When We Choose to Die

Most of us don’t want to die today (and most of us won’t have to), but a lot of us WOULD like to choose when and how we do it, when the time comes.

If a new ballot proposal passes, Massachusetts will join Oregon, which implemented a virtually identical statute in 1998, and Washington and Montana, states which did the same in 2009, as the only states where voters have approved physician-assisted dying. If the law passes, a physician may provide a dying patient with medication–if the patient chooses–that will bring about a faster, easier death. As Dannion Brinkley (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show) once famously said, "In this country we torture old people to death."

In the October 11th edition of the New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell writes: "Euthanasia–the act of directly injecting medication to cause death rather than providing medication for the patient to take if he or she chooses–is also a form of assisted dying, but it is banned everywhere in the United States. It is also banned in Switzerland, where assisted dying is otherwise allowed. However, euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, where they make no moral distinction between the two forms of assisted dying, and euthanasia is favored because it’s easier and faster. In June, the British Columbia Supreme Court overturned the Canadian law against assisted dying.

"In 1957, Pope Pius XII held that there is no moral requirement for doctors or families to provide ‘extraordinary’ medical treatment, by which he seemed to mean futile or extremely burdensome treatment. In 1968, a group of prominent physicians recommended that death be redefined to include brain death even while respiration and heartbeat continued, and that treatment could be withdrawn from such patients. Also in the 1960s, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her book, On Death and Dying, which argued for greater acceptance of death."

So now, if you’re sick and in pain, you know where to go to spend your last 4 days. And who knows who you’ll see while you’re there? (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this provocative interview).

Who’s a survivor? (NOTE: Survivors–we mean SUBSCRIBERS–can still listen to this show). WE ARE, because we’re still here! Let’s just hope it’s not the End of Days for unknowncountry.com soon (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show too), and there’s only ONE way to MAKE SURE that doesn’t happen: Subscribe today!