Disability Activists, Assisted Suicide and the Land of Oz

Yesterday – November 1 – the anticipated/dreaded Dr. Oz show on assisted suicide aired in most places, although syndicated shows such as Dr. Oz often play out on different dates in different locations. Disability activists Nadina LaSpina, Danny Robert, Ari Ne’eman, Julie Maury, Hope Derogatis and Bill Peace were all in the audience.  Danny Robert and Ari Ne’eman got to speak.  While Bill didn’t, there are several times you can see him clearly – looking generally pissed off at the tone and bias of the show.

Every one of them deserves a ruby slipper award for enduring this visit to the Land of (Dr.) Oz.

Ari Ne’eman was invited to write and post an essay on the Dr. Oz site.  It’s titled Death on Demand: Risks and Responsibilities.  Here’s an excerpt:

There are many critical civil rights issues facing Americans with disabilities and chronic health conditions – but the right to die is not one of them. Over the last 15 years, Americans have been engaged in an intensely controversial debate as to whether or not states should legalize assisted suicide for individuals with significant disabilities and terminal illnesses.

These laws – often promoted as “Death With Dignity” – appear on the surface to assist individuals expected to die within six months to request a lethal prescription from their physician. To the uninformed, these laws claim to enhance autonomy to a small number of individuals already at the end of their lives. Yet, as we’ve seen from years of experience where physician-assisted suicide has become legal, the reality is quite different. Far from assuring autonomy, the legalization of physician-assisted suicide has served to diminish true choice by creating an environment in which individuals denied access to necessary health care are made to feel like suicide is their preferred option. By advocating for so-called death with dignity, rather than the support and services people need to live, proponents of such laws bolster a system already denying dignity to hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

There’s a section for comments directly following the essay.  It would be great to have even more disability rights advocates chime in.

You can also watch video – cut up into very small pieces – of the show.  The Oz site isn’t friendly to embeds for video, so I can only provide links:

Do You Have the Right to Die? Pt. 1 – features Danny Robert after a short intro by Dr. Oz.  (In the opening shot, the guy who is to (your) the left of Dr. Oz wearing glasses and a maroon-ish shirt is Bill Peace.  Watch for him in other video segments.)

Ari Ne’eman challenges Montel Williams directly starting near the end of “Do You Have the Right to Die?  Audience Q & A, Pt 1” and continuing at the beginning of  “Do You Have the Right to Die?  Audience Q & A, Pt 2“.

As expected, the show was very biased.  The show opened with a woman who has a neuromuscular condition who says she’s tired of living with it and has family with her to support her – support her when it comes to dying, anyway.  Of all the people on the stage, Montel Williams is probably given the most time, because, well, this is entertainment and he’s the biggest celebrity there beside Dr. Oz.  Williams manages to disparage talk of the “slippery slope” while at the same time advocating for just such a slope.  He’s fluent in the stats concerning Oregon and the eligibility criteria.  Williams is clear, though, that he wants to end it all when he feels he is ready – no mention of terminality.  And, at the end, Oz the ringmaster of the show announces that he favors assisted suicide – with unrelieved suffering as his criteria.  So good old Oz wants public policy to slide down a slope farther down the hill than it supposedly has in Oregon and Washington.  The audience – from what we’re told by the folks who were there – seemed to be pretty stacked with people in favor of assisted suicide and not too picky about if the eligibility was “suffering,” “dying,” or “disabled.”

And by a strange coincidence, that put them in sync with both Montel Williams and Dr. Oz.

We are extremely grateful to all of our fellow activists who trekked in the downpour that day to get to the show.  Their presence and advocacy were probably the major factors preventing the show from being a total disaster.

I understand that, like Dorothy, everyone was extremely happy to finally escape from the Land of (Dr.) Oz.  –Stephen Drake