It was a surprisingly healthy turnout for a frigid Wednesday night.  About fifty people gathered in the Museum auditorium where Patient Choices Vermont introduced  the featured speaker, George Eighmey an Oregon attorney who was instrumental in passing the nations first “Death With Dignity” law.  Most of the audience was legitimately interested in what Mr. Eighmey could share about Oregon’s experience with physician-assisted end of life choice.  The remainder, wearing badges stating their opposition to physician assisted “suicide” were there primarily to challenge the speaker.

A Vermont physician, Dr. David Babbott opened the discussion with a run-down on H.274, Vermont’s own “Death With Dignity” bill, which is under consideration in the current legislative session.  Some key provisions of the Vermont bill in its current wording, are as follows:

. The patient must be an adult resident of Vermont; must be terminally ill; must be able to communicate consent; and must be deemed mentally competent.

. The patient must ask and answer in the affirmative twice, that he or she wishes to go ahead with the medication.



Mr. Eighmey began by saying the Vermont bill, as proposed, is an improvement over the Oregon bill, offering more safeguards which include requiring  two “non-related” signatures, additional record keeping and palliative consultation.  

After offering a little personal background and a history of the Oregon law, Mr. Eighmey addressed the myths that currently cloud the debate, using data from the Oregon experience:

Myth 1:  Women would be “coerced” into using the law more than men.  

Fact: In Oregon, 46% of the patients who choose the option are women; 54% are men.

Myth 2: The medication is unreliable and people will live- on after taking it.

Fact:  Of the 528 instances when this procedure was chosen in Oregon, only 3 patients did not die.  They awoke alert and aware of their surroundings.  One requested that the medicine be administered again.  All three died of their underlying condition within a very short time.

Myth 3 People will be coerced into taking the lethal dose.  

Fact: Mr. Eighmey says that he has worked with over 80% of patients who chose this option.  Invariably, it was the patients relatives who tried to persuade the patient not to take the medicine.  In fact, 9 out of 10 patients who start the process never complete it, but they take great comfort in knowing that it is available to them.

Myth 4:The patients who take the lethal dose will be the poor, enfeebled, uneducated and minorities.

Facts:  In Oregon, over 90% of the patients who chose this option had insurance.  Almost 89% are enrolled in hospice care.  Over 90% are caucasian. Most are highly educated, fiercely independent and belong to a loving family.

Myth 5: If given this option, patients will “rush into” dying when they might have more than six months to live.

Fact:  The prescribed process makes this impossible to do.  Almost 30% of the one-in ten patients who complete the process after beginning it, never take the medication.

Mr. Eighmey made a point of saying that this choice should not be called “suicide.”  It is simply the dying patient being given control of the circumstances under which his death takes place. It is also not to be confused with “euthanasia” since the patient is making the choice him or herself.

There were some good questions from the audience and a couple of deliberately disruptive grand-standing attempts.  

Among the good questions was one posed by someone who was concerned that this law might legitimize suicide in the minds of children and young adults.  Mr. Eighmey pointed out that there are tragic suicides going on all over the United States all of the time so “legitimization” is a non starter.  Mr. Eighmey, who himself lost a son to suicide, says that  what we need is a better mental healthcare system and preventive interventions.  What a Death With Dignity Law communicates to our children is that we have compassion for the frail and the dying.

One of the organized opposition challenged Mr. Eighmey with the fact that Oregon has a suicide rate that is 35% higher than the national average, to which he replied that Oregon with it’s dreary months of wet weather, and high homeless and indigent population, has had this rate of suicides for decades, despite the fact that the Death With Dignity law has only been on the books since 1997.

Someone else asked how the cause of death is represented on the death certificate of a patient who dies in this manner.  Mr. Eighmey says that the law regards this as a privacy issue, so the death certificate cites the underlying disease as the cause of death.

We can look forward to many heated debates on this topic over the coming months, and perhaps years; sbut Vermonters could not have a more sympathetic or experienced voice for Death With Dignity  than Mr. Eighmey.  Fortunately, he will be speaking several more times throughout the course of this tour:

Thursday, March 3rd

12:30 pm – 2 pm

Middlebury Town Hall Theatre

68 South Pleasant (Merchant’s Row – on the Green)

6:30 pm – 8 pm

Mark Skinner Library in Manchester Center

48 West Rd, just off 7A

Friday, March 4th

6:30 pm – 8 pm

Hardwick Memorial Building, 3rd Fl., 20 Church St.

elevator available at Police Dept entrance. Others enter through main door and go up the stairs.

On the Radio:

MARK JOHNSON SHOW

WDEV

Thursday, March 3rd

9:00 am – 11 am (not sure what time George will be on)

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A quick reminder to Franklin County residents that tonight at 6:30, at the Historical Society on Church St. in St. Albans City, Patient Choices Vermont will be holding a forum on the Death With Dignity Act. (See details below fold.)

This is an important issue, that will be presented tonight in one of Vermont’s most conservative districts.  If we want our legislators to support this bill, we have to turn out in good numbers to demonstrate that it matters to us. I will try to live-blog from the forum, but if I can’t I’ll update after the event.

Death with Dignity: From Oregon to Vermont

Patient Choices Vermont sponsors Speaker Tour with George Eighmey

Patient Choices Vermont is sponsoring a series of discussions with Patient Choices Vermont board member David Babbott, MD, and George Eighmey, who was instrumental in passing and implementing Oregon’s first-in-the-nation Death with Dignity Act. We’ll talk about the bill that was recently introduced in the Vermont House of Representatives (H.274).

WHO: Patient Choices Vermont board member Dr. David Babbott and George Eighmey (bio below)

George Eighmey (pronounced Amy) graduated from the University of Illinois Schools of Administration and Law with honors. He practiced law in Illinois and Oregon until 2000, concentrating in the area of estates and family law. George was licensed to practice before the Ninth and Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Oregon and Illinois Supreme Courts, the U.S. Tax Court, and the U.S. Federal Appeals Court. He served on the Urbana, Illinois city council as an elected member and he was an Oregon State Representative from the Portland, Oregon area from 1993-1999. During his term as an Oregon representative he served as vice-chair of the House Judiciary Committee, minority whip, and senior Democrat leader where he championed the passage of the Death with Dignity Act, Medicinal Marijuana and Alternative Medicine laws. George served as Executive Director of Compassion & Choices of Oregon; an organization dedicated to providing nonjudgmental information on end-of-life options for 12 years until retiring in September 2010. He continues to lecture on the subject of Oregon’s aid-in-dying law. He is an advisory board member of Odyssey Hospice, Signature Hospice, Equity Foundation, the Bosco-Milligan Historic Preservation Foundation and co-author of a chapter in the book – Compassion in Dying – Stories of Dignity and Choice. He has received honors from several human rights and attorney organizations.  

David Babbott, MD, is a retired professor of Medicine at the University of Vermont, where he taught medical students and residents for over a quarter of a century. Before that, he had a full-time clinical practice. A long-time advocate for patient choice at the end of life, Dr. Babbott has served on the Board of Directors of Patient Choices Vermont since 2003. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He has served as a Master of the American College of Physicians, and as governor for the Vermont Chapter.

Free and open to the public.

Wednesday, March 2nd

6:30 pm

St. Albans Historical Museum, 9 Church St. 3rd fl

enter thru rear of bldg. – elevator available. Will have snacks from Cosmic Bakery.

http://www.stamuseum.com/index…

More information is available at www.patientchoices.org, including a link to the bill and factsheets.

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Patient Choices Vermont is an advocacy organization that seeks to educate Vermonters about end-of-life options and to influence policy, regulations and practice that affect the terminally ill. PCV works to promote the best possible pain control, palliative and hospice care, adn to enable terminally ill patients to direct their own end of life. More information can be found at www.patientchoices.org.