Tag: Assisted Dying

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Physician-assisted dying: A Jewish community perspective

‘It may be impossible to achieve consensus on many of the issues surrounding physician-assisted dying’

By Shimon Koffler Fogel

"Surely we can all agree that every Canadian should have access to other means of alleviating suffering before contemplating a physician-assisted death," writes Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Toronto.
“Surely we can all agree that every Canadian should have access to other means of alleviating suffering before contemplating a physician-assisted death,” writes Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Toronto.

Physician-assisted dying remains a deeply personal and contentious issue among Jewish Canadians. Some in our community support physician-assisted dying, focusing on the plight of those stricken by a terminal or debilitating illness with no possibility of pain relief. Others oppose physician-assisted dying based on traditional religious grounds or due to concerns about a knock-on effect toward more broadly applied euthanasia.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision in Carter v. Canada recast this vigorous debate by determining that Canadians, under certain circumstances, will have a right to physician-assisted death. The remaining question is how this decision should be implemented.

While there is a vibrant diversity of opinion among Jewish Canadians on this subject, there are also points of unity that reflect common values within broader Canadian society.

Who’s eligible?

One such point of unity comes in the form of concern over the eligibility requirements for physician-assisted dying. Many who support physician-assisted dying base their position on situations of terminal illness or advanced stages of severely debilitating and painful diseases for which there is no relief or cure. However, the Supreme Court decision did not limit physician-assisted dying to such circumstances.

Parliament must now choose between two distinct approaches to physician-assisted dying. The first views physician-assisted dying strictly as an end-of-life option, a means for those who are nearing death to choose how and when to die. This is consistent across all North American jurisdictions where physician-assisted dying is permitted, including Quebec.

The second approach, predominant in European countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, does not restrict physician-assisted dying in this way. In these jurisdictions, children and individuals with psychiatric disorders or minor medical conditions can be eligible for a hastened death — considerations that played no part in the Supreme Court determination.

Quebec’s physician-assisted dying law, which was subject to significant, thoughtful deliberation and passed with strong, cross-party consensus, could be instructive for federal legislation in this context. In Quebec, a patient seeking physician-assisted dying must be competent and fully informed, at least 18 years of age, at the end of life, suffer from an incurable illness, be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability and experience constant and unbearable suffering.

Concerns persist

Even so, significant concerns persist regarding the balance between the right to physician-assisted dying set out by the Supreme Court and the conscience rights of health-care practitioners, including physicians, pharmacists and nurses. Many have deep religious, moral and professional convictions that consider referring their patients to another, willing provider to be an unconscionable act.

Yet Parliament’s special joint committee on physician-assisted dying recommended that, at a minimum, health-care providers who object to physician-assisted dying for reasons of conscience should be required to provide a referral. This disregards the Supreme Court instruction that “the charter rights of patients and physicians will need to be reconciled in any legislative and regulatory response.”

Several viable options have been put forward to balance the seemingly competing rights of patients and health-care practitioners. For example, the Canadian Medical Association has proposed a “separate central information, counseling and referral service” to which objecting physicians would direct patients seeking physician-assisted death. Another possible accommodation would require an objecting physician to notify a designated administrator of their medical institution, who would then be responsible for transferring care in a timely manner.

Others have suggested a model where physicians would be required to report all requests for physician-assisted death to a government body that would have a registry of physicians to whom it could refer patients.

Pleasing all parties

Whatever the specific approach, with creativity and thoughtfulness, the rights of objecting physicians and patients can be harmonized. What’s more, such a process would likely facilitate improved access to physician-assisted dying for patients. The Canadian Medical Association estimates that 30 per cent of its members would be willing to provide physician-assisted death. However, it is unlikely that the remaining 70 per cent would know to whom they should refer a patient. A third-party agent would be well-suited to ensuring timely patient access while preventing the violation of physicians’ conscience rights.

Regardless, physician-assisted dying must not be the only, nor the default, end-of-life option available to patients. While respecting the division of jurisdictional responsibilities, the federal government should do its utmost to ensure that palliative care of the highest quality is universally accessible and that first-rate psychosocial supports are made available to all Canadians separately from physician-assisted dying. While it may be impossible to achieve consensus on many of the issues surrounding physician-assisted dying, surely we can all agree that every Canadian should have access to other means of alleviating suffering before contemplating a physician-assisted death.

Complete Article HERE!

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Drug Company Jacks Up Cost Of Aid-In-Dying Medication

By April Dembosky

Valeant Pharmaceuticals

When California’s aid-in-dying law takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It retails for more than $3,000.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug most commonly used in physician-assisted suicide, doubled the drug’s price last year, one month after California lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice.

“It’s just pharmaceutical company greed,” said David Grube, a family doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted death has been legal for 20 years.

The drug is Seconal, or secobarbital, its generic name. Originally developed in the 1930s as a sleeping pill, it fell out of favor when people died from taking too much, or from taking it in combination with alcohol. But when intended as a lethal medication to hasten the death of someone suffering from a terminal disease, Seconal is the drug of choice.

“It works very quickly and very gently,” Grube says. “People fall asleep with no complications. It’s a very gentle passing.”

In 2009, Grube remembers the price of a lethal dose of Seconal — 100 capsules — was less than $200. Over the next six years, it shot up to $1,500, according to drug price databases Medi-Span and First Databank. Then Valeant bought Seconal last February and immediately doubled the price to $3,000.

Most drug companies justify such hikes by pointing to high research costs. But Grube says that’s not the case with Seconal. It’s been around for 80 years.

“It’s not a complicated thing to make, there’s no research being done on it, there’s no development,” he says. “That to me is unconscionable.”

Valeant bought several other drugs at the same time it bought Seconal, raising some of those prices as much as 500 percent. That sparked a congressional investigation into its pricing practices. (The CEO resigned Monday amid an accounting controversy).

“Valeant sets prices for drugs based on a number of factors,” the company said in a statement, including the cost of developing or acquiring the drug, the availability of generics and the benefits of the drug compared with costly alternative treatments. “When possible, we offer patient assistance programs to mitigate the effects of price adjustments and keep out-of-pocket costs affordable for patients.”

The most likely explanation for raising the price of Seconal is the lack of generics, says Mick Kolassa, founding partner of Medical Marketing Economics, a firm that advises drug companies on how to price and market their drugs.

Seconal went off patent in the early 1990s. There were some generics for a while, but then demand shrank and manufacturers abandoned them.

“So that meant when the current company bought it, they didn’t have any generic competition, simply because the market got so small that it left,” Kolassa said. “So in situations like that, a company can acquire it and raise the price.”

Kolassa says it’s also possible that the demand for even the brand-name drug is so low that it’s hard to recoup the costs of making and selling it.

“Here’s a company that said, well, we can raise the price, keep it on the market and make some money with it,” he said. “Or we can walk away and the product goes away.”

Whatever the explanation, what cancer patients like Elizabeth Wallner see is a drug company taking advantage. She has one word to describe the pharmaceutical executive who decided to double the price of Seconal: “Scumbag.”

Wallner, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer five years ago. It spread to her liver and lungs. She always thought that if her suffering became too unbearable, she would consider ending her life. But she never thought about the price tag of the lethal drug.

“You’re going to make money off my death,” she said.

She’s most worried about her son.

“You are literally, at that point, taking the money from children,” said Wallner, who is 52. “Everything I have, if I’m going to die tomorrow, everything I have will be left to my son who will be 20 years old and almost 100 percent on his own.”

Under the California aid-in-dying law, it is optional for health insurance companies to cover the costs of the practice. Most private insurers plan to do so, according to the California Association of Health Plans. So does the state’s Medicaid program.

But for patients who aren’t covered, there is a cheaper alternative: a three-part drug cocktail that can be mixed by a compounding pharmacy for about $400.

Grube says the cocktail works just as well, but doctors usually don’t prescribe it because of the hassle some patients have to go through to get it. Seconal, on the other hand, is a ready-made pill, routinely available at most retail drugstores.

He says advocacy groups like Compassion & Choices are working on campaigns to reduce drug costs and to educate doctors and patients about the law.

“My dream is that any Californian who will choose aid in dying would have few burdens or barriers to jump through,” Grube said.

Complete Article HERE!

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‘The Good Death’: Hard to find, and religion’s role may be to blame

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There is no such thing as a “good death.” There is only a “good enough death.”

So writes Ann Neumann in “The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America.” A visiting scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University and a hospice volunteer, Neumann takes a close-up look at end-of-life issues and how they are both helped and hindered by faith.

"The Good Death" by Ann Neumann.
“The Good Death” by Ann Neumann. Cover photo courtesy of Beacon Press

“Religion is most prevalent around the deathbed in our country,” Neumann, 47, said in a phone interview from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y. “That is where it is resoundingly proven that we are not a secular nation.”

“The laws, medical practices and corporate regulations that surround death and dying continue to be strongly influenced by religion, whether it is in the delivery of health care through Catholic hospitals, whether it is in the rituals that medical practice is infused with, or whether it is simply in the language that we find acceptable around the dying.”

If “The Good Death” is anything, it is a call for people to examine their own wishes around end-of-life issues and decide what role religion — either theirs or that of their caregivers — will play. Religion, she holds, influences our ideas of quality of life and how far we are willing to go to preserve it.

Neumann has spent time around the dying. Her first up-close experience as a caregiver was with her father’s difficult, drawn-out death from cancer that left her worn-out and overwrought.

In the aftermath, unmoored by her own grief and seeking a way to cope with the death she knew would someday come for her and her loved ones, she decided in 2007 to become a hospice volunteer. Her descriptions of her visits with her patients are among the most moving in the book.

In between she weaves in the history of death in America, from the front parlor to the back room of the nursing home. She chronicles the harrowing right-to-die cases of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, Terri Schiavo and Jahi McMath, who remains in a coma in New Jersey, the only state that does not consider her legally brain dead, Bible verses hanging over her bed.

Newmann, reared a Mennonite and now a Catholic, looks at how quality of life is often sacrificed for sanctity of life, often for religious reasons, by health care providers, families and religious leaders.

“We must examine the inequality and the discrimination that the church has built into its position on health care,” she said. “The Catholic Church is so good at managing hospitals, at addressing patient care that we cannot say it is bad on the whole and yet the discrimination against women, the lack of autonomy provided to elders or to individuals like to Terry Schiavo — these families that are put in these difficult positions should be supported by their church. They should be able to make their own decisions.”

Ann Neumann is a visiting scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, where she is a contributing editor to the Revealer. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Bookforum, the Nation, and Guernica. This is her first book.
Ann Neumann is a visiting scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, where she is a contributing editor to the Revealer. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Bookforum, the Nation, and Guernica. This is her first book.

But what about hope? In the book, Neumann echoes the writing of Adrienne Martin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who writes that hope is not always a good thing. It can lead to pain and suffering, both physical and emotional, and result in stretching out an illness in the hope for an unlikely positive outcome.

“It was an area of research that fascinated me because it did question the hands-down understanding we have that hope is always good,” Neumann said. “Hope can be sustaining. It can get us out of bed. But it can also result in the very painful treatment of patients and lead to denial.”

What’s a country with a rapidly aging population to do? The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2050, one in five Americans will be 65 or older and have diverse ideas about end-of-life issues. A Pew Forum survey in 2013 found two-thirds of Americans believe there are some situations in which patients should have a right to end their own lives, while 31 percent say doctors should do everything they can to prolong life.

Start conversations with your loved ones, make your end-of-life wishes clear and know your rights, Neumann said.

“A good death is whatever a patient wants,” Neumann said. “It is not up to me, to their legislators, to their priests, to their families. That is true informed consent. A good enough death is as close as we can get because humans are not perfect. We can get so much closer, but we will never have a perfect death.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Who Should Have The Right To Die

Doctor-assisted dying continues to be hotly debated in the United States, but the ideas – and specifically the words – used to support it have evolved in fascinating ways. Over nearly a century, there has been a shift away from terms related to death towards a focus on autonomy and dignity, drawing in no small part on the ideas of the 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill.

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Right to die: Should ‘mature minors’ have access to doctor-assisted death?

MPs wrestle with sensitive moral and legal questions in crafting new physician-assisted death law

By Kathleen Harris

A woman holds the hand of her mother who is dying from cancer during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg in 2010. A woman holds the hand of her mother who is dying from cancer during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg in 2010.
A woman holds the hand of her mother who is dying from cancer during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg in 2010.
A woman holds the hand of her mother who is dying from cancer during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg in 2010.

This week’s parliamentary report on the right to die has put a profound moral and legal question to federal legislators: Should children suffering from incurable illness be allowed to end their own life with the help of a doctor?

Among the 21 recommendations from the joint panel of MPs and senators is one to allow “competent mature minors” to request a physician’s help to die.

The committee tabled its 70-page report Thursday called “Medical Assistance in Dying: A Patient-Centred Approach.” It suggests a two-phased approach, with an initial phase allowing doctor-assisted death to adults 18 years and older and then expanding it to mature minors within three years.

Dr. Derrick Smith, head of psychiatry at Vancouver’s Children’s Hospital and chair of the physicians’ advisory council of Dying with Dignity Canada, said it is right to determine the capacity and competence rather than the arbitrary age of someone making such a “momentous decision.”

Age is ‘arbitrary’

“Some people who are 21 do not have the capacity to consent and some people who are 14 do,” he said. “It’s really artificial to try and have an age as a cut-off point. You’re much better off going with something measurable like capacity to consent. If the cut-off is 18 and we’re prepared to let people 18 have physician-assisted death, why would we want to have 17-year-olds suffer interminably?”

The committee’s recommendation to include mature minors has generated much controversy, with critics insisting it goes far beyond the parameters set out by the landmark Supreme Court decision on Feb. 6, 2015, that struck down the ban on assisted death.

But Smith believes the discussion should go even further — to include young children.

“The committee isn’t going to address that, but as a society we should,” he said. “Obviously a five-year-old is not going to be able to give consent for something like that, but should we allow a substitute decision maker like the parent to say, “Johnny’s had enough suffering. I think it’s time that we assist him to terminate the suffering.”

Conservative MP Mike Cooper, who filed a dissenting report with three of his fellow caucus members, said including minors deviates from the “clear road map” set out by the Supreme Court. He called it “illogical” that someone not old enough to vote would be old enough to decide to die.

“What this does is open the door for someone under the age of 18 who may have an underlying mental health issue to be able to access doctor-assisted dying, and I don’t think anyone would think that’s a good thing,” he said.

To date, Belgium and the Netherlands are the only two countries that allow minors to obtain medical assistance in death. There is little research or data on how it has worked so far, and Cooper said Canada is heading in a dangerous direction.

Uncharted territory

“I think there are risks when you’re talking about minors; about their ability to have capacity, a full appreciation of the consequences,” he said. “Most jurisdictions have not gone down this road, and I think from a policy standpoint we’re entering uncharted territory and we should proceed with a great deal of caution.”

Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, who co-chaired the committee on medical assistance in death, said the Supreme Court decision was based on two adults with physical conditions, but the report “hugs closely” to charter rights of all Canadians, including minors and the mentally ill.

“What other issues could come up and should be in the legislation to ensure that Canadians’ rights are protected in the spirit of the charter, in the spirit of the decision?” he said. “We looked at how age could be a charter issue, ability could be a charter issue, capacity could be a charter issue.”

While the issue has drawn bitter political battle lines, it is also dividing Canada’s medical community.

Dr. Dawn Davies, medical director of the palliative care program at Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and chair of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s bioethics committee, believes the panel should have stuck to consenting, competent adults. She said it’s “premature” to set a three-year deadline to include minors.

In most cases, palliative care can mitigate and manage the pain and suffering of patients, yet she is one of fewer than 20 full-time pediatric palliative care physicians across the country.

“Until we can improve that, I have very grave concerns, because I think a lot of adults are asking for assisted death out of a sense of control … but I think in the case of children, we don’t even know what their issues are.”

Court challenges expected

Davies expects that requests from minors could wind up in court with challenges from medical professionals, child protection services or even relatives.

She could not predict how many minors would actually seek medical assistance to end their own lives, but in her experience most terminally ill patients want to live to reach milestones such as birthdays or graduation.

But she worries about young people who may have devastating injuries, like quadriplegics whose life-altering experience causes despair.

“In many cases, people do go on to live productive, fulfilling lives, and I really worry about new catastrophic injuries for minors — that possibly leading to requests,” she said.

Davies said with advancements in pain management and end-of-life care, the issue is less about preventing pain and suffering and more about control over ending one’s own life. She calls that a “real departure” for human beings.

“For myself, I’d say it goes beyond being a physician. It is such an about-face for our whole society that one person will be able to take the life of another person for any reason,” she said. “I just don’t think personally that I would ever be comfortable with that.”

The Liberal government has until June 6 to pass new legislation on doctor assisted death.

Complete Article HERE!

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Diane Rehm on life, death and learning to play the piano

By Sadie Dingfelder

Diane Rehm’s new book explores how she mourned her husband’s death and began her new life alone.
Diane Rehm’s new book explores how she mourned her husband’s death and began her new life alone.

Public-radio host Diane Rehm, 79, began writing her new book, “On My Own,” on the last night of her husband’s life. The candid memoir tracks Rehm’s first year of widowhood, starting when her husband, John, decided he was done fighting Parkinson’s disease, which had rendered him nearly immobile. It describes the 10 excruciating days when John starved himself to death (a path he chose, Rehm says, because assisted suicide is illegal in her home state of Maryland).

“On My Own” traces her uncertain steps without John — taking care of finances, taking over his side of the bed — and features reminiscences of their 54-year marriage. Rehm, who is ending her long-running WAMU program “The Diane Rehm Show” after the November election, will talk at Sixth and I on Wednesday.

You wrote that you and your husband were “more together in sickness than in health.” Can you expand on that?

It’s a lovely thought to expand on, because while he was in assisted living, I think he realized how dependent he had become on me, and I think that broke down some of the barriers he had used all his life to shield himself, to be such a private human being. He knew I would do anything for him, and I think we simply had a loving time with each other in those last few months.

What do you hope people get out of reading “On My Own”?

I hope that people will talk with their families and their loved ones about what it is they want at the end of their life. John and I talked a lot about it with our kids, about how neither one of us wanted prolonged dying or to live long in illness or to lose our ability to care for ourselves. People need to talk about death and dying. It’s kind of a taboo subject in families. I can remember my own mother wanting to talk to me about it and me saying, “Oh Mom, let’s not talk about this now.”

You’ve become the de facto face of the “right to die” movement. Do you feel that impairs your ability to be a journalist?

I’m not an activist. I am not out there campaigning for anyone, for any organization. I am simply speaking about my own experience. I’m going to speak about my husband’s death. I’m going to speak about my own hope for myself — that when the times comes, I will have the right to choose how I wish to die. I’m only speaking from the heart and for myself, so I see no conflict journalistically.

You’ve said that working has helped you keep your grief at bay. Are you concerned about retiring after this election cycle?

The fact of the matter is, I’m not retiring. I’m stepping away from the microphone, but I’m going to continue to work — at WAMU in some capacity, on behalf of trying to find a cure for Parkinson’s, trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and speaking out personally about what I believe is the right to die.

Will you pick up any hobbies?

Piano. I took lessons for just five years as an adult, and I’m looking forward to trying to get back into that. But I won’t try to be too ambitious because I know it’s hard to play the way you’d like to hear yourself play. You just have to forgive yourself and keep on trying.

Do you have any advice for other people who are grieving or friends of those who have experienced a great loss?

If a friend of yours is grieving, just listen. Just be there and be helpful in any way you can. And don’t push that person to “get over it.” I think there’s part of me that will probably grieve forever. When I’m alone, I miss John so much. I miss talking with him. I miss laughing with him. I’ll miss him forever, and I’ll think about him forever, but that doesn’t mean I will close down my life. I will keep living as long as I am healthy and well and have good thoughts and interesting things to do and interesting people to be with. But I will not push someone else who is grieving to do what I am doing. I’ll just try to be with that person and be that person’s friend.

Complete Article HERE!

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Candidates avoid the aid in dying debate, but it’s time to start talking about it

Since physiological support like respirators and defibrillators made it possible to prolong life, prolonging death has fueled a more subtle conversation

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With an aging population and state-by-state legislation creeping along, aid in dying is not a discussion national politicians should avoid.
With an aging population and state-by-state legislation creeping along, aid in dying is not a discussion national politicians should avoid.

Several factors have made politicians, particularly at the national level, reluctant to wade into the aid-in-dying conversation. Catholic leaders and their evangelical “pro-life” allies have eviscerated any politician willing to discuss aid in dying, shutting down dialogue and branding advocates as “pro-death”. By claiming to represent American religions, these vocal opponents have bifurcated the issue along political lines, all but silencing those who are religious but disagree.

Yet a conversation is taking place, with or without the presidential candidates. Since the 1970s, when physiological support, like respirators and defibrillators, made it possible to prolong life, prolonging death has fueled a more subtle conversation about what medical decisions patients and their families can make. Aid in dying is now approved by 68% of Americans, a number that rose by a striking 10 points in the course of a year, according to a Gallup poll conducted in May 2015. It’s now legal in five states with at least a dozen more considering bills or legislation.

Still, the issue was absent from the presidential race until a terminal cancer patient finally asked a question last week. Jim Kinhan, an 81-year-old with a face as rosy as his sweater, asked Hillary Clinton at a New Hampshire town hall meeting on 3 February about her position on the legalization of aid in dying.

“I wonder what leadership you could offer within an executive role that might help advance the respectful conversation that is needed around this personal choice that people may make, as we age and deal with health issues or be the caregivers of those people, to help enhance and – their end of life with dignity.” His voice was raspy, his question respectful. The Washington Post reported that Clinton “looked a bit nervous”. After a slight pause and some careful word selection, Clinton failed to take a position.

Republican candidates have also been silent about aid in dying, but it’s difficult to imagine anyone in the current conservative field will step away from the Republican party platform as they vie for traditionally Republican social conservatives. The campaign of Jeb Bush and his role in the Terri Schiavo case have even worked against the cause, helping to refresh patient concerns regarding autonomy in a way that defies party lines and past reticence.

But, unlike the fight to end abortion, which has (wrongly) focused on women’s sexual decisions and succeeded in shaming female medical choices, aid in dying is an issue that addresses male choice. That gender difference – and the fact that Republican voters skew older than Democrats – could catch up with the party and its candidates in the future. Republicans would do well to pay attention.

New Hampshire, where Kinhan lives, is home to one of the oldest populations in the country, and legislators there have tried twice in the past to establish study committees. Both times governor Maggie Hassan has vetoed the proposals. This year, as Hassan prepares to leave office, a Concord senator has tried again, introducing SB 426. It’s spurring the kind of dialogue in the state that Kinhan was hoping Clinton’s national campaign could get behind.

In the past, the very terms used to describe aid in dying have proven controversial. For more than a decade, polls showed that approval ratings depended on how questions about aid in dying were asked. If the term “assisted suicide” was used when polling, those willing to claim support for the laws were fewer. But that has begun to change; voters, exposed to repeated state-level conversations about aid in dying, and who now see that the laws have succeeded in the “laboratory of the states”, have come to understand that “assisted suicide” is not “suicide”. It is not something our culture should be united in preventing.

In an op-ed for the Concord Monitor at the end of January, Kinhan addressed the contrast between aid in dying and suicide. “The transparency and shared process of end-of-life choice is in strong contrast to the behavior known as suicide,” he wrote, emphasizing the difference between choosing not to suffer from a terminal disease and choosing to end one’s life out of despair.

“This choice is not dark and secretive,” Kinhan continued. “Personally, it rings loudly and joyfully of my readiness for what lies ahead and for thankfulness for what life has gifted me.”

Compassion & Choices, the nation’s largest aid in dying organization, has announced a call for questions for candidates. They will host an event on 17 February that gives voice to seniors who have concerns about end-of-life care. Hopefully candidates will realize what Kinhan and the movement to legalize aid in dying have shown: it’s time for a national conversation.

Complete Article HERE!