IS PALLIATIVE CARE THE ANTIDOTE
TO ASSISTED SUICIDE?
By Julie Grimstad, HALO’s Board President
July 6, 2021
The goal of palliative care is to relieve symptoms—including pain and stress—at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided in conjunction with curative or life-prolonging treatment. Hospice care is a subset of palliative care. It is focused on providing comfort care when a patient no longer has curative options or has chosen to forgo treatment because the burdens of treatment outweigh the benefits.
There is merit in the argument that we should ensure patients do not choose assisted suicide because they are not receiving the best treatment available for management of pain and other symptoms of disease. However, Oregon’s experience suggests that palliative care is not the antidote to assisted suicide. An overwhelming majority of patients who have died by assisted suicide using Oregon's so-called “death with dignity” law (in effect since 1997) have been enrolled in hospice. The “Oregon Death with Dignity 2020 Data Summary” (annual report) revealed that 94.7% of patients who died by ingesting a doctor-prescribed lethal dose of drugs were enrolled in hospice at the time of death.
It is significant that The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) “takes a position of studied neutrality on the subject of whether PAD [physician-assisted death] should be legally permitted or prohibited.” Neutrality gives the green light to assisted suicide as surely as support does.
VSED: slow assisted suicide with palliative care.
Also, there is more than one way to assist a suicide. For instance, Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED) is facilitated by some hospices, particularly in states that do not permit assisted suicide by physician-prescribed drugs. VSED means that a patient, who is capable of eating and drinking, chooses to refuse food and fluids with the intention to cause death. This is suicide. When a hospice supports this decision by providing “comfort care” as the patient slowly starves and dehydrates to death, the suicide is assisted – not prevented – by palliative care!
When palliative care is provided by healthcare professionals who have genuine respect for the life of every person committed to their care, it can be a blessing for patients and their families. However, palliative care should never be used to cause or hasten death, and hospice should be a safe haven where patients are helped to live as fully and comfortably as possible until death occurs naturally according to God’s perfect plan for each person’s life and death.
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