GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: The first year of California’s assisted suicide: over 500 prescriptions | BioEdge

sábado, 10 de junio de 2017

The first year of California’s assisted suicide: over 500 prescriptions | BioEdge | Sunday, June 11, 2017 |

The first year of California’s assisted suicide: over 500 prescriptions

| BioEdge | Sunday, June 11, 2017 |

The first year of California’s assisted suicide: over 500 prescriptions

by Xavier Symons | 10 Jun 2017 |

Over 500 people have been prescribed life-ending drugs since physician assisted suicide was legalised in California in June last year, according to statistics released by Compassion and Choices.

The pro-euthanasia lobby group is celebrating the positive reception of the laws among healthcare providers and the general public, writing in press release that “the implementation of the law has been a huge success”.

A very significant proportion of healthcare providers and individual practitioners still object to the provision of euthanasia. But Compassion and Choices says that nearly 500 healthcare facilities and over 100 hospice locations have adopted policies” supportive of patient choice and doctors who choose to participate in the law”.

A survey by the group found that 504 patients had been prescribed barbiturates since June last year. Official statistics are expected to indicate an even higher number of prescriptions.

Dan Diaz, husband of the late euthanasia advocate Brittany Maynard, said that “She would be proud that her advocacy inspired our legislators to pass this law that enabled hundreds of terminally ill Californians avoid tortuous suffering.”

Yet many doctors have expressed serious reservations about the law.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of UC Irvine’s medical ethics program, objects that the law doesn’t mandate an evaluation by a psychiatrist. He says without that, patients are left without sufficient supports when they're most vulnerable.

"Would they feel differently or would they pursue a different course of action if they felt that they had the familial or the social support or the support from health care professionals that they needed to walk through the process?" he asks.

Kheriaty also questions whether the lack of access to mental health and specialist care might play into a patient’s choice. Access to services vary based on geography and income.

"It’s not so much the folks from Silicon Valley, but the folks in Central Valley that I would be worried about," he says.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

We may have over-egged today’s newsletter with stories about surrogacy, but they all appeared this week with a common theme: what about the mothers? The accepted wisdom is that most mothers are well compensated and give up the child happily.

Not always.

Take the case in England of a surrogate mother who has just been jailed for 22 weeks for stalking a judge and a court welfare officer. The terrified family court judge had awarded the child she bore to the commissioning gay couple even though Lian Harris had changed her mind and wanted to keep it.

Ms Harris snapped.

Over a year she harassed the judge, protested outside the house of politicians and lawyers, unfurled a banner on Westminister Cathedral saying “Family courts do evil”, attempted to fasten herself to the second-floor balcony of the social worker’s home, and tried to organised harassment on Facebook, amongst other stunts.

Not a happy camper.

Ms Harris is said to be an exceptional case. But how do we know? Where are the longitudinal studies to prove that surrogate mothers live happily ever after once they surrender the child they carried for nine months?