EuthaNEWSia (www.euthanewsia.ca)

http://tinyurl.com/35txaq3

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1886486/review_of_dying_patients_charts_identifies_need_for_improvement_in/

Also see:

Last-Ditch Efforts Can Drag Out Suffering [Medical Futility Blog]
http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2010/07/last-ditch-efforts-can-drag-out.html

Professor Thaddeus Pope writes: The following statistics are well-known among ethics, palliative care, and critical care professionals. I am glad they are being reprinted in newspapers across the country. "More than 80 percent of people who die in the U.S. have a long, progressive illness such as cancer, heart failure or Alzheimer's. More than 80 percent of them say they want to avoid hospitalization and intensive care when they are dying, according to the Dartmouth Atlas Project, which tracks health-care trends." Yet that's not what is happening:

"The average time spent in hospice and palliative care, which stresses comfort and quality of life once an illness is incurable, is falling because people are starting it too late. In 2008, one-third of people who received hospice care had it for a week or less, says the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization."
"Hospitalizations during the last six months of life are rising: from 1,302 per 1,000 Medicare recipients in 1996 to 1,441 in 2005, Dartmouth reports. Treating chronic illness in the last two years of life gobbles up nearly one-third of all Medicare dollars."
"People are actually now sicker as they die," and some find that treatments become a greater burden than the illness was, said Dr. Ira Byock, director of palliative care at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "There are worse things than having someone you love die," he said.

Sooner or Later: Restoring Sanity to Your End-of-Life Care [Medical Futility Blog]
http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2010/06/sooner-or-later-restoring-sanity-to_27.html

Thaddeus Pope reports: Damiano de Sano Iocovozzi had the following post at the AMA Facebook page a few days ago:

At present, the USA is still spending 25% of the health care dollar on medical futility for those insured and uninsured patients who can no longer benefit from critical care anything in the nation's ICUs. What normally happens is this: as a patient's disease progresses or is deteriorating due to old age, an ambulance is summoned. Without an advance directive, the patient may get intubated, placed on life support, maybe he is coded, transferred to intensive care where an expensive but futile fool's errand begins and costs about $10,000 per day. A steady stream of specialists marches in and out of the room 24/7 ordering a la carte a list of medically futile diagnostics, therapies, respiratory care orders, advanced pharmaceuticals, maybe a trip to surgery or to the cath lab, critical care nursing and more specialists.

As time goes on and the patient's disease continues to deteriorate his status, a hospital-acquired infection sets in, kidneys shut down, dialysis begins, more blood draws to measure levels of heavy antibiotics that will not cure, help usher a remission or a reprieve from old age. A new rush of drips is started to keep the blood pressure stable as the bacteria proliferate. Usually death is preceded by another code blue where the poor unfortunate is literally shocked on the thorax, given CPR and the worst part, cannot even get to say good bye due to a large tube from mouth to lungs…

Mr. de Sano Iocovozzi is promoting his new book, Sooner or Later: Restoring Sanity to Your End-of-Life Care.

end-of-life care

futile care

medical treatment

U.S.A.

The Associated Press: Correction: Germany right-to-die story [The Associated Press]
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jdo0vCHstOuVPeqVb08e4nbHWHEAD9GN2QK81

BERLIN - In a story June 25 about a right-to-die case, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Germany's top criminal court legalized assisted suicide. The court didn't rule on the issue of assisted suicide. The case involved a woman in a vegetative coma who was being kept alive through an intravenous feeding tube, though not terminally ill. The court overturned the attempted manslaughter conviction of a lawyer who had told the woman's daughter she could remove the tube from her mother. The woman had previously said she did not want to be kept alive under such circumstances.

South Korea: Patients, families asking for death with dignity [JoongAng Daily]
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2922650

This is a progress report explaining how the new death with dignity guidelines are being applied in the past year. There are five basic requirements for the suspension of life support: chances of recovery were negligible, doctors were unable to alleviate pain, it would be meaningless to maintain the patients condition, the patient's quality of life is low and the hospital expenses are overly burdensome for the family.

DNR requests are up by 25%. Since the guidelines came into effect last July, about 46 patients have died after having life support suspended.

Switzerland: Dignitas boss: Healthy should have right to die [BBC News]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/10481309.stm

This report begins: Ludwig Minelli, the head of Dignitas, is 77. A trained lawyer, he founded the assisted suicide organisation 12 years ago. The organisation, whose slogan is '"live with dignity, die with dignity", has helped over 1,000 people to die. Many of them are people who have travelled to Switzerland because assisted suicide is not permitted in their own countries.

Dignitas has the status of an association under Swiss law, with two active members, Mr Minelli and one other. The identity of the other member has not been revealed. These two active members control the policy and financing of Dignitas.

The report ends with:
Q: Can I ask you about the Dignitas philosophy on people who would come to you who are mentally ill rather than physically ill? Why you think it's okay to help someone with a major mental illness like schizophrenia to commit suicide?

A: As a human rights lawyer I am persuaded that the right to make an end of life decision belongs to every person who has capacity of discernment, most persons with mental illness have full capacity of discernment, of course. And I think this capacity to make an end of life decision should also apply to a healthy person, so the British discussion about terminally ill persons is completely obsolete. And I want to implement this last human right.

Q: What if someone came to you who was neither physically nor mentally ill but expressed the wish to die. Would you be able to help them?

A: Of course. For instance a very old person which has no illnesses at all, has some difficulties because in old age you will have some difficulties, has no longer family, has no longer friends. Why should we say no?

Switzerland: interview with Ludwig Minelli of Dignitas [BBC News]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/10461894.stm

Ludwig Minelli explains how Dignitas goes about its work. He confirms that Dignitas will not release financial information, saying it is a private organization that is not legally compelled to do so. Also interviewed is Dr Alois Geiger, who was the prescribing physician for paralysed Briton Dan James. The report suggests that "any change to existing Swiss law is likely to be a long process."

Oregon: Editorial: "Dignity" law could use fix [democratherald.com]
http://www.democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_2245259c-83ae-11df-a029-001cc4c002e0.html

The editorial is about last week's EuthaNEWSia story, Oregon: Death with Dignity house planned, and starts with: Last week's story about a Portland psychiatrist may revive the debate on assisted suicide in Oregon. If so, it might lead to improvements in the law, which now requires people to do the act without anyone helping them.

Dr. Stuart Weisberg wants to establish a business where people can go to make use of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. But under the law, lack of a place is not a problem. And only people who are residents of Oregon may make use of the law - so a "death house" for tourists would be pointless.

The editorial suggests that a facility like Dignitas would be useful in Oregon, filling a need which is now not met.

Most Czechs Agree with Euthanasia [Angus Reid Global Monitor]
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/35684/most_czechs_agree_with_euthanasia
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Most people in the Czech Republic support the practice of euthanasia, according to a poll by CVVM. 61 per cent of respondents share this point of view, down one point since May 2009.

In the Czech Republic, assisting a person to commit suicide is equivalent to murder. Euthanasia has been extensively discussed in the Czech legislature for years, but no changes in the status quo have been approved.

Connecticut: No appeal by Compassion & Choices [New Haven Register]
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/06/26/news/aa3ctsuicideend062610.txt
Kathryn Tucker, lawyer for Compassion & Choices, announces they will not appeal the Superior Court dismissal of their lawsuit to permit doctors to assist suffering patients to die.

Montana: Oregon death-with-dignity advocate discusses details of law at UM [The Missoulian]
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_01071182-833c-11df-9ec6-001cc4c002e0.html
The report begins: "We imagined that we would have people lining up at the borders," said Barbara Glidewell, who served as Oregon's first patient adviser under the state's death-with-dignity act. "… That didn't happen."

Glidewell, a bioethicist and faculty member at Oregon Health and Science University, spoke Monday to a group of about 30 at the University of Montana. The talk was sponsored by Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group that promotes death with dignity.

Unite Against Euthanasia, Group Tells Quebecers [Epoch Times]
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/38304/

This story begins with: EDMONTON-A newly formed grassroots group has launched a campaign calling on Quebecers to oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide from being brought into the province's health care system. "We thought we would need to have a group that would really represent an option different than the one that is proposed by the euthanasia lobby," says Dr. Andre Bourque, president of Vivre dans la Dignite (Living with Dignity), a non-partisan, non-religious group focused on end-of-life issues.

The group plans to make a submission to a travelling parliamentary commission that will hold hearings in late summer or early fall to get the views of Quebecers on the issue. One of the group's key arguments is that euthanasia and suicide are killing and as such shouldn't be "confused with health care."

Another excerpt: Dr. Bourque says legalizing euthanasia would be a "foot in the door" to opening and expanding a practice that will place vulnerable patients in a dangerous position. "There will be lives taken without their consent, there are people who don't want to die who are going to die, and there are going to be decisions taken by third parties for people who have not asked that their lives be shortened."

Free copies of "Final Exit" for American libraries [World right-to-die news list]
http://lists.opn.org/pipermail/right-to-die_lists.opn.org/2010-June/003941.html

Derek Humphry writes: As I've reported on this ERGO news list before, a supporter bequeathed a large sum of money so that ERGO could distribute complimentary copies of the book 'Final Exit' to US public lending libraries now that their acquisition budgets are being cut so severely.

We now have a web site up by which a library may ask for a free copy. http://www.finalexitforlibraries.com/

If you know people in the library field, or have contact with your local library, please tell them of this remarkable site. We are already in the process of distributing hundreds of copies to libraries.

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