As of today, Bill Peace’s essay “Comfort Care as Denial of Personhood” is online – and accompanied by three commentaries available at the Hasting Center Bioethics Blog. Here’s what we wrote before about the experience at the center of Bill’s essay: Back in 2010, our friend, colleague and ally Bill Peace, experienced a long, expensive health crisis when he experienced a stage IV skin breakdown – with a long treatment process that was physically an…
…e and I have dealt with previously scheduled events that took us away from online NDY matters. Diane is at the INCIL Retreat today. In addition, I committed to do a presentation at the Fall Conference of the Nonverbal Learning Disorders Association. I’m leaving tomorrow and won’t be back until Saturday night. Here’s the blurb for my session, taken from the list of presenters on the NLDA site: STEPHEN DRAKE, Research Analyst, Policy Analyst and Org…
November 1, 2013 Response to Question 1: I am a 55-year-old white man who is a quadriplegic based on a spinal cord injury in 1984. The level of my injury was at the fourth cervical level, resulting in near total paralysis below my shoulders. My breathing ability survived the injury, and after diaphragmatic strengthening, I have breathed without assistance for the last 30 years. I drive a powered wheelchair with a sip/puff tube, live in the commun…
October 31, 2013 Response to Question 1: I have a serious, progressive neuromuscular disability. For most of my life, doctors thought I had spinal muscular atrophy, but now there’s a DNA test for that and last year we learned that I don’t have the SMA gene. So now I have a generic neuromuscular disability labeled congenital myopathy. I have friends with similar conditions, as well as friends with post-polio syndrome, many of whom use BiPAP machin…
…ple Against Cuts and Not Dead Yet Rally Against Assisted Dying (morningstaronline.com, 04/29/24) New York considers Medical Aid in Dying Act for ninth consecutive year (WAMC, 04/27/24) Advocates push back after Cardinal O’Malley denounces bill to permit physician-assisted suicide (Boston Globe, 04/16/24) Assisted suicide in Minnesota? Critics point to Canada as cautionary tale (Star Tribune, o4/12/24) Think again: the humanist case against assiste…
