8. Expert Interview Summary

Interviewee: Professor and Director of a palliative care unit

Key issues:

• Clinicians do not really understand community, and have no real commitment to community.Bureaucrats have a better

understanding of community than the clinicians, but they are constrained by the federal versus state split between funding

and provision.Federal Government doesn’t supply provisional health services, so all they can do is provide guidelines and

hope to be able to influence policy using inter-departmental relations.

• Clinicians and bureaucrats think they have common understanding that palliative care is the clinical, professional provision

of care, and they feel that the community exists to do two things.The first of these is to locate clinical services among

them (community based palliative care) and secondly to have a “paternal, patronising attitude to educate the community”

about the services that are there.

• There are many people who believe palliative care is only terminal care, specifically the last few weeks of life.In the

palliative care community itself, there are a lot of people that resist this image of palliative care.They see palliative care as

care of people who live with a life limiting illness, for which there is no cure.This means palliative care can be care of

people some years before they die.However, the Federal Government doesn’t want to hear that.

• There is significant variation in referral patterns, essentially because of a type of inter-occupational territory dispute or more

simply put, a “culture clash”.

• Oncologists think the palliative care people are coming in too early.Furthermore, oncologists think the palliative care

people are the “death people”, so they don’t want to give them up to palliative care, because they think it’s sending the

wrong message to the patient, that they’re giving up hope on them.

• The palliative care people think oncologists are letting their patients go too late, and believe that the Oncologists tend

to be in death denial.

• Another key issue is how palliative care defines itself, and the fact that there isn’t even agreement within the palliative

care area.

• Inequality of service provision.

• Currently palliative care is fine if you know a good doctor and a good palliative care service.For those who live in the outer

suburbs or regional areas there’s not much (good) palliative care, so it’s more elitist.Community can be active, and this is

necessary.The history of Public Health in the last thirty years has shown that people are interested in their own health,

and given half a chance they would be interested in their own death and loss as well.

Priorities for improvement in palliative care:

• The development of a public health approach to palliative care should be funded immediately.There should be priority funding

given to community development, policy development, social research, and death education.And this should occur, not only in

patient populations, but should be part of the in-service training, and curriculum design in medicine, nursing, social work,

pastoral care.

• Palliative care needs to understand the community, which can only be achieved through a public health approach.

palliative care needs to stop patronising the community, and will then go a long way to developing a good, strong system

that supports death, dying and loss.

Community Attitudes to Palliative Care p 41

p 42

• Barriers need to be broken down.The first barrier is between the bereavement care sector and the palliative care sector.

They’re often not connected.It needs to be seamless around the issues of death, dying and loss.

• Break down bereavement care.People who do counselling and group work and such would have nothing to do with

palliative care.Get them to work with palliative care, and vice versa.Secondly, break down the barriers of public health

practitioners and palliative care.This country has a Public Health Association and Health Promotion Association in every

State.palliative care has no relationship with them, so without the partnership between Public Health and palliative care,

forward advances cannot be made.

• It requires commitment, and getting the Federal Government (through it’s bureaucrats) to understand how important it

is to have this dimension of palliative care.All the other major health fields have this – maternal health has health

promotion and public health, cancer has Slip, Slop, Slap, a dimension of cancer care.

Key things that affect community’s awareness of palliative care?

• The reticence of the key media outlets to carry stories regularly about palliative care is a real problem.The respondent did an

interview for Channel 9 but they didn’t run it because they found it too sad.There was also an interview for Channel 10, which

was aired.However in order to get Channel 10 to show it, a lot of effort and talking was required.The TV Channels are scared

of showing anything that’s not really entertaining, because entertaining is what they do.

What does the community know about palliative care, do you think?

• The community does not know very much.People that do know think it’s about care of older people, sometimes people with

cancer.And some know that it’s the care of people at the end of life.Often people think of Hospices, but they won’t necessarily

think of community based palliative care services.Most people who actually know about palliative care have a very simple,

skeletal understanding.There are a few people who are informed because they’ve had a member of the family or a friend

who has received palliative care.

What do you think the community needs to know?

• The community needs to know that palliative care is care of people who have a life threatening illness for which there is no

cure, and that it can provide whole person care – social care, psychological care and spiritual care.People who receive palliative

care may not die for a long time, and the main aim is to improve or maintain quality of life of people with serious illness.By

serious illness, it may be cancer, or it may be motor neuron disease, or even heart disease.

• But it is not medical care at the end of life, nor is it institutional care, nor just doctors and nurses.It is social work and pastoral

care and community workers.People like that are important members of the team, or a palliative approach to care.

• After the person has died, palliative care can supply care to friends and family as they experience the loss, and you find that’s

important.

• It’s not necessary to know about all the different techniques that can be used to help them with their pain or their breathing.

It is important to know that there are specialists in the area to rely on.

National Palliative Care Week

• There were only fifteen people at the launch of National Palliative Care Week, and not one of them was a journalist.Simply

unbelievable.So there are some serious institutional barriers to get over.It is not just palliative care not marketing itself.

Community Attitudes to Palliative Care

• It is really important to note that clinicians and bureaucrats can’t and shouldn’t market a national programme themselves.

palliative care people are palliative care people, not people who hustle the media.It needs community development people

who are trained and experienced at liaison and lobbying journalists.Palliative care should pay for some of this expertise in

order to get in front of the TV and the microphone.

• Palliative care also needs to be smarter with the money they do have.Give Palliative Care Australia public relations personnel.

Give the key bodies’public relations people and the Minister will roll up with a crowd of journalists next time.Staff are too busy

with their day-to-day business to try and organise that sort of event.

Case Study:

• “I don’t expect that, for some people palliative care will make the difference.Because the euthanasia debate is not about

symptom control.It’s about quality of life.And the people who run around and equate the two are the ones who put

euthanasia and palliative care end to end.We can do symptom control, but make no mistake, I would say over 90% of your

troubles we can deal with.But whether or not you want them dealt with and still feel you want to live, a totally separate issue.

I was speaking to a woman the other day who is 86 and she wants to die.She has lost her home, lost her cat, and her friends

can’t visit her because she’s in a nursing home.She’s grown fat because she’s a vegetarian, and they don’t have a service chef in

the nursing home.She’s had two hip replacements, but her hips have collapsed under the weight of the new prosthesis, and it

cannot be replaced so she gets around in a wheelchair.She can only do one thing, she can wipe her own bum, and she’s not

sure how long she can do that for.”

“She wants to die.What can we do for her in palliative care? The answer is, nothing.But even if we could, she would still want

to die.You see, it isn’t about making her physically healthy.It’s about whether or not she thinks she’s the person she was, and

whether she wants to live whilst being that person.‘Oh you should stay alive, chin up’, I’m sure that’s a really good answer, but

it’s not the one she wants to hear.A lot of the issues around euthanasia don’t come back to palliative care.That’s the point.If

you walk into a voluntary euthanasia society, the average age is probably seventy.Those people don’t care about, they’re not

fundamentally concerned about whether or not they’re going to get dying, they’re concerned about whether they’re going to

lose their dignity, their homes, people they love, whether or not they feel life is worth living under those conditions, but that

is too big for us.This is about how we should live and how we should die.We are only a bloody health service.”

Community

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/publishing.nsf/content/4f5136ec5d82b96bca25700b00020e6e/$file/attiexp.pdf

 Expert Interview Summary

Interviewee: Professor and Director of a palliative care unit

 Case Study:

• “I don’t expect that, for some people palliative care will make the difference.   Because the euthanasia debate is not about symptom control.   It’s about quality of life.   And the people who run around and equate the two are the ones who put euthanasia and palliative care end to end.   We can do symptom control, but make no mistake, I would say over 90% of your troubles we can deal with.   But whether or not you want them dealt with and still feel you want to live, a totally separate issue.

I was speaking to a woman the other day who is 86 and she wants to die.  She has lost her home, lost her cat, and her friends can’t visit her because she’s in a nursing home.   She’s grown fat because she’s a vegetarian, and they don’t have a service chef in the nursing home.   She’s had two hip replacements, but her hips have collapsed under the weight of the new prosthesis, and it cannot be replaced so she gets around in a wheelchair.   She can only do one thing, she can wipe her own bum, and she’s not sure how long she can do that for.”

 “She wants to die.What can we do for her in palliative care? The answer is, nothing.  But even if we could, she would still want to die.   You see, it isn’t about making her physically healthy.  It’s about whether or not she thinks she’s the person she was, and whether she wants to live whilst being that person.‘Oh you should stay alive, chin up’, I’m sure that’s a really good answer, but it’s not the one she wants to hear.   A lot of the issues around euthanasia don’t come back to palliative care.That’s the point.  If you walk into a voluntary euthanasia society, the average age is probably seventy.   Those people don’t care about, they’re not fundamentally concerned about whether or not they’re going to get dying, they’re concerned about whether they’re going to lose their dignity, their homes, people they love, whether or not they feel life is worth living under those conditions, but that is too big for us.   This is about how we should live and how we should die.  We are only a bloody health service.”

 

19 December 2007 from the National Post (Toronto ON)

 http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/12/18/peter-a-singer-turning-health-workers-into-torturers.aspx

 
Peter A. Singer: Turning health workers into torturers

Posted: December 18, 2007, 3:45 PM by Marni Soupcoff

Peter A. Singer

Last week, a judge reserved his decision and continued a temporary injunction to keep Samuel Golubchuk, an 84-year-old man with brain damage and multi-organ failure, hooked up to a ventilator and other life-support in a Winnipeg intensive-care unit. Mr. Golubchuk’s doctors want to stop the ventilator, believing it to be futile. Mr. Golubchuk’s family, citing their religious beliefs, want it to continue.

This case is the latest in a series of so-called “futility” cases that turn the right-to-die debate on its head. In the early right-to-die cases — such as the famous 1976 case of Karen Ann Quinlan– the patient or family want to stop treatment and the doctors want to continue. The Quinlan-type cases are straightforward: It is now widely accepted that patients, or the families of incapable patients, have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment even if it results in their deaths.

In “futility” cases, like the Golubchuk case, the roles are reversed: Doctors and nurses want to stop treatment, but the family insists on continuing it. There is no consensus about these cases, and they are horribly complicated. They require striking a balance between the desires of families and the moral distress of health care teams.

Families feel they are protecting their loved ones’ chance for life. The views expressed in regard to the Golubchuk case are typical: “When there is life there is hope. He is breathing, his brain functions, he holds their hands,” the family’s lawyer said. Unfortunately, as is often the case, we do not know what Mr. Golubchuk himself would have wanted.

Doctors and nurses feel they are being turned into torturers, forced to inflict painful procedures on patients who have no hope of recovery. They feel that they are violating their professional ethics, including the precept: “First, do no harm.” For example, a nurse said she was appalled by Mr. Golubchuk’s condition. He was retaining 45 litres of water, and his skin was swollen to the point of bursting. According to the nurse, “he was rotting from the inside out.”

These cases are hugely distressing for health care teams because they feel they are being forced to act against their professional values. In 1999, I appeared as an expert witness in a similar case in Montreal. The case was so stressful that the lead intensive-care doctor had a cardiac arrest and died right in the coroner’s court, and I found myself performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation rather than giving expert testimony.

In the 1980s, doctors and nurses tried to develop a precise definition of futile care– for example, treatment that had less than a one in 10,000 chance of success. This approach broke down, however, when it was realized that the issue was sometimes not the quantitative chance of survival but the quality of life.

In the 1990s, we tried to deal with these cases by approaching them like conflicts in other areas of our lives. For example, I led a group of intensive-care doctors and nurses to develop a process of negotiation and mediation to try to find common ground between the health care team and families in cases where they disagree on the merits of continuing treatment. These processes often worked to defuse conflict and build common understanding; but not always, as the Golubchuk case shows.

While conflict about end-of life care between patients and families and health care teams is not uncommon, it is usually resolved locally. Conflict resulting in court battles gaining national attention occurs only about once a year. In these intractable cases, lawyers get involved because there is no middle ground. When he takes his decision, the judge in the Golubchuk case will need to be Solomonic.

The way forward in these cases is to acknowledge both the desires of families and the moral distress of health care teams. The family should be able to continue treatment, but the health care team and hospital should not be forced to provide care which they find morally and professionally distressing.

The family of Mr. Golubchuk should be given a period of time to find a health care team and hospital who share their belief that the treatment being provided is worthwhile. If they cannot, that should serve to inform them that rather than saving their father’s life, they are prolonging his death.

peter.singer@utoronto.ca

- Dr. Peter A. Singer is director emeritus of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, professor of medicine at University of Toronto and senior scientist at University Health Network.

 

21 December 2007 from Times on line (UK)

 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3080504.ece

 Family angry as sister who tried to kill dying father is spared jail

Russell Jenkins

  A woman who tried to smother her terminally ill father in a “mercy killing” was spared jail yesterday, to the anger of her sisters, who wanted her imprisoned.

Jennifer Allwood, 41, had tried to kill her father, Alexander Thow, 67, a retired sailor, soon after he was released from hospital, where he had been told he had stomach cancer and only six months to live.

She placed a pillow over his head at his home in Cleethorpes, North Lincolnshire, but during the struggle the he was able to call out for help. His cries were heard by the defendant’s daughter who, with difficulty, pulled her mother away.

Hull Crown Court was told that Allwood had told her father: “I am going to finish it dad. This is cruel. You are not making mum suffer and you are not going to suffer.”

Simon Waley, for the prosecution, said that Allwood then called the emergency service on a mobile phone and confessed to the operator that she had just tried to kill her father. She said that she had been trying to put him out of his misery. When police arrived at the house, Allwood told them: “Take me away. I will just do it again and kill him. He is ill.”

The court was told that Mr Thow died a month after the attempt on his life. Although the incident had had a “dramatic impact” on the family, it had not hastened his death.

Allwood had admitted attempting to murder her father at an earlier hearing.

Michael Mettyer, the Recorder of Hull, sentenced Allwood to 12 months’ imprisonment but suspended the term for 18 months. Instead, he ordered her to do 150 hours’ community service.

He told her that there was no purpose in sending her to jail, but added: “This was a disgraceful thing to do. It was wholly misguided and quite, quite wrong. You did it out of a foolish desire to end your father’s suffering.”

Earlier Douglas Hogg, QC, for the defence, said that Allwood had been distressed at what she had done and had admitted her guilt. He said: “I am not trying to excuse an attempted mercy killing, it is something one has to recoil from but this is an exceptional case, a very distressing case.

“What she did was done when she was in a confused state with a misguided motive. She is now deeply sorry.”

Her family were furious at the judge’s leniency. Three of her sisters said that she should have been jailed. Judy, 36, said: “She should have been locked away for what she did to our father. Mum has had a dreadful time and we do not want anything more to do with Jennifer.”

Fiona, 38, said: “Mum and dad have 20 grandchildren and this has appalled everyone in the family. My sister should be in jail and she should be there for a long time. None of us want anything more to do with her. She was not bothered about our father, only herself. She did not help his suffering. She made it worse. They say that what she did did not hasten his death but it did not do him any good either.”

 

20 December 2007 From ABC News

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/19/2122666.htm?section=justin

Advocate hopeful Rudd will consider voluntary euthanasia

Voluntary euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke is hoping that the new Federal Government will take a more flexible approach to the issue of elderly people ending their own lives.

Dr Nitschke is holding a workshop in Canberra today, despite being warned by the Attorney-General’s Department that some of the material being shown at the meeting is in breach of federal law.

About 40 people are attending the workshop which will provide information on accessing voluntary euthanasia methods.

Dr Nitschke says he hopes there will be a fresh look at the end of life issue, after 10 years of Federal Government opposition to voluntary euthanasia.

“Maybe the foot will come off the throat a bit, with the Kevin Rudd Government although Kevin Rudd himself is quite hostile to this end of life issue and some of his senior ministers are too,” he said.

“But there are more people in this new Government who understand that this is an important issue for this century.”

Dr Nitschke says there are people in Australia who consider it illegal.

“It becomes a little bit contentious, obviously we’re on the edge and we don’t feel like falling over into a trap that might be set,” he said.

“But by the same token it’s very important that people understand this issue, so they don’t get caught up in some medical nightmare and have no ability to control it themselves.”

 

 

 

19 December 2007 from The Age (Australia)

http://news.theage.com.au/euthanasia-campaigner-scents-censorship/20071218-1hv5.html

Euthanasia campaigner scents censorship

Voluntary euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke says he is prepared for more government censorship during a workshop in Canberra on Wednesday.

Dr Nitschke has been contacted by the ACT Department of Fair Trading about his plans for the Exit International workshop.

Dr Nitschke says he has been warned against playing an unclassified video entitled The Single Shot.

“This video shows a group of elderly people performing some but not all of the steps involved in the manufacture of their own Peaceful Pill,” he said in a statement.

The attorney-general’s department wrote to Exit International in October stating the screening of an unclassified film in a public place would breach the Classification Act.

The letter also warned Dr Nitschke of the penalties associated with the sale of a banned book – a $26,000 fine and a two-year jail term.

“The former federal government (often with the support of the Labor Party) have done all they can to remove elderly and terminally ill Australians’ right to know about their end-of-life choices,” Dr Nitschke said.

“This penchant for the selective censorship of the content of our private workshops not only tramples on our elderly members’ right to free speech but is forcing our activities underground into people’s garages and lounge rooms.”

The Canberra workshop will be held on Wednesday morning at the Griffin Centre. All participants must be aged over 50.

16 December 2007 from Houston Chronicle

 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/5380821.html

No welcome mat for suicide clinic
Service is legal in Switzerland, but some objected to new neighbors

By TOM HUNDLEY
Chicago Tribune

STAEFA, SWITZERLAND — The local zoning law permits only “quiet businesses” to operate in this affluent condominium complex high above the shores of Lake Zurich.

What could be quieter than death by a self-administered overdose of barbiturates?

But residents of Glaernisch Street were unhappy when they learned that an organization called Dignitas had rented unit 57B.

“Nobody wants to live next door to an apartment where you know somebody is going to die every day,” said Victor Koeppel, a retired professor who lives across the courtyard from 57B.

The new tenants moved into the apartment Sept. 13. The first death was recorded Sept. 18, and six more followed in daily succession until Sept. 26, when police, acting on neighbors’ complaints, arrived with an eviction notice that cited Dignitas for violating the local zoning code. For the second time this year, the organization found itself out on the street.

 

Passive assistance

Dignitas is a Swiss nonprofit organization that helps people kill themselves. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, provided the assistance is passive. That means the person assisting can supply the lethal drug, but cannot administer the fatal dose or injection; the person wishing to die must be able to do it himself or herself.

 

Since its beginnings in 1998, Dignitas has helped more than 750 terminally ill people to their deaths. But Ludwig Minelli, the organization’s director and driving force, said that its philosophy has prevented a far greater number of suicides.

“Seventy percent of the people who have asked us for help never call again. They live on, without anxiety or fear, knowing that if their pain becomes too much, the exit is wide open,” he said.

Two other European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, also allow assisted suicides, but only for their own citizens. In the U.S., Oregon passed a Death with Dignity law in 1997 that has since survived repeated legal challenges. Like Belgium and the Netherlands, Oregon restricts assisted suicides to residents.

 

‘Death tourism’

Switzerland does not require residency, and as a result, it has become the capital of what some call “death tourism.”

 

Koeppel, the neighbor, says he supports the idea of assisted suicide, but not in a residential neighborhood.

“Why wouldn’t you choose a more discreet location, someplace a little more isolated?” he asked. Or perhaps the anonymity of a big city, as others have suggested.

For seven years, Dignitas operated out of an apartment in Zurich, but eventually the other tenants became upset with the daily parade of body bags from their building. They pressured the landlord to terminate Dignitas’s lease in July.

Part of the problem is that each assisted suicide is treated as an unusual death. This means that in addition to the coroner, the mortician and others who are normally in attendance after a death, the police also have to conduct an investigation.

“As a neighbor, I can see everything from my garden,” said Margot Heyer, who lives next door to the Dignitas house on Glaernisch Street.

Heyer and her neighbors point out that another group in Switzerland called Exit also helps the terminally ill end their lives, but that it limits its assistance to Swiss nationals who wish to die in their own homes.

“On the one hand, I think it is good that there are organizations like Dignitas and Exit, so that people can decide for themselves if they want this service. Certainly it is more acceptable to have a humane suicide than to have these people jumping from bridges,” Heyer said.

“But it would be better if other counties also allowed this. Then it wouldn’t be such a problem in Switzerland,” she said.

 

Question of dignity

Minelli said that he anticipated the negative reaction from the residents of Glaernisch Street, but decided to move in anyway because there were no better options.

 

“We searched for a place for three months. This was the only alternative offered to us. The choice was to take it or close down,” he said.

In the weeks following the eviction, Dignitas has helped two German citizens end their lives in the grim privacy of their parked cars.

Newspaper editorials have dubbed this practice “death on wheels” while others have criticized the organization for the alleged lack of dignity in the parking lot deaths, but Minelli defended the practice.

“Whether it is dignified or not is not to be judged by outsiders, only by the person who has chosen it,” he said. “These people told us they preferred to do it in their own car, not in a hotel room, so we had to respect this.”

Since then, Dignitas has been able to rent a space in an industrial zone near Zurich. The assisted suicides were resumed there late last month.

Every sixty seconds you spend upset, is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back .

Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly, Laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we should dance

 

I was reminded of these words of wisdom and the impact that death has on the people left behind.   Having attended three funerals recently, I am feeling rather “deep” in my outlook on life….One part of me wants to sing because of self survival, but the other side of me, is wondering what legacy will my funeral invoke in those who will speak of me.  

 

Talking to the son of “Catherine” I am so very touched by his faith in God that permits him to face life without his mother, with a sense of peace and serenity.  It is the value of holding a faith which I can envy but do not understand.   The three departed have for me, died in every sense of the word with no comprehension of “anyone looking down on me”…imploring me to share any lessons they’re anywhere else learning!!!      I live with my memories of their lives but only that!

 

________

 

I wondered whether the fitness techniques that “Catherine” spent her life developing actually extended her life because of it.   She never ate to excess, rarely drank to excess, and generally lived a very clean life, free of gambling and any other vices I can think of (unlike myself!).

 

This morning I remembered again, “Catherine” who died last Monday night at about 7.30 pm, didn’t share my passion at all for being involved in local issues.   She didn’t care for demonstrations, letter writing, formalised activism about anything in particular.  She played her golf and bridge throughout the years without leaving a scratch on the paintwork of the Local or State Governments.

 

She was passionate about sport in most forms, but didn’t give a hoot about social injustices to any great degree.   So many people I know share her views on life – believing that we are responsible for what becomes of us….a bit of “God helps those who help themselves”….without even wanting to check out the small details for how anyone arrived at the circumstances they’ve found themselves in.

 

She didn’t care to promote Choice and Dignity in Dying, but relied on the system “to do the right thing by her” as she was inevitably drawn towards the whirlwind hole of gurgling force,  that is the end result of cancer.   Although a strong swimmer figuratively and in reality, she could not fight the stem of the flow drawing and sucking her life’s energies.  

 

She had a relatively “peaceful” death that took far too long to eventuate because for much of the past two months, there was little two way communication at all.   Another woman I heard of, at the age of 42 died badly of breast cancer.   It is about the chances and circumstances that surround the individual’s death that makes each one’s choice in dying, such a unique one

 

“Catherine” was not alone in her inertia of motivating politicians to change the law to legislate for change.    I see her beloved Liberal Party is in strife for not being sufficiently brave about standing up for the majority of Victorians in social issues, but I do believe that in implementing voluntary euthanasia, all parties stand ahead of the Labor Party.

 

 

 

 

Today we bury “Catherine” after her eight year’s of ill health and recovery from various cancers.   She stayed as long as she wanted and made many comebacks, refusing to allow cancer to hinder her love of life, sport, bridge, films.   In the end, as she herself said, The health care workers can’t cure cancer, they just make it easier to cope……

“I’m cured”, I’m told myself as I too believe medical treatment doesn’t cure cancer….it merely makes it recede into the subconscious, but I think for most people in remission, mother nature does not allow us to delude ourselves for too long, that cancer never reoccurs.  Catherine was first diagnosed within 12 months of myself and although she had numerous tumors did not have my luck at recovery.

Catherine had told me some time ago that she’d seen the angels, that she thought that it was her time to go….and while I hoped she hadn’t confused me for an angel, I agreed  with her that her time had come to leave.   The fight was done.   A good full life ended, without regrets.   I will forever value the last conscious outing was to take Catherine to lunch on her birthday in September.   She died a good death surrounded by her immediate family, full of love and the goodness of all that goes towards making the dying process of living, more tolerable.    Even I felt satisfied with her standard of palliative care, but it is with relief and joy I welcomed her passing.    I know her stresses are gone forever.   

One in 3 people experience cancer, and I believe it will become two in 3,  with the rate of magnetic fields our bodies are exposed with modern technology.  Not to mention the Victorian State Government’s re issuing food companies the Rights to modify our staple foods, 2008,  in a way that will surely corrupt the non genetically modified fields.  Like cane toads, once the genie is out of the bottle, it will be too late for recriminations!   Perhaps fifteen years down the track,  the evidence that Europe chose to accept that makes GMF unacceptable to them, will impinge on the health of my grandchildren.  

I won’t be alive to fight that fight so I can only hope that financial considerations will not override the effects arising out of mucking around with mother nature at our peril.   Pigs fed with GMF have had adverse reactions, and yet we put their heart valves into human beings?…

Yesterday I spent time helping with grandchildren in the Royal Children’s Hospital, after some twenty five years absence from the building.   What a diversity of anguish is to be seen within its four walls, from differently abled children to cancer sufferer with their tiny head denuded of hair…..I came away, so very grateful for the continuing good health of my immediate family.  Older parents coping with disabilities of their growing young….wheel chair bound, mentally challenged….Thank goodness for my luck in the lottery that is life!  My respect for other’s ability to cope is limitless.

Today will be the third funeral I will have attended within the month.   Hopefully it will be the last for a long time to come.

9 December 2007 from the Vancouver (BC) Sun

Choice Comments: As if they’d just made a new discovery! The beauty of this “plastic bag method” is that the product won’t be taken off the shelf by well meaning but self centred “policemen” who want to rule our lives with the same enthusiasm they do their own. Helium gas makes the process of dying easier, particularly when the user already has a life threatening illness and is weakened by other forces of nature.

Christ on the Cross, if the Bible is to be believed, had a quicker death, than many suffering terminal and chronic illness…….Christ suffered some six hours…..many with modern medical intervention suffer six years, give or take!

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=ce4139ae-d635-4030-ac92-a7b7d6fab09d

Sunday » December 9 » 2007

Helium in an ‘exit bag’ new choice for suicide

At least 19 people in B.C. have used method since 1999, assisted or not, criminologist discovers

Doug Ward,

Saturday, December 08, 2007

A Vancouver expert on the international right-to-die movement says helium inhalation has become a method of choice for people, including British Columbians who want to die by assisted suicide.

Kwantlen College criminologist Russel Ogden said that at least 19 people in B.C. have committed suicide by using helium since 1999, according to statistics compiled for him by the Coroner’s Service of B.C.

Ogden acknowledged that he has no way of knowing whether these people committed suicide because they had a terminal or progressively debilitating illness — or because they were mentally ill.

But the figures, Ogden said, reflect a trend in the underground right-to-die community — which he calls the “death counterculture” — toward asphyxiation with helium for people ravaged by incurable suffering.

“What these B.C. statistics indicate is that a new method for suicide has entered the public consciousness.”

Ogden said the technique of asphyxiation by helium inhalation first gained public exposure in the assisted-suicide community with the release in 2000 of the third edition of Final Exit, the landmark book written by Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry, a primer on suicide and assisted suicide.

Information about the helium option has since been disseminated through the Internet, including YouTube, and various handbooks, he added.

The helium method basically involves a person placing an “exit bag” over his head with the helium entering the bag through a tube.

Helium is seen as a swift, highly lethal and painless way to die without involving physicians or drugs. Helium is also nearly undetectable in toxicological probes, which is important for people assisting a suicide because of the potential of criminal charges.

Kwantlen criminologist Ogden said the 19 deaths recorded by the Coroner’s Service under-represent the number of deaths in B.C. involving helium.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ogden, who has researched the assisted-death movement for many years.

Ogden said the coroner’s service figures only involve cases where equipment related to the use of helium was found.

The figures don’t include cases where death is assisted by activists who remove all equipment or evidence so that the death is attributed to an underlying illness or undetermined causes, Ogden said.

“I have data provided to me by activists in the right-to-die movement between 1999 and 2002 on over 100 helium-related cases in North America that were unreported in any forensic literature.”

Ogden said helium inhalation has become the preferred method among activists in the Final Exit Network, an underground U.S. group which helps people kill themselves.

Final Exit is an offshoot of the much larger Compassion and Choices, which lobbies for political changes such as the Oregon model of physician-assisted suicide for dying patients.

The best-known recent case of assisted suicide in B.C. involved Evelyn Martens, a Vancouver Island grandmother and right-to-die activist, who was charged with assisting two women to commit suicide.

One of the women, Monique Charest, a former nun, was found dead in her Duncan apartment in 2002. Evidence at trial revealed that Charest used the helium method to end her life.

Martens, who was an executive member of the Right to Die Network of Canada and an agent for “Last Rights” Publications, was acquitted in 2004.

Ogden, who teaches a course at Kwantlen called “Socio-legal Aspects of Assisted Death,” said the emergence of new methods such as helium inhalation don’t appear to spur any rise in the number of suicides. “What we know is that when a new method is found, people simply change their methods. The statistical incidence of suicide doesn’t increase.”

The emergence of helium as a method stems from Canadian and American laws prohibiting assisted suicide — except in the state of Oregon.

“It certainly shows that necessity is the mother of all invention,” said Ogden.

dward@png.canwest.com

From Canada.com

 http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=d31eae82-4418-4357-be8d-a5e950d5bb63&k=20706

 
Latimer’s sister says he won’t lie his way out of prison

  Thursday, December 06, 2007

Chris Purdy

 SASKATOON – Robert Latimer’s sister says he will never lie to the National Parole Board – even if lying is the only thing that will set him free.

“They want him to lie,” Pat Latimer-Martin of Dennis Beach, N.B., said Thursday, a day after her younger brother was denied day parole by the board – in part because he would not express remorse for killing his severely disabled daughter, 12-year-old Tracy, in 1993.

“He will never lie. He hasn’t since he was old enough to talk.

“He’s got to stand up for his convictions and stand up for Tracy.”

The parole board decided the 54-year-old Saskatchewan farmer had not developed any insight into his crime. Latimer insisted during his parole hearing Wednesday that killing Tracy was the right thing to do.

He remained unapologetic and angry at the legal system.

“The laws are not as important as Tracy was,” he said.

“I still feel don’t feel guilty because I still feel it was the best thing to do.”

The decision means Latimer will not be able to spend days in the community and nights in a halfway house. He likely will not have another opportunity at parole for two years.

Latimer killed his daughter Tracy by placing her in a truck on the family farm in Wilkie, Sask., and pumping exhaust into the vehicle until she died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

He contended it was an act of mercy because Tracy was severely disabled and suffered from cerebral palsy caused by brain damage at birth. She was a bed-bound quadriplegic who could not speak or feed herself. She suffered from a twisted spine, malnutrition, seizures and chronic vomiting.

In 1994, Latimer was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life with no parole eligibility for 10 years. A second trial also found him guilty of murder, but resulted in a two-year jail sentence. In 2001, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction and original sentence of life with no parole for 10 years.

Pat said the whole family, including Latimer’s wife Laura, is disappointed.

Pat said when she last visited her brother in October at the minimum-security William Head Institution in B.C., he was optimistic about the parole-board hearing.

“At that point, he was counting the days,” she said. “It’s only natural to hope for the best.

“There was so much about how everything looked good for him and he had a plan in place. . . . He’s not a risk to re-offend. He’s not a risk to the public.”

She said the parole board needs to better examine each individual when deciding if he or she should be released.

“He’s really not the type of person who should be in jail,” she said. “We all know Tracy is so much better.”

Saskatoon StarPhoenix