Trauma of Assisted Suicide Witnesses

Relatives and friends of a person who commits assisted suicide have a high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, according to a Swiss study in the latest issue of European Psychiatry. About 20% of respondents experienced full or sub-threshold PTSD and 16% had symptoms of depression after about 19 months after the death.

"Witnessing the unnatural death of a significant person thus seems to have a strong impact on the bereaved, which may lead to severe mental health problems at 14 to 24 months post-loss. Our findings suggest that relatives and family members who witness assisted suicide need to be better informed about and prepared for its possible consequences it for their mental health. Additionally, right-to-die organizations should offer them professional help focused on trauma-related symptoms."

The study was based on data on 146 people who died with the help of the right-to-die organisation Exit Deutsche Schweiz between October 2005 and September 2006. Of this group, 21 had died with no family members or friends as witness. ~World Radio Switzerland, Oct 4

Oregon Says "No" to Suicide Kits

The Oregon House of Representatives has approved a ban on the sale and marketing of suicide kits, a month after senators voted unanimously for a similar bill. The House passed the bill 52-6. The bills were presented after 29-year-old Oregonian Nick Klonoski used a suicide kit to end his life in December. "After learning of a young man who took his life using a helium hood he bought, it became obvious that there were no checks and balances of marketing suicide kits," said State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, who supported the bill in the senate. "Minors had access to the kits through the Internet, and I personally don't believe we need to be marketing an object like a suicide kit." ~ ABC News, Jun 13

51 Dead Under WA Right-to-Die Law

Fifty-one people have died in the first full year under Washington state's Death with Dignity Act. Figures released by the state health department show that 68 physicians wrote life-ending prescriptions for 87 patients in 2010. Of these 72 died: 51 from the medication and 15 died of their illnesses. Another 15 patients were still alive. In 6 deaths, it was unclear whether the patients had taken the drug.

"There are no surprises here," said Robb Miller, executive director of Compassion; Choices of Washington, a leading euthanasia group. "We are seeing a steady increase in the number of participating physicians and a continuation of a very small percentage of dying patients who use the law. About one-tenth of 1% of all people who die in Washington elect to self-administer life-ending medication. It's a very, very small number."

Critics of the law, however, complained that exact figures are papering over gaps in information about the deaths. ""The published data ... is so limited and unreliable that even those agreeing with the policy have qualms regarding the health department's inability to determine whether the law operates with the full safety and voluntariness its proponents were promised," said Eileen Geller, of True Compassion Advocates. For instance, of the 72 people who died, the department had only seen 61 of the death certificates.

Serious pain did not seem to be a great concern. Of the people who died, 90% were concerned about loss of autonomy, 64% about loss of dignity, and 87% about losing the ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable. ~ AmedNews.com, Mar 28
 
 
One of my Ethics students wrote this:  Everyone may be searching for a "good death", but terminally ill patients merely wish to have a painless, merciful death at the time of their own choosing. Surely that is not asking much. It is easy for society, the government, and people to deny them this one act of mercy by spouting "moral", "ethical" and religious tenets by the dozen.
 
I question this statement: "Everyone may be searching for a 'good death', but terminally ill patients merely wish to have a painless, merciful death at the time of their own choosing."

There is a redemptive aspect to suffering and some are willing to suffer some pain to experience what is called "holy dying." This is exactly where the Christian Tradition and political correctness on the issue of Euthanasia knock heads. Christian tradition does not permit anyone to take God's role in life and death. Further, it maintains that suffering can serve God's purposes and that the amount of suffering is also in God's hands. I know that this is a strange idea to modern Americans, but it is the teaching of the Church historically.

Alice C. Linsley

Suicide Not a "Right" Even in Switzerland

There is no human right to assisted suicide, the European Court of Human Rights has declared, in a unanimous verdict.

The background to this important judgement is in Switzerland. A 57-year-old Swiss national, Ernst G. Haas, felt that he could no longer live a dignified life after battling a serious bipolar affective disorder for 20 years. He twice attempted suicide, but then hit upon the idea of using sodium pentobarbital, a prescription-only drug. But no psychiatrist would prescribe it for him. He then asked the Swiss government for permission to obtain sodium pentobarbital without a prescription. He argued that Article 8 imposed on the State a "positive obligation" to create the conditions for suicide to be committed without the risk of failure and without pain.

Various Swiss courts refused. Mr Haas then asked 170 different psychiatrists whether they could examine him with a view to getting his hands on some sodium pentobarbital. They all refused.

As a result, Mr Haas invoked Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a right to privacy, and sued the Swiss government in the European Court of Human Rights.

On January 20, the Court handed down its decision. It acknowledged that there does appear to be a right to suicide implied in Article 8. This has been strengthened by the 2002 Pretty case, in which the Court approved the right of a British woman to kill herself if she found life undignified and distressing.

However, Article 2 of the Convention also guarantees the right to life. Most member states give the right to life more weight than the right to suicide.

The Court pointed out that a prescription system is supposed to protect vulnerable people from making hasty decisions and to prevent abuse. That was all the more true in a country such as Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal.
 
The Court considered that the risk of abuse inherent in a system which facilitated assisted suicide could not be underestimated. The Court agreed with the Swiss Government’s argument that the restriction on access to sodium pentobarbital was intended to protect health and public safety and to prevent crime. It also shared the view of the Federal Court that the right to life obliged States to put in place a procedure apt to ensure that a decision to end one’s life did in fact reflect the free will of the party concerned. The Court considered that the need for a prescription, issued on the basis of a full psychiatric report, constituted a means of fulfilling that requirement.
 
It also declared that the risk of abuse inherent in a system which facilitated assisted suicide can not be underestimated. That is why a prescription from a doctor and a psychiatric examination to ensure free will are proper safeguards. ~ Human Rights Europe, Jan 20

Asian Mothers Killing Their Children, Selves

A recent article in Time magazine highlights a rising number of suicides involving a parent and child in Hong Kong. These “filicide-suicides” are not a new phenomenon in East Asia, but there have been at least 15 since the start of 2008 and three in February-March -- all mother and child -- provoking alarm amongst welfare agencies and experts.

In Taiwan it is worse. As we noted recently in a post about research showing that motherhood protects women against suicide, Taiwan has high and increasing rates of suicide amongst men and women. It also has the highest filicide-suicide rate in East Asia, with 61 reported cases since 2008.

The parent’s desperation is often linked with joblessness and financial hardship as well as marriage breakdown. Cultural attitudes come into play:

Two years ago, a study co-authored by the University of Hong Kong and the University of Macau found that a deranged sense of compassion was common - parents killed their offspring to spare them from destitution and believed it their right to do so. "We take our children as our property," says Fernando Cheung, former head of the Hong Kong legislature's welfare panel. "Asian culture dictates that they're ours, that they are not independent beings, especially when they're small."

Read it all here.

To Save a Life

"New movie in theaters is literally saving lives. "

"Teens see this film, they walk out and throw their razor blades away"

'To Save A Life' is a film made by Jim Britts, a youth pastor working with young people in California. Many of the youth are in such pain and despair that they harm themselves and sometimes take their lives.

Britts and his wife have been working with youth for over 10 years. They worship at New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California. Jim's movie script has also been turned into an award-winning novel. The story is based on the struggles many students face, including teen suicide.

For more, go here: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123180

Death Better than Disability?

If assisted suicide is legalised most of the people who will die are disabled. And American disability advocates take a very dim view of it. This is the theme of a hard-hitting series of articles in the latest issue of the Disability and Health Journal.


The editor, Suzanne McDermott, writes that she changed her own mind after studying the issue. At first she believed that assisted suicide was solely a personal autonomy issue. But eventually she was persuaded that it is at the heart of the movement for disability rights: "Almost all people at the end of life can be included in the definition of 'disability'. Thus, the practice of assisted suicide results in death for people with disabilities."

The special issue is a response to a controversial 2008 decision by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to back "aid in dying" (ie, assisted suicide). Several themes emerge from the articles.

First, the very existence of legalised assisted suicide threatens disabled people. It will lead to an expectation that the disabled, elderly and infirm should shuffle off their mortal coil a bit early to relieve the burden on their carers. This fear has been ridiculed by supporters, who contend that all they want is choice at the end of life. Dream on, says Diane Coleman, of the lobby group Not Dead Yet. "Proponents of legalized assisted suicide are willing to treat lives ended through abuses of the practice as 'acceptable losses' when balanced against their wish for a pleasant way out and their unwillingness to accept disability, or responsibility for their own suicide. We disagree."

Second, the danger is not mandated euthanasia, as in Nazi Germany. Rather, it is a subtle and widespread expectation that death is better than disability. "If the legalization of assisted suicide continues, I believe the rank and file will some day see nothing wrong with hastening the deaths of many people," writes Dr Carol J. Gill. "They will stand by and do nothing to stop it and will endorse the policies and institutions that advance it-not because they are evil people but because it will no longer be evil in our culture to do so. It will be compassionate, respectful, routine."

Third, several authors argue forcefully that Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, which is the model for assisted suicide in the US, is deeply flawed. After about 15 years, several intractable problems have emerged. The authors claim that there is very little patient control; that statistics are incomplete; that oversight is minimal and secretive; that safeguards are easily circumvented; and that negligent doctors cannot be prosecuted. Allegations that in Oregon and in the neighbouring state of Washington, which has also legalised assisted suicide, the circumstances of deaths are routinely falsified are especially disturbing. In fact, Washington actually requires that doctors falsify the death certificate by listing the terminal disease as the cause of death rather than the lethal dose of barbiturates. ~ Disability and Health Journal, January

Montana Allows Assisted Suicide

The state of Montana has become the third US jurisdiction to allow doctors to participate in assisted suicide. In a 4-3 decision, its Supreme Court held that state law protects doctors from prosecution for helping terminally ill patients die.

However, the decision does not end the debate in Montana, as the court carefully tiptoed around the question of whether euthanasia and assisted suicide are protected by the state constitution. Instead its decision leaves this in the hands of the state legislature. No doubt there will be a debate in the legislature and possibly even a referendum.

The conservative western state of Montana seems an odd place for radical social change. But like Alaska, California, Florida and Hawaii, its constitution contains an explicit right to privacy, which is favourable ground for assisted-suicide arguments. However, the supreme courts of Alaska, California and Florida have found that privacy does not apply to assisted suicide. In 2007 a lawsuit was filed by supporters (led by the lobby group Compassion and Choices) to challenge the status quo.


Read it all here.

UK Assisted Suicide Prosecuted

Fears that Britain might introduce a euthanasia law have been mounting since September when the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, drew up interim guidelines specifying when a person should be prosecuted for assisting suicide. He said that prosecution was "likely" if the victim was under 18, had a mental illness or was in good physical health. It would be unlikely if the victim had a grave illness or disability, was determined to kill himself and was a close friend or relative of a helper, who was motivated by compassion.

With a public consultation on these guidelines ending next week, a world expert on euthanasia, Professor John Keown, of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, has mauled them in a UK law magazine. "Justice should be tempered by mercy; not undermined by it," he writes.

First, he says, the guidelines need to make it clear that assisting suicide remains a serious offence which is punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment. Media reports have given the impression that now there are "exceptions" to the law. Second, a presumption in favour of prosecution should be maintained. Keown says that the interim guidelines "signally fail" to do this. Instead, he writes, "They misleadingly state that the question is whether prosecution 'is needed' in the public interest."

Finally, the interim guidelines list 16 circumstances when prosecution is likely and 13 when it is not likely. There is a danger that the public prosecutor could become merely an even-handed arbitrator rather than an enforcer of the law. Furthermore, some factors when prosecution is unlikely are "problematic" -- such as having a severe and incurable physical disability. This could easily become discrimination against the disabled, or could allow relatives to pressure people into killing themselves.
 
Source:  New Law Journal, Dec 11

Helping the Suicidal

Carolyn Friedman has written a piece on common myths about suicide. Here's what she has to say:

Suicide remains a serious epidemic that transcends socioeconomic, age, racial, religious, mental health, and gender/sexual identity boundaries. While studies do show that some groups stand at a higher risk of suicide than others – usually those already prone to social marginalization – the sad reality is that this mindset holds the potential to strike anyone, anywhere, at any point in life. Due to the mixed messages flailing about regarding the condition, it becomes progressively more difficult to objectively discuss the delineation between fact and fiction. So many misconceptions abound that the suicidal truly needing an intervention in order to survive may very well not receive the help they need to recover.

Read it all here.

Exit to Market Suicide Pill

The assisted-suicide advocacy group Exit has found a way to fund its macabre activities. It has a pill to sell to help you end your life. Here is the report:

A "peaceful pill" for people who want to commit suicide will be made available by mail order in 2010. The pill is a stable solid form of the barbiturate Nembutal. Developed by the euthanasia group Exit International, it is designed to withstand transport and can be stored for up to 50 years. Customers will only have to mix it with water. An activation kit with the chemicals for reconstitution and a test kit to check the strength of the resulting product are nearly finished so that the pill can be distributed.

Dr Philip Nitschke, a leading right-to-die advocate and director of Exit International, said "Exit believes that all seniors of sound mind should have the option of a peaceful death at the time of their choosing should this be their wish - this Exit Pill will go some way to ensuring this." Nitschke is set to hold instructional suicide talks in San Francisco this Sunday.
~ Assisted-Suicide Blog Oct 30, CBC News Nov 4

Suicide in Japan

Last year a suicide epidemic swept through Japan. Hundreds of Japanese killed themselves by mixing ordinary household chemicals to create a cloud of poison gas that often injured others and forced the evacuation of homes and apartment buildings.

A USA Today report told this grim story:

The 517 self-inflicted deaths by hydrogen sulfide poisoning this year are part of a bigger, grimmer story: Nearly 34,000 Japanese killed themselves last year, according to the Japanese national police. That's the second-highest toll ever in a country where the suicide rate is ninth highest in the world and more than double that of the USA, the World Health Organization says.
Japan has long been known as a "nation of suicide," notes sociologist Kayoko Ueno at University of Tokushima. Samurai warriors famously chose seppuku — disemboweling themselves — over surrender. Japanese kamikaze pilots crashed their planes into targets during World War II.

"Suicide is not considered a sin," says sociologist Masahiro Yamada of Chuo University in Tokyo. "We've made it a bit of a virtue."

Authorities are alarmed now that suicide has reached epidemic levels.

Reasons:
• A decade of weak economic growth and the unraveling of Japan's system of lifetime employment have left many middle-age and elderly men unemployed and in financial ruin. Among Japanese suicides, nearly 71% are men, more than 73% are 40 or older, and more than 57% are jobless.

For an unemployed, former "salaryman," suicide can be "a rational decision," Yamada says.

When a man commits suicide in Japan, his beneficiaries can still collect his life insurance. And insurers pay off Japanese home mortgages when a family's breadwinner dies — even if the death is a suicide. "If he dies, the rest of the family gets money," Yamada says. "If he continues to live without a job, they will lose the house."

• The Internet has allowed young, depressed Japanese to get suicide tips and find others with whom they can enter into death pacts.

A few years ago, suicidal Japanese were meeting each other online, driving out into the countryside, shutting themselves up in the back of vans and killing themselves in clouds of carbon monoxide by burning charcoal briquettes. "People really want to be connected. People got together to die," says anti-suicide activist Koji Tsukino, 43.

Read the full report here.

It seems apparent that where suicide is glorified the number of cases increases. Consider suicide bombers who kill themselves and others believing this an honorable end. It is also evident that despair about one's future is a contributing factor.

Only Greenland has a higher incidence of suicide for population. Read about that here.

For resources in coping with suicidal thoughts, go here.

Greenland Highest Suicide Rate

Greenland is the country with the world's highest suicide rate. The rate here is 24 times that seen in the United States. Even Japan—a nation with a well-documented suicide epidemic—has an annual rate of only about 51 people per 100,000 inhabitants. Greenland's is 100 per 100,000.

If that statistic isn't sobering enough, there's also the fact that the majority of Greenlanders who kill themselves are teenagers and young adults. (In most other countries, the elderly dominate suicide statistics.) Young men here are especially prone to an early exit and account for more than half of all suicides, although the girls hold their own. In a 2008 survey, one in four young women in Greenland admitted trying to kill herself.

Read more here.

The Suicide of Kerrie Wooltorton

Almost exactly two years ago, Colin Wooltorton heard that his 26-year-old daughter, Kerrie, had killed herself by drinking a hideous poison, apparently in a depressive state about her incapacity for childbirth.

The dreadful truth is that emergency services and medical staff could have saved Kerrie’s life. You don’t have to be a parent to understand where that knowledge must place Mr Wooltorton. You just have to be a human being.

Try this: just for a moment, imagine that the police visit your home to tell you that your child has committed suicide. Now imagine that they tell you that the ambulance and hospital staff could and would have saved her life, but she handed them a letter asking them not to.

So they didn’t.

This is where we have arrived in our attitude to suicide in Britain today. A disturbed young woman, with all the promise of adult life before her, is left to kill herself, because under her current circumstances she wants to.

Apparently, doctors who could have treated Kerrie didn’t do so, because they feared that they might have been prosecuted for assault under the Mental Capacity Act (2005). This legislation forms part of a raft of laws and “guidance”, introduced on this Government’s watch, which promotes the individual’s right to die over our society’s responsibility to save their lives if we can. It passed onto the statute book to enable terminally ill patients to have a degree of autonomy over their medical treatment. It was intended to allow those who were dying, or who knew that their condition could only end in their death, to refuse medical treatment so that nature could take its course.

Read it all here.

Traumatized Train Conductors

Colorfast mental snapshots of horror, a sense of overwhelming helplessness, sympathy and sometimes anger -- these are the aftershocks that engineers and subway train operators report from their special perch as unwilling agents of sudden death. Eight people have jumped in front of Metro trains in 2009, the most in recent years, and inches from each of those horrific scenes, barely mentioned in the news, sits a traumatized driver who will be forever entangled with a stranger's demise. It is an intimacy none of them sought.

"It's such a mixture of both anger and compassion, I don't know where one ends and the other starts," said Evans, who estimates that about half of his fatal strikes were suicides. "They're doing this to you, too. It's a hard thing to take home."

According to a British study, 16 percent of train operators involved in fatal incidents develop post-traumatic stress. For some, getting right back behind the controls is the best way to shake off the shadows of violence. For others, years of counseling are needed before they can return to everything they love about driving a train.

Some never do.

Everyone reacts differently," Evans, 61, said. He told of a colleague who struck a mother and her four children on the tracks near Providence, R.I., a murder-suicide. "He never worked again."

It took Julia Lee, 59, almost eight years before she could get back in the cab of a Metro train after striking someone who had climbed down from the platform in Rockville in 1988. As she rolled into the station at 35 mph, a man was reclining on the tracks, his elbow resting on the rail.

"I screamed and hit the red mushroom" emergency brake, said Lee. "But we were right on top of him. I felt the thump-thump and knew we had hit him."

Evans reminds himself that he is no more to blame in a death-by-train case than sleeping pills or razor blades are the cause of other suicides. "I'm no different than a bullet being shot out of gun," he said. "I'm just the weapon."

But the flip side of not being responsible is the devastating feeling of not be able to do anything in the moments before impact. The driver of a car might at least have the option of swerving out of the way or slamming on the brakes. The driver of a train doesn't steer, and it can take a half-mile or more to stop. Evans has conditioned himself not to hit the emergency brake, a futile gesture more likely to injure passengers or derail the train than protect the person out front.

From here (requires free subscription to the Washington Post)

Senate Drops End-of-Life Provision

Posted by Tom McFeely
Friday, August 14, 2009 11:30 AM

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks at a health-care reform town hall. (grassley.senate.gov)
One down, a much bigger one to go.

That’s how Catholics might characterize yesterday’s move by the Senate Finance Committee to drop a provision that would have allowed taxpayer funding of doctor-patient end-of-life discussions from its version of the health-care reform bill.

“Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the provision had been dropped from consideration because it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly,” Associated Press reported yesterday.

Sen. Grassley’s statement can be read here.

The provision to fund end-of-life discussions is included in the version of the bill that has been passed by three committees in the House of Representatives. If the move by the Senate signals the permanent demise of this proposal from the health-care reform package, it’s good news. Critics of the provision warned, with good reason, that it could open the door to pressure for doctor-assisted suicide for patients suffering from serious illnesses that would be costly to treat.

The willingness of Senate Democrats to give ground on this issue gives reason to hope that the health-care reform bill also can be amended to address the biggest pro-life concern about the bill as it’s currently drafted: The inclusion of a mandate for taxpayer funding of abortion services.

Read more here.

Rona Zelniker's Last Days

A year ago, when a doctor finally diagnosed the brain disease that had been making it harder for her to walk without falling, Rona Zelniker told her son and daughter that she was going to end her life while she still could, before complete disability set in.

Her children were grateful for the way she prepared them, and for the time they had together at the end. "I must have cried 150 times in the last year," said Keith Zelniker, 32, her son. He scheduled off the week she was planning to die, writing on his work calendar, "bereavement time."

Zelniker felt anxiety about how she would end her life. She didn't want to swallow pills, only to wake up even worse off, with brain damage. A gun was out of the question.

Last fall, she contacted an organization she had found on the Internet - the Final Exit Network - which she described in a letter as "the answer to my prayers."

After reviewing her records and interviewing her, members of the network instructed her how to end her life quickly and painlessly, and an "exit guide" - a retired guidance counselor from Wynnewood - would come hold her hand.

Zelniker was enraged, but undeterred, in February when Georgia authorities charged four members of the Final Exit Network with assisted suicide, a felony. The Final Exit Network halted all trips to the bedside, fearful of more police sting operations.

"We were told all exits were off," said Leonora Vizer, 77, the Wynnewood guide, who had to stay home.
So on March 18, Rona Zelniker, one month shy of 61, with a progressive and incurable brain disease called Sporadic OPCA, ended her life alone, in the spare bedroom of her condominium, adjacent to the golf course, in an active-adult community in Monroe Township, Middlesex County, just off Exit 8 of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Zelniker pulled a clear plastic hood over her head, fastened the bottom around her neck with Velcro, opened two helium canisters with tubes leading into the hood, and soon enough was unconscious, and then dead, in her black recliner.

She was wearing a $6 golden necklace Keith had given her when he was 13. Inscribed on the heart was, "I love you, Mom. 1990."

By her side Zelniker left letters for police, friends and family.

"I hope that you all understand my need to die with dignity at the time and place of my choosing," she wrote. "It has not been easy for me these past months. My balance has become so bad and my legs so weak that I am in constant fear of falling and hurting myself . . . I am dropping almost everything. It is getting harder to speak and I am choking more frequently. My window of opportunity is narrowing rapidly and if I wait much longer, I will be at a nursing home's mercy. I could never live like that. I would not have done this if I had time left. Please know that I really don't want to leave my wonderful life, family and friends. I waited until the last possible moment."

She also wrote, because of the Georgia arrests, "I have to do this alone. Nobody should have to go through this unaccompanied, for fear of their friends and loved ones being arrested. I truly hope that one day, the laws will be changed and people like me will be able to die with dignity, with friends and loved ones by their side."

John Celmer, who ended his life last summer in Georgia, and whose death prompted the arrests of Final Exit Network members, was not terminally ill. He was disfigured from surgeries, skin grafts and cancer treatments for his jaw and would not leave the house.

"We're talking about a person who was cured of cancer," said John Bankhead, spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "Without the involvement of the Final Exit Network, he would likely still be here. The problem is they offer this as a viable alternative to people who are not terminally ill."

Read it all here.

Where to Call If you Need Help

If you are in a crisis and need help right away:

Call this toll-free number, available 24 hours a day, every day: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You will reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a service available to anyone. You may call for yourself or for someone you care about. All calls are confidential.

You might also call a pastor in the community who you have heard is a caring person.

For statistics on suicide and suicide prevention, go here.

For help in cases of spousal abuse, go here.

For information on alcoholism and/or local meetings of AA, go here.

For help with gambling addictions, go here.

Salvat's Suicide: Political Blackmail?

Paris: Rémy Salvat was 23 years old and was sick from six years of a rare degenerative disease that pushing him to a state of total disability.

Last Sunday Salvat locked himself in his room and took an overdose of drugs that ended his life. This case has dramatically reopened dramatically the debate on euthanasia in France.

Rémy wrote a letter to President Sarkozy demanding the right to die. He said: “I know that one day I will lose my capacities. I don’t want to be forced to be trapped in a body kept alive like a prisoner.”He wrote: "I know that in France there is no law to allow medical teams to practice euthanasia. This prevents me from living in peace ... we need to change the law."

Read it all here.

Visual Impairment a Factor in Suicide

Eye conditions that lead to visual impairment often have psychosocial and health consequences. A new report suggests visual impairment may be associated with an increased risk of suicide through its indirect negative effect on health.

Detrimental health consequences associated with eye problems include impaired activities of daily living, social isolation, mental impairment, increased dependency on others, increased motor vehicle crashes, falls and fractures, depression and poor self-rated health.

“Increased mortality risks also have been noted in adults with visual impairment and disabling eye disease”, comment study authors.

Byron L. Lam, M.D., of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine, and colleagues reviewed data from national health surveys of 137,479 participants conducted between 1986 and 1996.

The study is found in the July issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Read it all here.