Lawrence Cranberg, Ph.D.
"Assisted Suicide in Court - Where Can it Lead?"
Sat Feb 26, 2005 22:02
64.140.159.29
Please pray for Terri and her family!
Judge Greer has ordered that Michael Schiavo execute Terri through starvation and dehydration to begin on March 18th at 1 pm Eastern Time.
Read his order online at:
http://www.tampabaylive.com/onair/misc/schiavo0225.pdf
###
To: Gayle Burnett, Editor, Editorial Page, The Oregonian
"Assisted Suicide in Court - Where Can it Lead?"
The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court to review Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law is one which will be worth watching with great interest from many points of view.
Federal interest in the regulatino of controlled substances - the drugs used to assist suicides - brings the Supreme Court into an area of health and safety which is under state control. But the ramifications of the suit for public policy in dealing with the elderly, with deadly illness, and with death itself are likely to be more important than the narrow issue of drug regulation.
The suit will bring public attention in particular to the provision of the Oregon law that requires two physicians to collaborate in the suicide decision and in the procedure to implement the decision. This may seem inconsequential, but it highlights the surprising fact that at the present time, in all the fifty states, a single physician suffices not only to attend a terminally ill patient, but also suffices to certify a cause of death in a Death Certificate.
It is time to ask why assisted suicide warrants the attention of two physicians, but otherwise a single physician suffices. In Oregon suicide is an option exercised by only 20 to 25 patients per year, but 30,000 persons die annually in Oregon, so suicide candidates are assured of a degree of medical caution that is waived for everyone else. Does this make sense?
It makes sense only if one assumes that only the suicidal are at risk of being murdered. But merely to state that proposition is to invite skeptical ridicule.
It is not merely common gossip that older persons are abused and their death is far too often hastened by abuse.There are thirty years of study by the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Aging which establish it as fact from the most credible sources. Elder abuse is common; abuse kills; and we must ask what are we doing about it.
The question is one which is largely evaded by law-enforcement authorities local, state and federal. A police officer responsible for homicide in a metropolitan area of one million persons confidently asserts there are only about thirty homicides a year. Of course he is speaking of killings by gun, knife, blunt instruments, etc., not of elder abuse.
But the impending review of assisted suicide by the U.S. Supreme Court may well have the unintended effect of focusing exceptional attention, if not in the court then outside it, on how life ends for those increasingly numerous abused and neglected older persons in our society whose stories are now buried in the thirty-year records of the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.
The records of that Committee have produced such a mass of evidence of critical need to protect the elderly, that in 2003, Senator Breaux was joined by Senator Hatch to propose the Elder Justice Act of 2003,S.333, a pioneering omnibus bill potentially as significant for the rights of older persons as the Civil Rights Bill of l964 was for blacks and women. S.333 did not get out of committee in the l08th Congress and has not yet been introduced into the l09th Congress. But municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies should take notice of what has been happening in the Senate, and shape their policies, and direct their resources accordingly.
The law enforcement officer whose experience has taught him that homicide is committed with a gun, knife, or bludgeon, must learn what is now scientific fact, that homicide of older persons is committed with abuse, neglect, and exploitation, and that in extreme cases both deserve the severest punishment provided by our legal system.
There are greedy, brutal predators in our midst who pervert the honorable intentions of a Power of Attorney to lock up frail older persons for fear they might change a will that is now in their favor. They will intercept daily mail and phone calls, threaten all visitors with arrest for trespass, deny every human right to the helpless captive, including the right to choose physicians. They never let their captive out of the house, not even to vote. They hold them prisoners until they die.
Let the police find those monsters, and the quacks who cover up broken hearts with falsified Death Certificates, and bring them to justice.Those who reduce a trusting older person to a state of slavery, with no more rights than an animal, should feel the full weight of the law.
In Oregon, as in many states, capital punishment is death by lethal injection. Death so administered for particularly heinous, deadly abuse of an older person could do far more for the welfare of our older citizens generally than an occasional assisted suicide.by lethal injection that raises debatable legal, ethical and practical questions.
written by:
Lawrence Cranberg, Ph.D.,
Associate Member, Texas Geriatric Society
Elder Justice Coalition
Judge Greer has ordered that Michael Schiavo execute Terri through starvation and dehydration to begin on March 18th at 1 pm Eastern Time.
Read his order online at:
http://www.tampabaylive.com/onair/misc/schiavo0225.pdf
###
To: Gayle Burnett, Editor, Editorial Page, The Oregonian
"Assisted Suicide in Court - Where Can it Lead?"
The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court to review Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law is one which will be worth watching with great interest from many points of view.
Federal interest in the regulatino of controlled substances - the drugs used to assist suicides - brings the Supreme Court into an area of health and safety which is under state control. But the ramifications of the suit for public policy in dealing with the elderly, with deadly illness, and with death itself are likely to be more important than the narrow issue of drug regulation.
The suit will bring public attention in particular to the provision of the Oregon law that requires two physicians to collaborate in the suicide decision and in the procedure to implement the decision. This may seem inconsequential, but it highlights the surprising fact that at the present time, in all the fifty states, a single physician suffices not only to attend a terminally ill patient, but also suffices to certify a cause of death in a Death Certificate.
It is time to ask why assisted suicide warrants the attention of two physicians, but otherwise a single physician suffices. In Oregon suicide is an option exercised by only 20 to 25 patients per year, but 30,000 persons die annually in Oregon, so suicide candidates are assured of a degree of medical caution that is waived for everyone else. Does this make sense?
It makes sense only if one assumes that only the suicidal are at risk of being murdered. But merely to state that proposition is to invite skeptical ridicule.
It is not merely common gossip that older persons are abused and their death is far too often hastened by abuse.There are thirty years of study by the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Aging which establish it as fact from the most credible sources. Elder abuse is common; abuse kills; and we must ask what are we doing about it.
The question is one which is largely evaded by law-enforcement authorities local, state and federal. A police officer responsible for homicide in a metropolitan area of one million persons confidently asserts there are only about thirty homicides a year. Of course he is speaking of killings by gun, knife, blunt instruments, etc., not of elder abuse.
But the impending review of assisted suicide by the U.S. Supreme Court may well have the unintended effect of focusing exceptional attention, if not in the court then outside it, on how life ends for those increasingly numerous abused and neglected older persons in our society whose stories are now buried in the thirty-year records of the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.
The records of that Committee have produced such a mass of evidence of critical need to protect the elderly, that in 2003, Senator Breaux was joined by Senator Hatch to propose the Elder Justice Act of 2003,S.333, a pioneering omnibus bill potentially as significant for the rights of older persons as the Civil Rights Bill of l964 was for blacks and women. S.333 did not get out of committee in the l08th Congress and has not yet been introduced into the l09th Congress. But municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies should take notice of what has been happening in the Senate, and shape their policies, and direct their resources accordingly.
The law enforcement officer whose experience has taught him that homicide is committed with a gun, knife, or bludgeon, must learn what is now scientific fact, that homicide of older persons is committed with abuse, neglect, and exploitation, and that in extreme cases both deserve the severest punishment provided by our legal system.
There are greedy, brutal predators in our midst who pervert the honorable intentions of a Power of Attorney to lock up frail older persons for fear they might change a will that is now in their favor. They will intercept daily mail and phone calls, threaten all visitors with arrest for trespass, deny every human right to the helpless captive, including the right to choose physicians. They never let their captive out of the house, not even to vote. They hold them prisoners until they die.
Let the police find those monsters, and the quacks who cover up broken hearts with falsified Death Certificates, and bring them to justice.Those who reduce a trusting older person to a state of slavery, with no more rights than an animal, should feel the full weight of the law.
In Oregon, as in many states, capital punishment is death by lethal injection. Death so administered for particularly heinous, deadly abuse of an older person could do far more for the welfare of our older citizens generally than an occasional assisted suicide.by lethal injection that raises debatable legal, ethical and practical questions.
written by:
Lawrence Cranberg, Ph.D.,
Associate Member, Texas Geriatric Society
Elder Justice Coalition
- I saw the ruling; Thx Dr C. --gw —gw watts, Sat Feb 26 22:05
- Thank You Gordon Wayne Watts! —APFN Webmaster, Sat Feb 26 22:43
- Judge Greer Broke the Law to Try to Ensure Terri Schiavo's —Gary and Lisa Ruby, Sat Feb 26 23:29
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