2022: A Year to Forget Good riddance to 2022!! No social or political movement advances in a straight line. There are always bumps in the road. Whenever a dynamic effervescence of a progressive development seems to be upsetting years if not generations of tradition, there will be pushback from those uncomfortable with the Brave New …
California Federal District Court Rejects Challenge to MAID Self-Administration Requirement Sandra Morris and Husband Joe A California Federal District Court has rejected a challenge, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to the State’s End of Life Option Act’s (EOLOA) requirement for self-administration of the prescribed medicine. This case had the potential of dramatically changing …
Federal Court Rejects Challenge to MAID Self Administration Requirement Under A.D.A. Read More »
Dr Roger Kligler In a long-awaited decision, on Dec 19, 2022, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rendered a shattering opinion essentially dismissing a 6-year struggle by Dr Roger Kligler, a retired Cape Code-based physician diagnosed with metasatic prostate cancer, to have MAID recognized under the State Constitution as a fundamental right. Dr Kligler was …
Kligler & Steinbach v Healey: A game changer for NC Read More »
Since its first largely academic references in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the procedure of requesting lethal medicaiton from a physician to hasten an inevitable dying process has struggled to find a universally accepted appelation. If one consults the medico-legal journals of yesteryear, “physcian assisted suicide” or “PAS” was universally embraced. Shortly thereafter, when …
NC Republican and conservative voters overwhelmingly believe that competent, terminally ill adults “should have the legal option to take life-ending medication prescribed by a doctor,” also known as medical aid in dying (MAiD).
A constitutional challenge by a 75-year-old terminally-ill Bridgeport, Connectiut woman, Lynda Bluestein, and a Middlebury, Vt doctor specialising in hospice and palliative care, to the residency requirement of Vermont’s Medical Aid in Dying law, could make all the difference for people in North Carolina. The lawsuit, filed by lawyers for Compassion and Choices, reprises a …
An article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society calculated the number of Americans to have availed themselves of Medical Aid in Dying laws in the 11 US jurisdictions where the procedure has been authorized. Nearly 5,400 terminally ill individuals used MAID to obtain aid-in-dying medication in the first-of-its kind study led by the …
A recent poll commissioned by Dying Right NC and carried out by the nonpartisan OH Predictive Insights group confirms that conservative GOP voters widely support MAID by 50% to 26%; (20% strongly support MAID while only 17% strongly oppose it). The survey was conducted over a two-week period in June 2022 among 300 NC GOP …
The story is all too familiar: on July 13, a 77-year old man telephoned 911 to report he had killed his suffering 71-year old wife in a mercy killing. “I shot my wife. She’s very ill, and I’m going to shoot myself,” he told the 911 operator before the call was disconnected. He noted she …
When MAID legislation was first proposed in the late 1990s, there were dire predictions that “physician assisted suicide” (as it was commonly called back in the day), would take off like a rocket, resulting in an obscene numbers of participants. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his pre-SCOTUS book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia relied …
It was all too foreseeable; all too common; all too tragic. A 64-year old Florida veteran Thomas Schultz, acting as caregiver simultaneously to his terminally ill 80-year old wife and his cancer-stricken 50-year old stepdaughter, called 911 to report he was overwhelmed by the double burden and had resorted to murdering both women before turning …
Medical Paternalism on the Brink Doctors have always enjoyed an undeniable prestige, an almost mystical clairvoyance and Solomonic judgment in the eyes of their patients. Doctors know the truth. Doctors know best. Doctors decide. And yet a movement has been bubbling along for a generation or so, questioning their omniscience. Too many times, doctors have …
