Study Finds That Participating in Euthanasia Can Have Adverse Psychological Effects on Doctors

Dignitas Moves to Offer Suicide Aid for Depression Victims

World Federation of Right to Die Societies Reaffirms Its Manifesto

Australia's Renegade "Dr. Death"

Accounts From North Korea Escapees

Euthanasia Death Toll Spikes in Belgium

The American Public Health Association Adopts Assisted Suicide Euphemisms 

Computerized Brain Connections Show Better Quality of Life in ALS Patients...   

STUDY FINDS THAT PARTICIPATING IN EUTHANASIA CAN HAVE ADVERSE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS ON DOCTORS. The report by Kenneth R. Stevens, Jr., published by the Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation, takes its data from sources including medical journals, legal investigations and the press, and concludes that "Many doctors who have participated in euthanasia and/or PAS [Physician Assisted Suicide] are adversely affected emotionally and psychologically by their experiences".

The study quotes a doctor from the Netherlands, the first country to legalize euthanasia: "Many physicians who had practiced euthanasia mentioned that they would be most reluctant to do so again."

Pieter Admiraal, a leader of Holland's euthanasia movement is quoted saying, "You will never get accustomed to killing somebody. We are not trained to kill. With euthanasia, your nightmare comes true."

One doctor said that he worried that legalization would limit clinical options offered to patients by doctors who grow to rely upon euthanasia as a quick fix. Dr. Zylicz, responding to a British questionnaire is quoted saying, "This is my biggest concern in providing euthanasia and setting a norm of euthanasia in medicine: that it will inhibit the development of our learning from patients, because we will solve everything with euthanasia."

The PCCEF study corresponds with reports by German authorities during the second world war that showed negative psychological effects on the doctors and nurses involved in the government sponsored euthanasia program T-4. The program was authorized by Hitler and at first focused on handicapped and orphaned children and mentally disabled adults who were starved to death or killed by lethal doses of medication.

In his landmark 1997 book, Origins of Nazi Genocide, Henry Friedlander reported that the psychological condition of nurses and doctors involved in the quasi-legal euthanasia program suffered alcoholism and serious mental disorders after prolonged stints working in the killing centres. Read the full article from Physicians for Compassionate Care: http://www.pccef.org/articles/art44.htm [Study first published in Issues in Law & Medicine. 21:187 (2006); LifeSite, 23 May06]

DIGNITAS MOVES TO OFFER DEPRESSED SUICIDE AID. Dignitas, the Swiss group that has assisted the suicides of 619 of its Swiss and foreign members since 1998, has petitioned the Swiss Supreme Court to permit it to facilitate the deaths of those deemed chronically depressed or mentally ill.

Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli, a human rights lawyer, views assisted suicide as a basic human right that should be available to those with chronic mental illness. The petition, which was scheduled to be heard by the Swiss high court on October 27, involves a Swiss man with bipolar disorder, also called manic depressive disorder, who lives abroad.

As yet, the court has not issued a ruling in the matter. Minelli spoke about the case during a September speech to Liberal Democrats attending a conference in Brighton, England: "If you accept the idea of personal autonomy, you can’t make conditions that only terminally ill people should have this right." "We should accept generally," he continued, "the right of a human being to say, ‘Right, I would like to end my life,’ without any pre-condition, as long as this person has capacity of discernment."

Labeled the "suicide missionary" by the London Times, Minelli said that he would take the court case all the way to the European high court, if necessary. "I tell [Dignitas] members suffering from mental illnesses: I am fighting for your freedom," he explained. [London Times, 9/20/06, 9/21/06, 9/22/06; Daily Post, 9/21/06; BBC News, 9/20/06; Independent, 9/21/06; International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No5]

WORLD FEDERATION OF RIGHT TO DIE SOCIETIES [umbrella group consisting of 38 right-to-die organizations from 23 countries] reaffirmed its "Manifesto" [9/06, biennial conference, Toronto, Canada] which originally debuted at its previous meeting in Tokyo in 2004, the document declares that everyone has the "right to die with dignity, meaning in peace and without suffering" and that "the manner and time of dying should be left to the decision of the individual."

Usually people presume that these "rights" apply only to those who are terminally ill, with six months or less to live. But they would be wrong. Instead, the Manifesto says, "all competent adults" who suffer "from incurable illnesses" have the "intrinsic human" right to be euthanized or assisted in committing suicide. "Incurable" does not necessarily mean "terminal." Incurable diseases can include even common conditions like arthritis or diabetes. [International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No 5]

AUSTRALIA’S RENEGADE "DR. DEATH" -Philip Nitschke, continues to be in the news. Upon his return from the World Federation of Right to Die Societies’ meeting in Toronto, Australian customs officials at the Brisbane Airport seized 45 copies of his new book, The Peaceful Pill Handbook, which contains instructions on how ordinary people can make their very own "suicide pill." Officials said the book was an incitement to suicide. [ABC News, 9/22/06]

While Nitschke seems to relish provoking authorities by testing legal limits, he usually avoids situations where he personally would be as risk for prosecution.

In September he arranged a trip for himself and 12 elderly Australians to travel to Mexico to buy bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal, a drug banned for human consumption in Australia and an item classified as a prohibited import. The drug, however, is #1 on Nitschke’s best-drug-for-human-euthanasia list, and, since it is only allowed to put down animals, he routinely recommends that people make friends with veterinarians in order to obtain access to the drug. But, that’s easier said than done. Hence, the trip to Mexico.

When the time came to return to Australia, the elderly people successfully smuggled in their bottles of the drug. Nitschke, however, decided to dump his bottles before going through customs, saying it was "too risky." [The Sunday Mail (Adelaide), 9/24/06; Int’l Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No 5]

ACCOUNTS FROM NORTH KOREA ESCAPEES continue to collect that disabled babies are being routinely killed soon after birth and pregnant women whose babies are suspected of having Chinese fathers are being subjected to forced abortions. Escapees say that this selective killing is part Kim Jong-il’s policy of racial purity and supremacy.

Ri Kwang-chol, a North Korean doctor who escaped last year, recently told a forum in the southern city of Seoul, "There are no people with physical defects in North Korea." He said that medical staff kill disabled newborns and bury them quickly. Other witnesses said that they saw infants being thrown into boxes with plastic sheeting and left to die. After two days, two of the babies were still blinking, so a guard beat them with forceps.

The aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières left the country in 1998 after the government refused to let the group enter the "9-27 camps," where disabled and ill children were being dumped. [The Sunday Times (London), 10/15/06; Int’l Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No 5]

EUTHANASIA DEATH TOLL SPIKES IN BELGIUM. According to the commission which oversees legalized euthanasia practice in Belgium, there were 742 euthanasia deaths, 31 per month, in 2004 and 2005.

Thus far, for the first part of 2006, the rate has increased to 37 euthanasia deaths a month. That is a significant jump from 2002 (the year euthanasia was legalized) and 2003 when statistics showed that 17 people a month were euthanized. The commission concluded that, despite the jump in deaths, euthanasia is limited to the very few, accounting for only three to four deaths per 1,000. But, with Belgium’s overall death rate at 10.27 per 1,000, the number of euthanasia deaths is not insignificant.

The rise in euthanasia practice, the commission explained, is because of the increased dissemination of information on the subject, not a change in the public’s attitude. There was "no wave of euthanasia," they concluded, nor was there any indication that Belgium became a tourist death destination. As the Belgian newspaper Le Soir put it, "Doctors did not become old-people murderers."

The statistics for 2004 and 2005, however, showed that 49 percent of euthanized patients were elderly. In addition, cancer patients accounted for 83 percent of euthanasia cases, with men opting for a hastened death more often than women. In only 39 percent of the cases, euthanasia occurred in the patient’s home.  A mere 14 percent of the official euthanasia declarations signed by patients were in French, indicating that the majority of patients requesting death are from the Dutch-speaking regions of the country. [Agence France Presse, 11/11/06; Expatica, 11/9/06; Int’l Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No 5]

The American Public Health Association has passed a "interim" policy adopting Compassion & Choices' euphemisms for assisted suicide.  Scroll down to:
 
LB-06-02 End-of-Life Choices — Urges health educators, policy-makers, journalists and health care providers to recognize that the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill person to choose to self-administer medications to bring about a peaceful death is not “suicide,” nor is the prescribing of such medication by a physician “assisted suicide.” Urges terms such as “aid in dying” or “patient-directed dying” be used to describe such a choice.
 http://www.apha.org/news/press/2006/policies07.htm
 
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 Contact: Media Relations,
 
American Public Health Association Adopts Policies on Pandemic Influenza Funding, Abstinence Education, War in Iraq
 
Washington, D.C., December 20, 2006 – The American Public Health Association (APHA) recently adopted 22 policies addressing a broad range of issues in public health from preparations for an influenza pandemic and opposition to abstinence-only education to trans fat restrictions and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
 
Following are descriptions of the measures approved by the Association’s Governing Council during its 134th Annual Meeting in Boston, Nov. 4-8. The descriptions are brief summaries; to read the full 2006 policies, visit <www.apha.org/legislative/policy/index.htm>.
 
    20061 Addressing Needs of Immigrants During Disasters — Outlines some of the specific needs faced by immigrants during natural and manmade disasters, such as loss of documentation proving lawful immigrant or refugee status and barriers to disaster relief and government assistance. Gives recommendations such as including immigrant needs in disaster preparedness planning, partnering with community-based organizations to better prepare and ensuring access to services in the event of a disaster.
    20062 Reducing Disparities in Birth Outcomes — Provides the scientific basis for the importance of addressing racial and ethnic disparities in preterm and low-birthweight births. Outlines a broad course of action to reduce the excess risk of preterm and low-birthweight births in minority and low-income populations. Emphasizes the importance of creating interventions at both the individual and societal level. Supports sufficient funding for such interventions, more research into the issue and a national effort to end social and racial inequalities.
    20063 Pandemic Flu Preparedness — Identifies the most important issues to be addressed in preparation for, and response to, an influenza pandemic. Outlines which federal agencies should be in charge of pandemic flu preparedness and response activities. Urges clear federal guidance on such issues as school closures, quarantine, isolation, occupational health and controlling public transportation in the event of a pandemic. Urges federal investments in the purchase, tracking, distribution and research of vaccines, antivirals and other countermeasures. Calls for the creation of an emergency Medicaid designation for pandemic flu and federally funded loan repayment and scholarship programs for public health students.
    20064 Support for Alaska Dental Aide Program — Stresses the need for access to preventive and therapeutic oral health services. Supports the Alaska Dental Health Aide Program and other innovative programs and practices as ways to bring oral health services to Alaska Natives. Urges local, state and federal support for the program. Urges Congress, the presidential administration and federal agencies to improve oral health policies, programs and funding.
    20065 Potential Risks of Nanotechnology — Addresses the potential environmental and occupational health and safety risks of nanotechnology as well as the design and manipulation of atomic materials. Urges Congress and federal agencies to substantially increase funding for environmental and occupational health and safety surrounding nanotechnology. Urges manufacturers to voluntarily adopt safeguards. Urges federal agencies to develop regulations and standards if needed.
    20066 Evidence-Based Community Health Assessments — Urges the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to initiate and oversee evaluations of community health assessments. Encourages the formation of a work group led by federal, state and local agencies, in collaboration with professional groups such as APHA, to develop a plan and recommendations for developing an evidence base of effective community health assessment practice.
    20067 Promoting Protective Eyewear for Kids Who Play Sports — Strongly recommends that all children who participate in sports with a moderate to high risk of eye injury wear protective eyewear. Urges state legislatures to enact laws similar to that of New Jersey’s requiring protective eyewear for children who participate in organized sports. Encourages donations of protective eyewear or funding, and encourages manufacturers to make protective eyewear tailored for children.
    20068 Employees’ Right to Form Unions — Supports the organizations that defend the rights of workers to have access to quality health care. Urges Congress to support legislation that enables workers to form unions. Urges the National Labor Relations Board to refrain from further attacks on workers’ rights. Urges all employers, particularly those in the health care industry, to allow their workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Outlines specific APHA activities to support worker unions.
    20069 Protection for Those Responding to Disasters — Addresses the public health impact and needs of disaster responders based on experiences of Hurricane Katrina. Recommends the implementation of certain sections of the National Response Plan in the event of future disasters. Advises that workers presume contamination unless proven otherwise in an area that has undergone significant damage during a disaster. Recommends responding to findings from environmental assessments with ongoing follow-up testing.
    200610 Concerns with Abstinence Education — Raises questions about U.S. programs that promote abstinence only until marriage as a universal strategy in light of statistics that show most Americans have sex many years prior to marriage. Notes that significant ethical and human rights concerns arise when abstinence is presented to adolescents as the sole choice, or when health information regarding other choices is limited or misrepresented. Calls for federal funding for comprehensive sexuality education.
    200611 Ensuring Emergency Contraceptive Access at Pharmacies — Urges pharmacist associations, pharmacies and schools of pharmacy to work with reproductive health and public health professionals to conduct ongoing educational programs for pharmacists about dispensing contraception, including emergency contraception. Outlines the time-sensitive nature of emergency contraception.
     200612 School and Child Care Hand Hygiene — Acknowledges that keeping hands clean is one of the most effective methods of preventing the spread of colds, diarrhea, influenza and food-borne illness. Calls for all state legislatures and education agencies to adopt and enforce mandatory standards and funding for adequate handwashing facilities and supplies in child care settings and school restrooms, classrooms and cafeterias. Calls for the support of and proper funding for handwashing programs, as well as research into the effectiveness of handwashing education.
    200613 Regulating Prescription Drugs — Outlines the current drug regulatory process and its limitations, including conflicts of interest. Supports legislation to require the Food and Drug Administration to require post-marketing drug studies. Supports requiring more transparency and access to data from pharmaceutical post-marketing studies. Calls for restoring FDA’s authority to limit drug advertising.
    200614 The Pharmacist’s Public Health Role — Calls for greater inclusion of public health concepts in the curricula of schools of pharmacy. Encourages the participation of pharmacists and other public health professionals in research that crosses disciplines. Urges Congress to require federal health agencies to recognize pharmacists as health care providers under programs such as Medicare. Supports the influx of more pharmacists trained in public health to address the public health worker shortage.
    200615 Alcohol Control — Calls for the World Health Organization to adopt and implement a binding international treaty on alcohol control modeled after the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Urges national public health organizations and other non-governmental organizations to support the treaty. Asks the U.S. government to support and help plan for such a treaty, designed to reduce the global health burden of alcohol.
    200616 Restricting Recruitment of Health Professionals — Calls for ethical restrictions on the international recruitment of health professionals to the United States. Urges U.S. health workers to voluntarily adopt an industry-wide code of ethics that guides their recruitment and hiring of health professionals from abroad. Recommends the U.S. government ask health care employees to report regularly on their recruitment practices. Calls for better pay and better working conditions for health care workers in the United States.
    200617 Opposing the War in Iraq — Calls for the immediate safe withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, accompanied by deployment of peacekeeping forces under the command of the United Nations in areas at risk for inter-ethnic conflict or civil war. Calls for halting plans to establish “enduring” U.S. military bases in Iraq. Supports a U.N.-led process to develop an Iraqi constitution. Calls for allowing agencies such as the U.N. Environmental Program to begin to evaluate the environmental contamination caused by the military conflict in Iraq.
   200618 Reducing Hunger in America — Raises concerns about proposed cuts to the U.S. Food Stamp Program. Calls on Congress and federal agencies to modernize and streamline the requirements of the Food Stamp Nutrition Education program to better allow for state and local participation and improve access to healthy, fresh food. Increase the food stamp minimum monthly benefit. Calls for a national action plan for improving the diets of low-income American families.
   200619 Reversing the Obesity Epidemic — Calls for governmental, public and private agencies to coordinate actions to reverse the obesity epidemic. Calls for identifying the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the lead federal agency to convene an anti-obesity task force. Calls for sufficient funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support a plan for nutrition and physical activity in all states, tribes and territories. Calls for mass communication campaigns that promote healthy eating and physical activity.

The following three policies were passed as latebreakers and will serve as interim policies until confirmed by the APHA Governing Council at its 2007 meeting:
 
LB-06-01 Prevention and Control of Multidrug-Resistant Organisms — Encourages and promotes rigorous infection prevention and control practices in health care settings. Stresses the need for health care quality and standards-setting organizations to create additional infection prevention and control standards, alerts and patient safety goals focused on multidrug-resistant organism prevention, identification and control.

LB-06-02 End-of-Life Choices — Urges health educators, policy-makers, journalists and health care providers to recognize that the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill person to choose to self-administer medications to bring about a peaceful death is not “suicide,” nor is the prescribing of such medication by a physician “assisted suicide.” Urges terms such as “aid in dying” or “patient-directed dying” be used to describe such a choice.
    LB-06-03 Restricting Trans Fat — Supports a key recommendation of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to limit trans fatty acids in the American diet. Urges Congress, state and local governments to require nutrition labeling of trans fats on commercial food products. Urges restrictions on the amount of trans fat that can be served in restaurant food. Urges federal agencies to revoke the “generally recognized as safe” status of trans fat.
Founded in 1872, the APHA is the oldest, largest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world. The association aims to protect all Americans and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services are universally accessible in the United States. APHA represents a broad array of health providers, educators, environmentalists, policy-makers and health officials at all levels working both within and outside governmental organizations and educational institutions. More information is available at www.apha.org.
 
Health Care Workers Group Backs Assisted Suicide, Opposes Abstinence
Washington, DC (21Dec06, LifeNews.com) -- Another leading health care organization has put politics ahead of the best interests of patients and health care. The by American Public Health Association is endorsing assisted suicide and questioning abstinence education. APHA held its 134th annual meeting in Boston in November and, Wednesday, released the text of resolutions on top health and political issues. The organization took a position on unrelated issues such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq but also took prominent stands for assisted suicide and against abstinence education. The group says it has "concerns" about abstinence education "in light of statistics that show most Americans have sex many years prior to marriage." APHA says it has "significant ethical and human rights concerns" in cases where "abstinence is presented to adolescents as the sole choice, or when health information regarding other choices is limited or misrepresented." The group is calling on the federal government to turn from funding abstinence education programs to those involving comprehensive sex education. The group also approved an assisted suicide policy urging euphemistic wording to replace the terminology used when a physician assists a patient in killing himself.

COMPUTERIZED BRAIN CONNECTIONS SHOW BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE IN ALS PATIENTS. Research, recently published in the journal Psychophysiology, sheds new light on the condition known as the completely locked-in state (CLIS), a state where the patient’s total lack of muscle control makes communication virtually impossible.

Patients totally paralyzed with advanced ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) are among the patients considered to be in CLIS. ALS is a motor disease which progressively destroys the peripheral and central motor system in the body.

German researcher Niels Birbaumer [University of Tübingen] found that when brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are used before the patient goes into the CLIS state, the patient can learn to communicate using the electronic device and continue that skill in the CLIS state. BCIs use activity in the brain to communicate by means of external devices like computers. 

One of Dr. Birbaumer’s most significant findings was that the ALS patients studied rated their quality of life far better than their caretakers or family members did, even when the patient was completely paralyzed and on a respirator.

He also found that "only 9% of the patients showed long episodes of depression, most of them in the time period following the diagnosis and a period of weeks after tracheostomy." "In fact," he wrote, "they are in a much better mood than psychiatrically depressed patients without any life-threatening bodily disease." According to Dr. Birbaumer, most ALS patients choose not to have artificial respiration or feeding and then die of respiratory problems. They are often pressured into foregoing such treatment by doctors and family members who think their quality of life is too low for such measures.

In the Netherlands and Belgium where euthanasia is legal, very few patients choose to continue life. "The facts on end-of-life issues and quality of life," Dr. Birbaumer concluded, "do not support hastened death decision in ALS…." [Birbaumer, "Breaking the silence: Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) for communication and motor control," Psychophysiology, 43 (2006), 517-532; Int’l Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Update 2006, Vol 20, No 5]

PVS & AMBIEN. Several studies are being conducted worldwide on patients thought to be in PVS, using zolpidem (Ambien) which actually wakes many of these patients! For more info, check our homepage, www.physiciansforlife.org.

EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE Kenneth J. Simcic, M.D., FACP, FACE: http://home.earthlink.net/~simcic/