Barney Frank Demagogues “End of Life” Policy in Budget Discussion on MSNBC.

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I’m probably being more self-disclosing than I would like to here, but it was no accident that we caught this bit of demagoguery by Rep. Barney Frank on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”.  The show usually has a good line-up of guests, representing a wide spectrum of political ideologies – and discussion occurs – mostly – with little shouting or talking over each other.  Below is an excerpt from Rep. Barney Frank’s appearance on the show today, in which he discussed the possible combination of spending cuts and revenue increases (taxes) that could possibly be worked out between the parties.  As you’ll see, Rep. Frank goes off the rails when he talks about “end of life” issues.

Anyone who wants to see or read the full exchange can go to this link.  The original video has options for both a synced transcript and closed captioning.

In this, Frank makes the outrageous claim that we can save a ton of money by stopping something that isn’t actually happening — medical professional “forcing” medical care to people at the “end of life” who just want to be left alone and die peacefully.

This is demagoguery because the right to refuse treatment – especially in the case of people in the final stages of a terminal illness – is a settled matter.  It is illegal for a hospital to “force” life-saving or life-extending treatment that you don’t want.  I give Barney Frank credit for being a pretty intelligent politician and policy wonk – in this case it was the grandstanding politician rather than the policy wonk who was talking.

In short, he offered up a nonexistent “problem” we could “fix” to save money.  It probably hit the right emotional notes with people.  The thing is, there will be same pretty intelligent Republicans he’ll have to deal with when negotiating – they won’t buy this any more than Frank will be inclined to believe some of the more outrageous stuff coming out of that camp.

Surprise! Compassion & Choices Weighs in on Arizona Final Exit Network Trial Outcome

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Not exactly a big surprise, but Compassion and Choices (aka “Conflation & Con Jobs“) has weighed in on the disappointing outcome of the trial of Final Exit Network (FEN) members in Arizona. 

I am cynical enough to believe that reporters who use this press release from the organization are too shallow, lazy or generally lacking in critical thinking skills to realize the text doesn’t really say anything of substance except to promote the organization and its primary agenda – legalization of phyisician assisted suicide.

Excerpt from the press release:

“This case demonstrates the problem with vague ‘assisted suicide’ statutes such as Arizona’s,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices. “Terminally ill patients across the nation ask their physicians for aid in dying. Many doctors, in an uncertain legal environment, rebuff such questions and fail to discuss their patients’ concerns about pain and suffering. When patients cannot talk openly with their doctors they may seek assistance from others. Sympathetic family members or friends are usually unequipped to assess a patient’s competence or end-of-life options. No one should have to risk prosecution to help a dying patient end life peacefully.”

Media accounts suggest Van Voorhis was not terminally ill and may have suffered from mental illness impairing her judgment. The trial judge did not allow prosecutors to present evidence of her psychological state. “In today’s legal framework, judges and juries do not distinguish between the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill patient for a peaceful death via selfadministered medication, and the act of a distraught individual who is not dying, who may be mentally ill and suicidal,” said Coombs Lee. “The
former is a practice known as aid in dying, which has strong and growing support among the public and medical professionals. The latter is suicide. Our nation’s laws should recognize the difference.”

What’s most important is what Coombs Lee is not saying:

  • She is not saying that FEN members “assisting” the suicides of nonterminally ill people in Oregon or Washington state should be vigorously prosecuted — even though FEN has made it clear that they do operate in those states to “help” those the law doesn’t cover;
  • She may be silent regarding prosecution because, while she maintains a highly debatable distinction between “aid in dying” and “assisted suicide,” she hasn’t really said that assisted suicide is wrong – or something that should be prosecuted;
  • She hasn’t said that the FEN members have done anything wrong – and as near as I can figure it’s the fault of a “vaguely” constructed law that none of us can know if the actions of FEN members were wrong.

Oops.  I guess I was mistaken.  Coombs Lee did say something of importance – her words invite us to believe that it is the law, rather than the actions of FEN members, that was responsible for Jana Van Voorhis’s death.

I wonder what she’ll say if FEN activities in Oregon or Washington state come to light.  Whose fault will the deaths the group facilitates be then?  –Stephen Drake

Arizona: Jury in Final Exit Network Trial Acquits One, Unable to Reach Verdict with Other

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Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected news from Arizona:

Lawrence Egbert, 83, an anesthesiologist from Baltimore, was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit manslaughter by aiding suicide in the April 2007 death of Jana Van Voorhis, 58.

But the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision as to whether Franklin Langsner, 86, a retired college professor from Scottsdale, had committed manslaughter by aiding suicide as one of Van Voorhis’ “exit guides,” or whether he was guilty of conspiring with Egbert to help her kill herself.

Langsner had no comment. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said they would retry his case.

Why was it unsurprising?  For one thing, important information was kept from the jury:

On its website, Final Exit states that “mentally competent adults have a basic human right to end their lives when they suffer from a fatal or irreversible illness or intractable pain, when their quality of life is personally unacceptable, and the future holds only hopelessness and pain.”

According to attorneys and her family, Van Voorhis suffered from mental illness but was not suffering from physical illnesses, a fact kept from the jury.

I’ll never get this.  Part of the defense claims involved the careful “screening” process that FEN says they use.  The knowledge that Van Voorhis had no serious physical illness would have belied the claim of any kind of “screening” process – and it might have made the jury view other claims of the group more sceptically.  (Personally, it really doesn’t matter to NDY if Van Voorhis was “mentally ill” or not.  We’re opposed to the facilitation and encouragement of suicide regardless of whatever diagnoses may or may not be involved.)

I can only hope the prosecution in Georgia makes a stronger case in the courtroom.  –Stephen Drake

Final Exit Network Members Await Jury Decision in One State (AZ) and Lose Court Challenge in Another (GA)

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The long-awaited trial of two members of the Final Exit Network (FEN) relating to their roles in the death of Jana Van Voorhis is all but over – it’s all in the hands of the jury now after a roughly week-long trial at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona.

The only ongoing press coverage of the trial has been published in the Phoenix New Times.  Paul Rubin, writing the reports, has been covering the death of Jana Van Voorhis and the resulting criminal charges against four FEN members for over three and a half years now.  Two FEN members entered into plea agreements and have testified for the prosecution.

Below is a list of Rubin’s articles on the trial, from oldest to most recent:

From the last story, some definitions and omissions that the jury will have to struggle with:

Deputy county attorney Patrick Johnson told the panel that the Final Exit defendants’ intent was clear.
“We’re not talking about an ignorant organization,” the young prosecutor said. “They’re smart people. They know know, and they knew they were breaking the law…They knew full well what they were doing.”
Don Samuel, a Georgia attorney serving as one of Egbert’s lawyers, argued that “this is not a Gambino crime family, like the Maria or something…[Final Exit] is not a group that encourages, actively participates, or advises anybody to commit suicide.”
The veteran attorney obviously knows that the word “advises” may come back to haunt the defendant, and he smartly tried to deal with it head-on.
One of Judge McMurdie’s jury instructions says that “to aid” means “to assist in the commission of an act.” That assistance can include both “active participation” and “advising the person to commit suicide.”
The definition of “advice” is fraught with possible interpretation, as the evidence unquestionably showed that both Langsner and his onetime co-defendant Wye Hale-Rowe were intimately involved with Jana Van Voorhis’ demise. 
One point worth noting as the jurors begin to deliberate: For legal reasons, they never learned that Van Voorhis was not seriously physically ill when she committed suicide, but was suffering from long-term mental illness.

Personally, I’m not as concerned about the jury not hearing about Van Voorhis’ “long term mental illness” as I am about the omission of the very pertinent information that she “was not seriously physically ill.” Since FEN claims to screen applicants by reviewing medical records it could cast doubt on both their – to say the least – attention to detail and the veracity of any other claims made on or off the witness stand.

Paul Rubin is writing that he isn’t sure that 8 people (the number of jury members in deliberation) can come to a unanimous decision on the charges in this case.

Meanwhile, the AP has news from Georgia:

Intro to article:

A Georgia judge rejected a free-speech challenge to the state’s law against assisted suicide, allowing a high-profile case to proceed against four members of a suicide group charged with helping a cancer-stricken man kill himself.

Forsyth County Superior Court Judge David Dickinson said in the opinion released Wednesday that “pure speech is in no way chilled or limited” by the law, siding with prosecutors in the state’s case against four Final Exit Network members.

“The court understands that defendants contend that the statute criminalizes only speech,” the judge wrote in the 13-page ruling. “However, the court finds that the statute requires both speech and an overt act in furtherance of assisting in the suicide.”

There’s more in the article, but the upshot is that there will be a trial in Georgia.  Four members face various charges relating to their alleged roles in the death of John Celmer.  –Stephen Drake

Bad Cripple – Assisted Suicide: No Assistance Wanted

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On March 21st, the Monterey County Herald published an op-ed by Neil Shapiro, which was, until the last paragraph, a fairly unremarkable and unoriginal promotion of legalized assisted suicide.  The author praised Jack Kevorkian and the states of Oregon and Washington – the two states that have legalized physician-prescribed suicide for people believed to have less than six months to live.

In fact, reading through the bulk of the article, I was hard put to understand the justification for the title given the piece from some newspaper staffer – “Right to die gives dignity to disabled.” 

Shapiro didn’t mention that most of Kevorkian’s body count consisted of people with disabilities or nonterminal chronic conditions, so that wouldn’t account for the title.  The statutes in Oregon and Washington claim to limit “eligibility” to “terminally ill” individuals.  So why was the title referring to “disabled” people?

The rationale for the title only became clear when I got to the last paragraph, which reads as a gratuitous jab at California disability rights activists who have been very helpful in fighting legalization efforts in that state.

Here is the closing paragraph from Shapiro’s suicide promotion piece:

There is a great irony in all of this. Those who are not incapacitated are physically able to commit suicide, and need no assistance. Those who require, but are routinely denied, that assistance are the disabled. We spend billions of dollars making sure that they have the same right as the rest of us to shop, visit the beach and the like, but we deny them the right to die with dignity. Go figure.

There is so much venom, privilege and bigotry in this one statement, I would hardly know where to begin.  Fortunately, Bill Peace at Bad Cripple took this piece of crap apart in his blog response, Assisted Suicide: No Assistance Wanted.

Here is an excerpt:

Where do I begin? If it were up to my neighbors as Shapiro puts it, I would have been denied an education. I would not be able to get on a bus or plane. I would not have a job or be father. We people with a disability had to fight for these fundamental rights. Even though we people with a disability are supposedly equal I have never felt that way—ever. The idea of equality for people with a disability is illusive at best. As for the billions of dollars spent on access, which Shapiro seems to resent, has saved countless lives, mine included. But just because we spend money on access and inclusion does not mean we value the people who are supposedly equal and included. When it comes to disability rights, as a society we merely pay lip service to these inherent civil rights most take for granted. We do not in reality accept the presence of people with a disability.

 There’s more – please read the rest here.

I have nothing to add but my thanks to Bill for writing this.  –Stephen Drake