Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, published an essay today – April 16 – on Huffington Post. His essay uses the tragedies of elderly suicide/homicides to build a case of assisted suicide, a tactic which will be familiar to readers of this blog. Here’s an excerpt from his essay, titled “Getting the […]
Last September, this blog discussed an article from a Pennsylvania newspaper that took a thoughtful, in-depth look at the tragically growing trend of elderly homicide/suicides. When that story was written, there had been three such cases in the state since June of that year. The number is now up to at least 6 in the […]
I suspect most readers of this blog are familiar with Peter Singer – mostly through his views on infanticide and euthanasia. Many others are already familiar with his book Animal Liberation – a book that served as the first inspiration for many who are now in the animal rights movement. Singer’s worldview – and the […]
Once again, an item featured on Thaddeus Pope‘s Medical Futility Blog turned out to be something that I wanted to explore in greater detail than the brief blurb given on his blog, in his September 10th post, Hospitals Vary in How Quickly LST Is Stopped: In “Mortality associated with withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy for patients […]
Dutch media are framing the latest survey of medical professionals somewhat differently than I have in the headline here. Radio Netherlands titles their story “Dutch doctors wary of euthanasia for dementia,” while DutchNews.nl features the title “Doctors reluctant to help patients with dementia die.” Both news entitities take pains to minimize the percentage of doctors […]
The following are excerpts from an excellent piece by columnist Dominic Lawson. He arranged to visit SCOPE, the UK disability charity that published the results of a survey earlier this year, finding that 70% of disabled respondents expressed concerns about their own safety if assisted suicide was legalized in the UK. Lawson was allowed to […]
(Pictured above: Profile picture of Professor Paul Longmore, copied from his facebook page.) I just received the news via various sources that Paul Longmore – professor, hisorian, disability rights scholar and disability rights activist – died unexpectedly last night. The following note from a friend and colleague of his appeared on Paul’s facebook page last […]
About three months ago, I commented on an essay in Newsweek by a veterinary oncologist who, among other things, said that “pet owners routinely rack up $10,000 bills” to save the lives of their pets. As I said at the time, that vet doesn’t service pets and their owners in my neighborhood, where few of […]
As a left-handed tribute to “bioethicist and medical historian” Jacob M. Appel, I have titled this blog entry as a question, leading uninformed readers to think maybe I will seriously analyze an issue with two or more sides. In fact, as readers of this blog know, I have a definite viewpoint and people come to […]
Several blogs wrote about this issue late last month when a press release announced the publication of an issue of the Disability and Health Journal dedicated to articles on assisted suicide and disability. I held back from announcing the issue on this blog for one very important reason: A snafu resulted in the press release […]
