Link: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/11/prweb8929655.htm
Disability Rights Activists from Not Dead Yet and National Council on Disability Featured in Dr. Oz Segment on Assisted Suicide
Members of Not Dead Yet and National Council on Disability were featured in a Dr. Oz segment on assisted suicide. Members expressed opposition to assisted suicide, but overall the segment was biased in favor of the practice.
On November 1st the syndicated Dr. Oz Show broadcast a segment addressing the topic of assisted suicide. Several members of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group, and Ari Ne’eman, a presidentially appointed member of the National Council on Disability, attended the taping of the program by invitation. Ne’eman is also head of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
Both Not Dead Yet and the National Council on Disability, as well as several other national disability organizations, oppose legalization of assisted suicide. The groups are concerned that assisted suicide poses a danger to people with significant disabilities, whether or not their conditions are classified as terminal.
The broadcast opened with Montel Williams, who has multiple sclerosis (MS), describing his experiences of pain with MS, his previous suicidal feelings, and his current support for laws allowing assisted suicide.
During the program’s two-hour taping, Danny Robert, a man with multiple sclerosis who uses a ventilator, was identified as a member of Not Dead Yet and given the opportunity to speak from the audience. Robert spoke about his initial marriage break up and wish to die, and his concern that he would have died and missed his current life and new relationship if assisted suicide were legal.
After attending the taping, but prior to the broadcast, Robert wrote a guest Not Dead Yet blog about the experience. In part, he described his observations about a disabled woman featured in the segment:
[Excerpt] Dr. Oz introduced Dana, an African American woman in her late 40s or early 50s with ALS. . . . She sat in a manual chair, somewhat reclined, wearing a ventilator mask. A video played on the big screens, showing Dana before tragedy hit, healthy, strong, athletic… (very exploitative). Then the ventilator mask came off (the ventilator alarmed briefly) and Dana began to speak. She said she had been living with the progression of ALS for 8 years and she was tired. She hated having to depend on others for her care and she couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was depressed, lonely, had no friends left and she wanted to die. Nadina [my life partner] and I looked at each other and said “that’s why she wants to die.”
[Excerpt] Dr. Oz asked Dana’s son how it felt to live with his mom. He said it was sad and that, though he didn’t really want her to die, he also didn’t want her to suffer anymore. Dana’s daughter said: “It’s heart-breaking, unbearable to watch her suffer. She’s had enough.” Dana’s sister, who has her health care proxy, reiterated: “She can’t take it anymore. She’s suffered enough.” It was obvious to us (but I guess to no one else) that the family had “had enough.”
Perhaps unintentionally, the episode demonstrated one of the significant reasons that Not Dead Yet opposes assisted suicide. “I really felt that Dana’s loneliness and feelings of being a burden on her family were at the heart of her apparent support for assisted suicide,” said Robert. “When Dr. Byock, another guest on the show, pointed out that she could just refuse antibiotics the next time she got pneumonia, Dr. Oz asked her directly if she would do that. Dana replied, ‘That’s a good question.’ When I looked at her expressions as her family spoke, I saw and heard a cry for help. But most of the Dr. Oz audience didn’t seem to hear her ambivalence and her plea. They just applauded her wish to die.”
Dr. Oz stated that he supports assisted suicide at the beginning of the taping and at the end of the broadcast. The producers included extensive footage and interview time with the disabled individual and family supporting assisted suicide, which was not comparably sought or obtained from a disabled individual and family opposing assisted suicide.
Ne’eman was also given the opportunity to speak during the two-hour taping. His comments were not included in the final one hour broadcast, but were included in two online video segments (part 1, part 2). Ne’eman was also invited to submit a written article on the topic which is featured on the program’s website.
Well, I just watched clips from the Dr. Oz episode, and found it to be just as dreadful as I thought it would be. I didn’t see anything featuring any sort of real value in the show, just a bunch of arguments either poorly responded to, or left not responded to, at all.
Ari Ne’eman made a good point regarding how could assisted suicide/right-to-die be truly voluntary, without a real choice for quality-of-life improvement options be offered, as well. No one there for the right-to-die ever made any sort of real effort to say that there needs to be much improved quality-of-life measures, along with more options for the right-to-die. The hostility by the right-to-die supporters on the show, made those opposing assisted suicide much more defensive by yelling out, also likely because the producers didn’t allow them to respond in a fair discussion.
This coming from someone who is very supportive of the right-to-die. While I support it, this show clearly is biased, but in the same sense, it didn’t do any favors for the right-to-die either. Besides the hostility of the right-to-die supporters on the show, and the unresponsiveness to the good points brought up by those against assisted suicide, the supporters of the right-to-die failed in making a case that there are ways for one to end their life peacefully, regardless of the opposition and the lack of appropriate assisted suicide legislation. This could have been done, had I, or someone from Final Exit Network been on the show.
The most important thing, however, going back to what Ari Ne’eman mentioned, is the right-to-die movement needs to show that the right-to-die is a voluntary decision which is a choice along with real quality-of-life improvement options, whenever possible. Of course, there are people whom are very ill and have a limited chance of improving in any way, in which they personally feel is adequate enough for them in living. Society should not make that choice for them though, only to offer solutions for life and death. Yet, only when quality-of-life improvement options are there and in full effect, can the choice to seek assisted suicide truly be voluntary.
In the meantime, people still should have the right-to-die and access to ways and means of ending their life, despite there being these issues, though not necessarily going through a process deemed by legislation, as supporting the right-to-die. There are ways and means to do it, which hopefully will be met with other choices, as well, so that everything can be voluntary with compassion, dignity, and fairness.
Terrible….. Just reading … I am just trying to bring awareness to WHY ASSISTED SUICIDE cannot (and shouldn’t) be accepted in US (or any where).