By Wesley J. Smith The bioethicist and Obamacare architect, Ezekiel Emanuel, made headlines — and raised hackles — when he argued a few years ago that 75 is the right age to die, or at least, to stop fighting medically to extend life. Now in “From Lifespan to Healthspan,” published by The Journal of the …
Continue reading "Pushing ‘Healthspan’ Duty to Die for the Elderly?"
By Nancy Valko An April 13 USA Today op-ed titled “Make an End-of-life plan or Lose your Money and Choices in your Dying Days” by Hattie Bryant begins with the statement “End-of-life care can bankrupt your family and rob you of choices. End the denial about dying. Make a plan in case you end up …
Continue reading "You Don’t Want to be a Burden, Do You?"By Nancy Valko I am on the road this week speaking to groups and doing radio interviews. So here is an article published in Voices magazine (a Catholic women’s’ magazine) in 2003 with an update in 2005. In the intervening years, the problems have grown worse but I originally wrote this article when almost no …
Continue reading "Futility Policies and the Duty to Die (updated)"By Wesley J. Smith Futile Care Theory has just taken a huge step toward nation-wide imposition with an official policy statement by the American Thoracic Society in collaboration with other medical and nursing associations involved with intensive care internationally. It is a frightening document. The statement, essentially, creates a right of doctors and hospital …
Continue reading "MDs Give Selves Duty-to-Die Power over Patients"By Wesley J. Smith In 1991, my friend Frances invited me to a “going away party.” She wasn’t moving or going on vacation. Frances wanted her closest friends to come to her home, to tell her how much she meant to us, and to hold her hand as she committed suicide. We refused. Validating Frances’s …
Continue reading "Family-Supported Suicide and the Duty to Die"By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network Is there such a thing as a “duty to die?” Some notable voices in bioethics say, yes. They believe that as a matter of distributive justice, when people reach a certain advanced age, severe disability, or very poor health, they …
Continue reading "The Duty to Die Advances"By Wesley J. Smith Editor’s note. The appears on Wesley’s terrific blog. The so-called “duty to die” has been quietly discussed in bioethics for more than a decade. Now, a major British Medical Association leader proposed an implicit duty to die by stating that terminally ill people may have to be denied life-extending treatments due …
Continue reading "Duty to Die Gains Traction in UK"