Euthanasia

On World Suicide Prevention Day, Wesley J. Smith appeared on In the Market with Janet Parshall to speak about the hypocrisy of suicide prevention organizations ignoring assisted suicide. Smith explained that these organizations only want to help prevent some suicides and that they “want to facilitate and endorse and help with others.” Read, “World Suicide Prevention Day” Hypocrisy

You may not have heard, but today is the annual World Suicide Prevention Day. Usually, such efforts are almost invisible. We don’t put nearly as much emphasis on suicide prevention as we once did. I am all for suicide prevention, of course. I just wish that those efforts included assisted suicide/euthanasia, which costs the lives of approximately 25,000 people annually around the world — with that toll increasing every year. But despite proliferating laws allowing doctors and nurse practitioners to assisted suicides — or, as in Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, and other countries — actively kill suicidal people, prevention efforts are generally silent about this category of suicide. I checked on the World Health Organization link to Prevention Day Read More ›

On World Suicide Prevention Day, Wesley J. Smith appeared on The Drew Mariani Show to discuss the double standard in many professional organizations that treat suicide in some cases as requiring prevention and in others as requiring assistance (i.e., assisted suicide and euthanasia). Smith recounts how this culture of death has marched through the West. Smith also addresses listener questions and expresses why it is vital that all suicidal ideations be treated with prevention, including those with terminal illnesses. “There’s a deep Nihilism in the West, a deep decadence in the West that we have to get a handle on because it’s dangerous and it causes people to look at suicide in a different way,” says Smith. Read, “‘World Suicide Read More ›

My mother died of Alzheimer’s disease at the ripe old age of 99. With invaluable help from hospice, my wife and I cared for her in our home for the last five months of her life.

Was it difficult? Very. Does that matter? No. Mom deserved the best care available regardless of her mental incapacity.

My mother’s brother also died of Alzheimer’s. He received excellent care in the memory unit of a Baptist-affiliated assisted living facility for the last years of his life.

Was it difficult? Very. Does that matter? No. My uncle deserved the best care available regardless of his mental incapacity.

The compassionate support my mother and uncle received was once the expected moral standard. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing. Increasingly, dementia patients are viewed by many as better off dead sooner rather than later.

The New York Times published an unbelievably puffy piece about a new assisted-suicide clinic starting in New York as legalization kicks in, describing it oh, so objectively as “a start-up for better deaths” — complete with Buddhist chanting. Good grief.

But the saccharine story raises an important issue discussed too little in the debate over assisted suicide. Legalization creates acute financial conflicts of interest that have the potential to push suicidal people toward death.

For socialized systems and government funded health care, killing instead of caring for expensive patients can save a lot of money over time, particularly when the terminal-illness limitation is lifted. Indeed, some advocates argue that saving money is a big part of the point. The Canadian media has even celebrated that potential.

Wesley J. Smith joined host Simon O’Connor on Family Matters, a show from Family First New Zealand, to discuss current efforts to force medical professionals with religious and conscientious objections to participate in assisted suicide and euthanasia. Smith specifically highlights the danger that these threats pose, as they would drive talented people away from the medical field. Smith and O’Connor also discuss the trend of medicine becoming something like a “vending machine” as it’s been made into a consumer service. “Patient autonomy, of course, is a part of medicine,” Smith explains. “But doctors are not automatons and they should not be forced to do things that run contrary to their beliefs and their ethics.” Read Wesley J. Smith’s piece, “Nuns Read More ›

Many Western countries and jurisdictions are legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. That opens up a problem for the death pushers. Since states aren’t going to get into the wet work of the actual killing, medical professionals and caregivers are going to be conscripted to do the deadly deeds — even if that means violating their religious beliefs and moral consciences.

Instead of resisting this rank authoritarianism, the medical and bioethics establishments are increasingly going along. This proposed coercion includes requiring doctors’ participation in suicides when patients starve and dehydrate themselves to death — known as VSED for “voluntary stop eating and drinking.”

As I wrote a few weeks ago here, the British Medical Association just so opined. And now, following closely in that guidance’s wake, a major article in the Journal of Health & Biomedical Law argues similarly — using dementia patients as the prime example — that doctors have to both inform patients about their right to commit suicide by VSED and ease the process by providing palliative care against the agony that killing oneself in that manner causes.

The other day, in response to the British Medical Association requiring doctors to participate in VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking) suicides, I wrote that “suicide nihilism is exerting an ever-increasing gravitational force.” With this post, I double down on that depressing conclusion.

Hospice was designed to care for people who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses until their natural deaths. But a study just published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management — the publication of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine — argues that people intending to commit suicide via VSED should qualify for hospice care even if they are not otherwise dying!

What? Why? Because someone dying within six months qualifies for hospice. VSED takes less than that amount of time to die. Hence, such suicidal people should be admitted to hospice. The mind just boggles.

The subtitle of the revised and updated version of my book criticizing utilitarian bioethics, Culture of Death, is, “The Age of ‘Do Harm’ Medicine.” Helping patients kill themselves by self-starvation and dehydration — known in euthanasia parlance as VSED (for voluntary stopping eating and drinking) — certainly fits that designation.

Two major medical associations now have endorsed doctors assisting in such suicides by palliating the painful symptoms to help patients go all the way to death. The first was the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) in 2023. This is especially notable because the organization shamefully went “neutral” on the legalization of assisted suicide, despite that action being the antithesis of the hospice philosophy enunciated by the great medical humanitarian Dame Cecily Saunders. The AAHPM’s journal also published a piece recently endorsing intentionally undernourishing dementia patients under certain conditions (MCF, or “minimal comfort feeding”) — VSED in slow motion, if you will.

Now, another “do harm” shoe has dropped. The British Medical Association has issued an ethical guidance that requires practitioners to participate in VSED when asked to do so by a patient. While the AAHPM guidance assumes that the act will only be done by terminally ill or seriously ill or disabled patients, the BMA guidance notably acknowledges that even those not in ill health can kill themselves in this slow manner — and that doctors must further the suicide palliatively. From the guidance (my emphasis):

The Washington Post has a heartwarming story about a Nashville cop who dissuaded a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge:

“It was emotional. This was an individual who had reached a level of frustration where he was having the worst day of his life,” Hotz said. “I just wanted to be able to develop trust with him and help him realize that tomorrow is another day and it will get better.”

“It was a combination of life circumstances that happened that brought him to a level of ultimate frustration and desperation,” Hotz said.

Even as they talked, Hotz said he remained afraid of what might happen next.…

“He was standing on the bridge and did lean over several times,” he said.