
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/the-rom-houben-tragedy-an_b_370032.html

    What is clear is that, if there are truly more locked-in patients than once believed, our society must confront these unpleasant choices directly. While we might ultimately decide to let these patients live, even at the risk of allowing them to suffer, we should recognize that such a policy is neither obvious nor intuitive. Whatever the truth of Rom Houben's case, it does not offer any easy answer to these questions.

  • A case against euthanasia [Mmegi Online, Botswana]
    http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=2&aid=11&dir=2009/November/Thursday26

    This is an OpEd piece by Botswanan Don-Martin Takudzwa Whande, who adopts a straight Biblical argument: "But nowhere does the Bible say one should take his/her life, or assist a person take his/her life because one has diseased feet or is undergoing utter agony. That would simply amount to suicide and murder which is against God's commandment, 'Thou shall not kill'."

  • Death with dignity [The Barrie Examiner, Canada]
    http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2193202

    Hospice Simcoe's new 10-bed facility, located at 336 Penetanguishene Rd., near Royal Victoria Hospital, is set to officially open it's doors on Dec. 1. It's the first residential hospice in the county, and will accept palliative patients living in Simcoe County or Muskoka from their teenage years to senior years. It's been a two-year project getting the building to this point, but the house is finally ready to be home to residents who don't want to die in hospital, but who can't live out their days at home.

  • International Emmy win for Walters [The Press Association]
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jKgnb6RIHHDmuzWATeQRuKU6Z_ow

    Veteran actress Julie Walters and up-and-coming star Ben Whishaw took the top acting honours as British talent dominated the International Emmys awards. Mamma Mia! star Julie, 59, won the best actress prize for assisted suicide drama A Short Stay In Switzerland on the BBC, while 29-year-old Ben landed the best actor gong for the broadcaster's five-part drama Criminal Justice.

  • Eluana Englaro's Father Now Making Waves as a Euthanasia Activist [LifeSiteNews.com]
    http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/nov/09112402.html

    The father of Eluana Englaro (known in the press as "Italy's Terri Shiavo"), Beppino Englaro, is making a name for himself as a euthanasia activist, and is continuing to claim justification for his successful decade-long court battle to have his daughter's food and hydration removed last year.

  • Fighting for a peaceful, pain-free death [Telegraph]
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/6613732/Fighting-for-a-peaceful-pain-free-death.html

    Jean is fearful of being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a controversial NHS palliative care programme for terminally-ill patients close to death. The LCP, originally designed by the cancer charity Marie Curie in the late Nineties to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients at a hospice in Liverpool, was approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2004. It has since been rolled out to nearly 1,000 hospitals, care homes and hospices in the UK." "Dr Rob George, a consultant in palliative care and clinical lead of London's End of Life Care Project, which is working to improve care of the dying in the capital, said that public fears were based on misunderstanding.

  • Swiss establish "restrictions" on assisted suicide [Onenewsnow.com]
    http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=777772

    Rita Marker, head of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (ITF), reports that this 'crack down' is not as serious as the public may think.

  • Euthanasia supporters "hopeful" about bill [ABC News, Australia]
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/20/2748408.htm

    The President of WA's Voluntary Euthanasia Society Ranjan Ray says he is hopeful but not confident the bill will be passed. He says it is only the first step. 'I'm hoping that it will come to fruition because it's only the first reading and we are hoping that the Premier will show some leadership and allow time to debate the bill,' he said.

ID:

The EuthaNEWSia ID for this advisory is: enid200911274646.
Mailed: Friday, November 27, 2009 15:06:36 -0600
at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Etcetera:

EuthaNEWSia is a free Canadian news advisory service covering end-of-life issues such as right to die, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. EuthaNEWSia is produced by the Right to Die Society of Canada which works toward a good death for all, including open, regulated and equitable access to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The editor is Michael Dawson <editor@euthanewsia.ca>. 

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