Category: United States

Alabama senate committee OKs assisted suicide ban, conscience bill

Both bills move to the full Senate.

Montomery Advertiser

Bryan Lyman

The assisted suicide ban, sponsored by Sen. Phil Williams, R-Rainbow City, would it make it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to assist in a suicide or deliberately prescribe a drug to assist with a suicide. . . .

The conscience bill, sponsored by Sen. Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville, would allow a health care provider to refuse to provide services they morally object to if they submit their objection in writing. The objection would not apply in life-threatening situations where no other providers were available . . . [Full text]

Embryo Experiments Reveal Earliest Human Development, But Stir Ethical Debate

Shots.  Health News from NPR

Rob Stein

Ali Brivanlou slides open a glass door at the Rockefeller University in New York to show off his latest experiments probing the mysteries of the human embryo.

“As you can see, all my lab is glass — just to make sure there is nothing that happens in some dark rooms that gives people some weird ideas,” says Brivanlou, perhaps only half joking.

Brivanlou knows that some of his research makes some people uncomfortable. That’s one reason he has agreed to give me a look at what’s going on.

His lab and one other discovered how to keep human embryos alive in lab dishes longer than ever before — at least 14 days. That has triggered an international debate about a long-standing convention (one that’s legally binding in some countries, though not in the U.S.) that prohibits studying human embryos that have developed beyond the two-week stage. . . . [Full text]

 

American Psychiatric Association Position on Medical Euthanasia

 Mark S. Komrad, MD

Early in December 2016, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Board of Trustees passed an historic Position Statement that originated in the Assembly and was unanimously supported by the APA Ethics Committee:

The APA, in concert with the American Medical Association’s position on Medical Euthanasia, holds that a psychiatrist should not prescribe or administer any intervention to a non-terminally ill person for the purpose of causing death.

This position is now one of the strongest of any medical organization in the world regarding the practice of physician-assisted suicide by prescription medication or euthanasia by lethal injection (PAS/E) for those with non- terminal conditions. This is not just a theoretical possibility that might occur along a slippery slope following legalization of PAS/E for terminal illnesses. People with non-terminal illnesses have been legally euthanized at their own request in several countries for nearly 15 years. This has included certain eligible patients who have only psychiatric disorders. . .  [Full text]

 

New Mexico State Sen Gerald Ortiz y Pino proposes bill to stop freedom of conscience exemptions on abortions

The Global Dispatch

Kaye Wonderhouse

New Mexico’s State Senator, Gerald Ortiz y Pino, introduced Senate Bill 282, which would repeal religious exemptions for participating in abortions.

SB-282 states, “A hospital shall not refuse to provide a reproductive health service if withholding the reproductive health service would result in or prolong a serious risk to the patient’s life or health; and, where a failure to provide the reproductive health service would violate the medical standard of care owed the patient.” . . [Full text]

 

Docs In Northwest Tweak Aid-In-Dying Drugs To Prevent Prolonged Deaths

Kaiser Health News

JoNel Aleccia

Two years after an abrupt price hike for a lethal drug used by terminally ill patients to end their lives, doctors in the Northwest are once again rethinking aid-in-dying medications — this time because they’re taking too long to work.

The concerned physicians say they’ve come up with yet another alternative to Seconal, the powerful sedative that was the drug of choice under Death with Dignity laws until prices charged by a Canadian company doubled to more than $3,000 per dose.

It’s the third drug mixture recommended by the doctors whose medication protocols help guide decisions for prescribers in the six U.S. states where aid-in-dying is allowed. . . [Full text]