A woman with terminal cancer who campaigned for Oregon’s euthanasia law has committed doctor-assisted suicide by drinking a glass of cranberry juice loaded with barbiturates.
The national peak body for palliative care, Palliative Care Australia, issued their most recent Statement on Euthanasia (Why not voluntary euthanasia?, one might ask.) in March 1999 at their Nation
Having an advance directive is no guarantee that end-of-life wishes will be honored. A 1995 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study of 4,300 critically ill patients found that only 49 percent who requested do not resuscitate (DNR) orders actually got them; 70 percent of those patients were never asked their preferences. There have been many cases in which individuals who have taken all the right steps have been deprived of seeing their loved ones’ wishes carried out because of physician, family, or institutional resistance.
NEW YORK TIMES Health Section
By Laurie Tarkin, Jenny Warburg for The New York Times
Of the estimated 730,000 Americans who have strokes each year, nearly 160,000 die and another 400,000 suffer varying degrees of disability. Yet, when stroke patients arrive at emergency rooms, medical experts say, they are not usually treated with the urgency required.
The less-than-rapid response, in some cases, can make the difference between full recovery and permanent debilitating disease or death.
ARCHIVES OF INTERNAL MEDICINE — Vol. 161 No. 3, February 12, 2001
Author Information
Kristen M. Coppola, PhD; Peter H. Ditto, PhD; Joseph H. Danks, PhD; William D. Smucker, MD
NEW YORK TIMES, Health Section (Tues, February 13, 2001)
By Eric Nagourney
Despite recent growth of the hospice field, intended to help the terminally ill die as peacefully as possible, most Americans still die in hospitals. Other studies had found that doctors often failed to tell patients’ families about their options; now, a new report suggests that nurses, too, may play a role.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Nov. 16, 2000, Vol;284:2460-2468
This article received considerable attention in the press when it was released.
Author Information Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD; Diane L. Fairclough, DPH; Linda L. Emanuel, MD, PhD
Context Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are highly controversial issues. While there are studies of seriously ill patients’ interest in euthanasia and PAS, there are no data on the attitudes and desires of terminally ill patients regarding these issues.
Sen. Gordon Smith says the president is considering an order to overturn how a U.S. drug law can be used
In an editorial 19 September, 2000 the New York Times called for President Clinton’s veto should the Senate pass the so-called “Pain Relief Promotion Act.”
The following article was carried in Congress Daily A.M. explains the building opposition to the Pain Relief Promotion Act and reported on the internet by John Hoffsess in “Nothing But the News”.
A study reported in the September 11th issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine and carried by Reuters Health News service reports that “Most terminally ill cancer patients favor right to die.”
A psychiatrist accused of killing five elderly patients by prescribing fatal doses of morphine was convicted Monday of manslaughter and negligent homicide.
