Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill cancer patient whose viral YouTube video reignited the debate on assisted-suicide, ended her life on Saturday.
Bioethicist Arthur L Caplan says that Ms Maynard's story has the potential to change the way many people - particularly younger Americans - view the issue. "I am terrified to think that my children will grow up in a culture that openly venerates suicide with this much unyielding passion”
"A whole new generation is now looking at Brittany and wondering why their state does not permit physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to the dying," he writes for NBC News. "Brittany is having and will have a big impact on the movement to get measures before voters or legislators."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29876277
In April, I learned that not only had my tumor come back, but it was more aggressive. Doctors gave me a prognosis of six months to live.
Because my tumor is so large, doctors prescribed full brain radiation. I read about the side effects: The hair on my scalp would have been singed off. My scalp would be left covered with first-degree burns. My quality of life, as I knew it, would be gone.
After months of research, my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left.
I considered passing away in hospice care at my San Francisco Bay-area home. But even with palliative medication, I could develop potentially morphine-resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind
Because the rest of my body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that.
I did not want this nightmare scenario for my family, so I started researching death with dignity. It is an end-of-life option for mentally competent, terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live. It would enable me to use the medical practice of aid in dying: I could request and receive a prescription from a physician for medication that I could self-ingest to end my dying process if it becomes unbearable.
I quickly decided that death with dignity was the best option for me and my family.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/maynard-assisted-suicide-cancer-dignity/
See the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfe3rCcUeQ
