Virginia: Easing Standards for Declaration of Brain Death – and Increasing Errors

…ute at JFK Medical Center in Edison,said he is concerned about brain death rulings coming from doctors whomay not be properly trained. For example, it is important to decipher whether a patient’s response is the resultof real brain activity or a spinal reflex, he said. More… Michael Williams, an associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, believes most hospitals – including his – still prefer a neurologist or another expert doc…

Georgia: Grand Jury Indicts Four Members of Final Exit Network on Multiple Counts

I missed this when the news hit yesterday, but things aren’t looking great for the members of the Final Exit Network (FEN). Here’s the gist of the news, from the second paragraph of the story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: An indictment returned Tuesday charges the Final Exit Network along with co-founder Thomas “Ted” Goodwin, 64, of Kennesaw and Punta Gorda, Fla.; Claire Blehr, 77, of Atlanta; and Dr. Lawrence Egbert, 82, and Nicholas Al…

Reporter Succeeds in Getting Two Suicide Prevention Organizations to Comment on Final Exit Network Billboard!

…a little. The Bay Citizen “was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to fact-based, independent reporting on civic and community issues in the San Francisco Bay Area.” (This all sounded familiar so I did a quick check of the likeliest source and found that the Chicago Reader‘s Michael Miner wrote about The Bay Citizen just about a month ago.) Given the dismal and consistent silence of suicide prevention organizati…

How many states does it take before we’re not “blown away” by nursing board scandals?

…ple in hospitals and other facilities may be people we wouldn’t want to entrust our lives to if we happen to end up there. But it also relates to the debate about assisted suicide, euthanasia and other forms of medical killing. Advocates argue that strict safeguards will prevent any abuse, slide or spread of medical killing beyond what is allowed in the law. The news in California and Texas shows us that the public’s faith in meaningful oversight…

Two recent cases show what it takes to screw up a “mercy killing” defense

…ylvania man last Friday was sentenced to 25 years in prison for repeatedly running her over on a rural road in northern Worcester County last August. More… From the beginning, Steven Molin did not deny running over his mother as many as three times, but claimed the incident was an accident, caused in part by a faulty passenger side door on the 2008 Chevy work truck damaged in a different accident earlier in the day. However, a Worcester County She…