I don’t know Dr. Aijian but I believe that he is probably a Christian and any devout Christian knows that they are a Christian before they are ANYTHING else.
My primary care doctor is a believer and it makes such a difference!
This world is very lost and ignorance is no excuse.
You raise a good point: patients need to know their personal physician’s position on medical care issues. An 80+ friend just got a Medicare paid $1.3M replacement heart from a youth. My physician doesn’t support replacing body parts on elders at taxpayer expense. Know your doc. Choose wisely.
This is where I go off the reservation with conservative dictum. Having taken care of thousands of critically ill patients over the course of 40+ years, I stand resolute with the right to die with dignity. Patients should have a right to choose their end based on well defined, medically supervised and legally sanctioned laws, with strictly applied guidelines, checks and balances to prevent fraud and abuse.
Sad how our society is more
humane with our pets end of life, than we are for our loved ones during their final days. Conservatives constantly remind us of our God given rights of freedom, until it comes to the right to end our lives! The ultimate freedom is that of our own destiny!
Yes, the final weeks or months of life can be not only painful, but extremely expensive as well. The majority of cost for Medicare is typically during the last 30 days of life, leaving many families paying for the 20% of a multi million dollar bill left by caring for their loved ones. Often, families are left with difficult choices, sometimes left with having to liquidate their parent’s home in order to pay for care.
I reject fully, the use of Nazi analogies in terms of right to die legitimacy.
Give terminally ill patients the freedom of choice now!
Respectfully but candidly, abortive care is done commonly for a variety of reasons, not just for the sake of termination of unwanted pregnancy. Therapeutic Abortions (TA’s) is healthcare and in my view, MUST be offered in a safe, sterile environment to women in the first trimester of pregnancy. I want this choice for MY daughter. Unfortunately, this is where conservatives go off the rails and interject faith with medical delivery and health care. National polls have reflected this time and again. If Republicans ever want to win elections, best accept reality for what it is.
Fancy name for birth control. After all that is what abortion is. It is not to save mom’s life in over 98% of abortions.
Per the CDC & Guttmacher Institute most abortions are because the mom thinks a baby is inconvenient. Just like Roe v Wade, a married woman decided she didn’t want a fourth child. Not health reasons, not race, it incest. Inconvenient.
Abortion = birth control. Not reproductive health.
Planned Parenthood = Abortion. Not coaching to be a parent.
Problem is people with MDs pushing death because it pays well.
Just like the jab, it paid the dictionary per patient to the tune of millions per practice.
Conflict of interest and using a white coat to wield power.
Strongly agree with your post. In second tri-mester (20-26 weeks), TAs are essential health care. No mom wants to die leaving behind her other young children or elder parents who need her.
Never Give Up --- Two children came by our house once and were selling their hand painted picture with the words "Never Give Up." I bought the picture for $5 and framed it. Now I go to my engineer friend Bob who had the fortitude to tell doctors what to do and they did it. He told the doctor to remove his prostate because he had prostate cancer. The doctors were playing the Obama "Just take a pill for the pain." solution. Bob got the operation which was successful. Each year Bob drives from Ohio to Florida to have his prostate checked with a team of specialists and he's doing fine. Bob taught me one rule in life: Don't let others dictate what you can or cannot do but instead fight for what you want done. Don't let people tell you something can't be done! Bob will be 90 in 2025 and has no problem driving day or night. He's spunky and a fighter. Nobody is going to protect you more than yourself! I see Bob each year in Georgia when he's making his trip to Florida from Ohio. And he's still smart as a whip.
LT, I always appreciate your comments and most often agree with them, on this one I am not in agreement. Our disagreement begins with what is. First there is the human life, the what it truly is of the matter leads to the truth of reality which leads to the good and those three things are what a moral or immoral act is based upon. To understand the nature and value of a human life is to come to know that it is so valuable that we not only do not have the right to take another's life, we have no natural right to take our own. To suggest that we do is simply a misunderstanding of what is.
Further, the word "freedom" may not mean what you seem to think it means. Your use of freedom above is actually 'license'. There are things we are not free to do but we may arrogate license to ourselves to do them, this is ever increasing and common but has nothing to do with natural law or natural right other then they go against nature.
We euthanize animals because they are less valuable than humans and you have inverted the order on that- we treat humans better than animals not worse if we do not put them to death. This leads to a misunderstanding of human suffering.
Finally, the good doctor here and the good doctors in the world will tell you that abortion is never a medical remedy. There is the principle of double effect that states that if a woman is in need of a life saving procedure that harms a baby in the womb as a secondary effect, that is perfectly moral and in line with the natural law, however, there is never a need for an abortion out of the womb for this remedy.
I know how contentious all this is and that you take my words here in the spirit in which I intend them.
End of life care needn't be expensive if the patient is in hospice. Indeed, that is the reason for hospice. So if a patient is not in hospice and is of sound mind it indicates that they are not interested in MAID. This can be very expensive because we have socialized medicine for the elderly called Medicare. But for Medicare, the expense of end of life care would be born by the patient and of no concern to anybody. To complain about the cost of end of life care is to complain about the nature of socialized medicine and by extension socialized anything. Socialized medicine reduces the patient to a cog in a greater scheme which does not have the interest of the patient but ihe interest of the orginization as priority. The patient is a billing vehicle. The entire discussion of the cost of dying as a public burden is an argument against socialized medicine and the notion that healthcare is a God given right. It is not but my freedom to bitch about it is.
In January, a 29-year-old Dutch woman with a psychotic disorder (otherwise healthy) chose medically assisted suicide. Legally allowing young healthy people (well, relatively healthy) to end their life is a slippery-slope, and one I hope we do not adopt in the U.S. without careful consideration of consequences. (Colicky baby or pesky toddler? Just chose MAID.)
Once a "right" such as this becomes law, we cannot go back.
Thank you for this article! The West, once known as Christendom, is evidently "under new management". They have a different morality, no? A new documentary heartbreaking shows how "Medical Assistance In Dying" was already rolled out in 2020 with via the death protocols in hospitals and nursing homes : https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/a-good-death-in-case-you-missed-it
The weak link in your article was the repetition of the disproven lie of "gas chambers at the camps" propaganda story. I forgive you, though. 😉 Many people still believe The Holocaust Narrative. To learn how we were sold it, see https://www.fidelitypress.org/book-products/the-holocaust-narrative
Hmm. Lie, steal, murder the playbook of evil never changes. Only the goons faces change.
Deceit has always been satans strong point. “Women Health “ is the reason to kill innocent babies? Really? Evil is so cunning. That’s why lazy uninformed voters are so dangerous to a republic like ours.
I am now in my nineties. I face the inevitability of death every day, even though I am healthy and competent mentally and physically. There is no doubt that if it came to it, I would choose hospice. I would never want any of my family to feel the guilt of assisting in my death unless it was a simple disconnection of life support when it artificially kept me alive.
As a general question, I do not support assisted suicide as a mandate from the government. It opens too many avenues to abuse.
As an example, I am horrified at the acceptance of the chemical and surgical mutilation of children, by so many members of the public and the medical profession, that it has grown into a billion-dollar industry. Perhaps the Supreme Court will stop it completely.
But how did the public let get so far and so large over the last ten to twenty years?
In 1995 my mother was dying of lung cancer.....as I dressed her to take her to the hospital for what we both knew would be her last journey she quietly said " I wish they could just give me a shot and this would all be over" But noooooo.....she had to linger for another four very painful, traumatic months, withering away, falling into a morphine induced stupor her last two fight for breath months. Yes, just one shot. That is all I need to know. We do it for a pet and it's called 'humane' and 'the right thing to do'. One. shot.
Thank you Dr Aijian. It is hard to believe so many Americans DO NOT know the Nazis were real and what they were capable of doing. My mother born in 1930 in West Los Angeles was very much aware from her short education at a local Catholic school and LA's WW11 war experience. This included the internment camps for Japanes Americans. A girl from her class was taken. A gentle movie showcasing the Nazis, German for Nationalsozialist, before Hitler gained total control is "Swing Kids." A person will certainly soon understand what is to come under an evil man poised to undue most of the Human Race. Recently on October 7, 2024, the same type of horrific crimes against the Jewish nation were also executed. Yes, you are correct Dr. Aijian, evil remains among us.
Powerful, thoughtful, compassionate, and important article. Thank you for sharing, Dr. Aijian.
In 2017, I escorted my 89-year-old father, who'd been an energetic psychiatrist for 50 years, down the hospice path.
Last summer, I walked the same path with my 15-year-old black lab. Tears were shed, and both were a heartbreaking loss.
I made the choice for my four-legged friend, but my Father's choice was his alone.
Life for humans should be a person's own choice, as is death. I can't make that choice for another. Unborn, alive and well, clinically depressed, terminally ill, or in our final days, we are all God's children -- precious and loved.
I hope and pray we all—especially medical professionals—will exercise the Hippocratic oath, love radically, and fight for life because all humans have value.
Wowza…. Unbelievable. Great article and eye opening. Praying California does the right thing for once although I have my doubts… 🙏🥰😔😥 good to see there are Doctors that think like this…
Years ago, while taking classes at CAl State LONG BEACH for a teaching credential, I took a semester - long class called "DEATH AND DYING". The teacher asked us at the beginning, if given the choice, would we want to spend our last days at home in hospice, or in a hospital. Almost everyone chose a hospital. At the end of the semester, she asked us the same question: the overwhelming answer was at home in hospice. Our text book, which helped me understand all the various questions about the dying process, is THE LAST DANCE: ENCOUNTERING DEATH AND DYING" BY LYANNE ANN DeSPELDER AND ALBERT LEE STRICKLAND. That class helped me during my mother's death, and since then, all the deaths of many of my friends and relatives who left our conscious world with grace and love. I really recommend this book.
I am a doctor and there is, I believe, reasons to end life. My mother died from Alzheimer’s and it was painful to watch her decline and death which was in a nursing home. She did not recognize anyone while being belligerent, hitting and biting care givers. Many patients with terminal and painful cancer will take extra pain killers to do the same thing. My daughter bought a home from a real estate broker who knew the previous owner committed suicide who had terminal cancer. So, end of life takes many forms by various means. I am a Christian and I would have to ask for forgiveness as my last prayer, if put in a position of ending my life due to cancer, Alzheimer’s or any number of horrible medical illnesses. This, of course does not include the financial burden to the surviving spouse or family members. So, I understand these end of life issues. There is no painless way out of this situation for all involved in this process. But I do agree there is a compassionate place for end of life in these circumstances.
I think death and dying have become way more complicated than they used to be before technology and scientific "progress" became more highly valued than health and life. Our health has, ironically, declined with the rise of the medical industrial complex. We are sicker than we have ever been, at younger ages, with new and more baffling auto-immune diseases. Perhaps this is where we should throw more of our energy, time, money and brain power...in helping our country to get healthier. Much of what we witness at end of life (at all ages, not just in the very elderly) is directly connected to how we view life, health, science, progress and death. I also think there is a direct connection between how we think about aging, dying, and the value of our elders, and how we think about family and community. In an increasingly more isolated, mobile and fragmented society in which our wise elders end up completely alone rather than surrounded by family, they have become an inconvenience rather than a gift of wise counsel, encouragement, and grounding for us. We tell them that they are a burden to society when they cease to be productive, no matter how many glitzy AARP magazine articles try to convince them otherwise. No wonder some want to call it quits.
I have been blessed to witness the deaths of 4 loved ones so far. I found it to be a beautiful and mysterious process, and an honor to witness. ...A realization of how thin the "veil" is between life and death. Yes. It was hard. It was painful to watch my loved ones suffer. But it was THEIR journey, their wrestling with that transition. It is NOT ABOUT ME or alleviating MY discomfort in watching them suffer. There is a difference between causing someone's suffering and bearing some of their suffering. Sometimes it seems that folks are permitted to suffer, and/or have more extended last days or months in order to find closure with people in their lives or for reasons we may not fully comprehend. Although I do appreciate hospice and their general premise, I think giving people pain meds that make them unconscious can rob them of being fully present on that journey and able to say goodbye, ask or grant forgiveness, or whatever they need to do. Timing is important. There is a time for drugs like morphine. Personally, I think it is sometimes given too soon, more to alleviate the pain of the other people in the room and not of the dying person.
We should have some say in our own dying process, how conscious we want to be. We should make those wishes known to several trusted people and put them in writing. It is shocking to me how few people do this, often because it is "unpleasant" to think about their own death. No one gets out of here alive. Acknowledging that can change the way we live.
It's an important topic, and I appreciate your perspective, Dr. Aijian.
Your ethics are out of order, but it is certainly understandable in the world the way it is today. Still, you don't seem to understand the nature of human life as it relates to reality. You hold an implied utilitarianism where the highest and lowest things are pleasure and pain, your stance is not Christian, it is secular humanist and the two are diametrically opposed, thus your suggestion of a futile prayer. You don't give life, God does. You can't take life not matter how horrible or inconvenient it seems to you. Read the Hippocratic Oath if you are a doctor. Read the Book of Job if you are a Christian.
A prayer is futile if one is asking God to grant license to sin. My statement is predicated on the fact that it goes against Divine and natural Law to take any innocent life, including your own, and so to willfully commit a mortal sin while praying for God's forgiveness is not only futile but a radical misunderstanding of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. Dr. Lederhaus, making a general appeal to the Bible does not help your case, clearly I understand the Bible much better than you, so it was a silly statement. You are wrong on this one as a doctor and as a Christian, but you are right on as a secular humanist, which is contrary to both the true doctor and the true Christian.
If I ever get to a point in life where death is easier than life due to a severe illness I would rely on forgiveness from Jesus. I wonder what you would do?
I would rely on Christ's promise of everlasting life he made to us from the Cross and proved to us by the resurrection. There is never a time when death is easier than life, unless you are a secular humanist. For a Christian, life is infinitely better than death. You are not God that you may give and take life Dr. Lederhaus. I will pray for you.
You have a history degree from UCSB. In my 31 years as a neurosurgeon I’m sure I have dealt with death and dying more than you. These decisions are very difficult with patients who have minimal or no neurological function. Would you want everything done to keep you “alive” in that existence? Or would your living will or relatives know or follow your wishes to do everything to keep your heart beating?
You must be a Catholic Priest? Being a retired neurosurgeon I had to make daily decisions about life and death. Does that condemn me? Would you prefer to be in a persistent vegetative state?
I do understand the arguments for assisted suicide. One scenario that comes to mind is the person about to be captured by those who are known to torture people before killing them. Fortunately very few will ever face this scenario.
My conscience will not allow me to participate.
Where there is incapacity to make decisions it is not assisted suicide for family to choose comfort care only which excludes nutrition and hydration. It is a very rare scenario where a person with poor quality of life cannot be given a peaceful end through good hospice care.
I have never given a patient medications to end their life. When a patient is comatose permanently generally those patients die from a pulmonary embolism, pneumonia with sepsis or brain death. Having said that, I would not choose to continue with all medical efforts to sustain a heart beat. That is why we have advance directives and physicians and family along with the patient’s wishes are honored.
Great article.
I don’t know Dr. Aijian but I believe that he is probably a Christian and any devout Christian knows that they are a Christian before they are ANYTHING else.
My primary care doctor is a believer and it makes such a difference!
This world is very lost and ignorance is no excuse.
The devil is the greatest liar of all time.
God bless you Dr.
You raise a good point: patients need to know their personal physician’s position on medical care issues. An 80+ friend just got a Medicare paid $1.3M replacement heart from a youth. My physician doesn’t support replacing body parts on elders at taxpayer expense. Know your doc. Choose wisely.
My favorite anecdote on this was an orthopedic surgeon who put a total knee replacement in a 100 year old man
I asked the surgeon the rationale for this, and his comment was priceless “ he’s a young 100”
The man never left the nursing home 🙄
Money, money, money.
How stupid can ya get!?
You mean like will the doctor persuade me into something financially beneficial to him/her and not necessarily in the patients best interest?
Like the jab or transgender surgeries.
You are correct about my faith . Thanks
I’d love to know any other another Christian Docs in SB
There are a few of us in SB who let our faith be known
This is where I go off the reservation with conservative dictum. Having taken care of thousands of critically ill patients over the course of 40+ years, I stand resolute with the right to die with dignity. Patients should have a right to choose their end based on well defined, medically supervised and legally sanctioned laws, with strictly applied guidelines, checks and balances to prevent fraud and abuse.
Sad how our society is more
humane with our pets end of life, than we are for our loved ones during their final days. Conservatives constantly remind us of our God given rights of freedom, until it comes to the right to end our lives! The ultimate freedom is that of our own destiny!
Yes, the final weeks or months of life can be not only painful, but extremely expensive as well. The majority of cost for Medicare is typically during the last 30 days of life, leaving many families paying for the 20% of a multi million dollar bill left by caring for their loved ones. Often, families are left with difficult choices, sometimes left with having to liquidate their parent’s home in order to pay for care.
I reject fully, the use of Nazi analogies in terms of right to die legitimacy.
Give terminally ill patients the freedom of choice now!
Many people can and do take their lives.
There’s an element of evil when you bring the “health care” system into this equation.
What logic is there when women accept that killing their babies is healthcare?
Respectfully but candidly, abortive care is done commonly for a variety of reasons, not just for the sake of termination of unwanted pregnancy. Therapeutic Abortions (TA’s) is healthcare and in my view, MUST be offered in a safe, sterile environment to women in the first trimester of pregnancy. I want this choice for MY daughter. Unfortunately, this is where conservatives go off the rails and interject faith with medical delivery and health care. National polls have reflected this time and again. If Republicans ever want to win elections, best accept reality for what it is.
Fancy name for birth control. After all that is what abortion is. It is not to save mom’s life in over 98% of abortions.
Per the CDC & Guttmacher Institute most abortions are because the mom thinks a baby is inconvenient. Just like Roe v Wade, a married woman decided she didn’t want a fourth child. Not health reasons, not race, it incest. Inconvenient.
Abortion = birth control. Not reproductive health.
Planned Parenthood = Abortion. Not coaching to be a parent.
Problem is people with MDs pushing death because it pays well.
Just like the jab, it paid the dictionary per patient to the tune of millions per practice.
Conflict of interest and using a white coat to wield power.
Strongly agree with your post. In second tri-mester (20-26 weeks), TAs are essential health care. No mom wants to die leaving behind her other young children or elder parents who need her.
Never Give Up --- Two children came by our house once and were selling their hand painted picture with the words "Never Give Up." I bought the picture for $5 and framed it. Now I go to my engineer friend Bob who had the fortitude to tell doctors what to do and they did it. He told the doctor to remove his prostate because he had prostate cancer. The doctors were playing the Obama "Just take a pill for the pain." solution. Bob got the operation which was successful. Each year Bob drives from Ohio to Florida to have his prostate checked with a team of specialists and he's doing fine. Bob taught me one rule in life: Don't let others dictate what you can or cannot do but instead fight for what you want done. Don't let people tell you something can't be done! Bob will be 90 in 2025 and has no problem driving day or night. He's spunky and a fighter. Nobody is going to protect you more than yourself! I see Bob each year in Georgia when he's making his trip to Florida from Ohio. And he's still smart as a whip.
LT, I always appreciate your comments and most often agree with them, on this one I am not in agreement. Our disagreement begins with what is. First there is the human life, the what it truly is of the matter leads to the truth of reality which leads to the good and those three things are what a moral or immoral act is based upon. To understand the nature and value of a human life is to come to know that it is so valuable that we not only do not have the right to take another's life, we have no natural right to take our own. To suggest that we do is simply a misunderstanding of what is.
Further, the word "freedom" may not mean what you seem to think it means. Your use of freedom above is actually 'license'. There are things we are not free to do but we may arrogate license to ourselves to do them, this is ever increasing and common but has nothing to do with natural law or natural right other then they go against nature.
We euthanize animals because they are less valuable than humans and you have inverted the order on that- we treat humans better than animals not worse if we do not put them to death. This leads to a misunderstanding of human suffering.
Finally, the good doctor here and the good doctors in the world will tell you that abortion is never a medical remedy. There is the principle of double effect that states that if a woman is in need of a life saving procedure that harms a baby in the womb as a secondary effect, that is perfectly moral and in line with the natural law, however, there is never a need for an abortion out of the womb for this remedy.
I know how contentious all this is and that you take my words here in the spirit in which I intend them.
Great article Dr. Aijian. I was beginning to wonder if doctors had morals.
End of life care needn't be expensive if the patient is in hospice. Indeed, that is the reason for hospice. So if a patient is not in hospice and is of sound mind it indicates that they are not interested in MAID. This can be very expensive because we have socialized medicine for the elderly called Medicare. But for Medicare, the expense of end of life care would be born by the patient and of no concern to anybody. To complain about the cost of end of life care is to complain about the nature of socialized medicine and by extension socialized anything. Socialized medicine reduces the patient to a cog in a greater scheme which does not have the interest of the patient but ihe interest of the orginization as priority. The patient is a billing vehicle. The entire discussion of the cost of dying as a public burden is an argument against socialized medicine and the notion that healthcare is a God given right. It is not but my freedom to bitch about it is.
Sad, scary but very insightful. Something to think about for sure
In January, a 29-year-old Dutch woman with a psychotic disorder (otherwise healthy) chose medically assisted suicide. Legally allowing young healthy people (well, relatively healthy) to end their life is a slippery-slope, and one I hope we do not adopt in the U.S. without careful consideration of consequences. (Colicky baby or pesky toddler? Just chose MAID.)
Once a "right" such as this becomes law, we cannot go back.
Read more about the young woman in the Netherlands here: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45117163
Thank you for this article! The West, once known as Christendom, is evidently "under new management". They have a different morality, no? A new documentary heartbreaking shows how "Medical Assistance In Dying" was already rolled out in 2020 with via the death protocols in hospitals and nursing homes : https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/a-good-death-in-case-you-missed-it
The weak link in your article was the repetition of the disproven lie of "gas chambers at the camps" propaganda story. I forgive you, though. 😉 Many people still believe The Holocaust Narrative. To learn how we were sold it, see https://www.fidelitypress.org/book-products/the-holocaust-narrative
If someone can be convinced that mirder in the womb is “healthcare” then why not MAID as the permanent cure for carpel tunnel syndrome?
The culture of death continues its long march through the state of California on its way to the rest of the world!
Hmm. Lie, steal, murder the playbook of evil never changes. Only the goons faces change.
Deceit has always been satans strong point. “Women Health “ is the reason to kill innocent babies? Really? Evil is so cunning. That’s why lazy uninformed voters are so dangerous to a republic like ours.
Just an awesome statement!!!
🙏👍
I am now in my nineties. I face the inevitability of death every day, even though I am healthy and competent mentally and physically. There is no doubt that if it came to it, I would choose hospice. I would never want any of my family to feel the guilt of assisting in my death unless it was a simple disconnection of life support when it artificially kept me alive.
As a general question, I do not support assisted suicide as a mandate from the government. It opens too many avenues to abuse.
As an example, I am horrified at the acceptance of the chemical and surgical mutilation of children, by so many members of the public and the medical profession, that it has grown into a billion-dollar industry. Perhaps the Supreme Court will stop it completely.
But how did the public let get so far and so large over the last ten to twenty years?
In 1995 my mother was dying of lung cancer.....as I dressed her to take her to the hospital for what we both knew would be her last journey she quietly said " I wish they could just give me a shot and this would all be over" But noooooo.....she had to linger for another four very painful, traumatic months, withering away, falling into a morphine induced stupor her last two fight for breath months. Yes, just one shot. That is all I need to know. We do it for a pet and it's called 'humane' and 'the right thing to do'. One. shot.
Your Mom was right, Peggy.
Thank you Dr Aijian. It is hard to believe so many Americans DO NOT know the Nazis were real and what they were capable of doing. My mother born in 1930 in West Los Angeles was very much aware from her short education at a local Catholic school and LA's WW11 war experience. This included the internment camps for Japanes Americans. A girl from her class was taken. A gentle movie showcasing the Nazis, German for Nationalsozialist, before Hitler gained total control is "Swing Kids." A person will certainly soon understand what is to come under an evil man poised to undue most of the Human Race. Recently on October 7, 2024, the same type of horrific crimes against the Jewish nation were also executed. Yes, you are correct Dr. Aijian, evil remains among us.
Powerful, thoughtful, compassionate, and important article. Thank you for sharing, Dr. Aijian.
In 2017, I escorted my 89-year-old father, who'd been an energetic psychiatrist for 50 years, down the hospice path.
Last summer, I walked the same path with my 15-year-old black lab. Tears were shed, and both were a heartbreaking loss.
I made the choice for my four-legged friend, but my Father's choice was his alone.
Life for humans should be a person's own choice, as is death. I can't make that choice for another. Unborn, alive and well, clinically depressed, terminally ill, or in our final days, we are all God's children -- precious and loved.
I hope and pray we all—especially medical professionals—will exercise the Hippocratic oath, love radically, and fight for life because all humans have value.
Don't give up the fight.
Wowza…. Unbelievable. Great article and eye opening. Praying California does the right thing for once although I have my doubts… 🙏🥰😔😥 good to see there are Doctors that think like this…
California is headed in the exactly wrong direction on this and countless other issues.
Hence the long U-Haul waiting list
It is a sad commentary and if I was younger I would be moving somewhere else. :-( Thanks for the sanity checks though.
Years ago, while taking classes at CAl State LONG BEACH for a teaching credential, I took a semester - long class called "DEATH AND DYING". The teacher asked us at the beginning, if given the choice, would we want to spend our last days at home in hospice, or in a hospital. Almost everyone chose a hospital. At the end of the semester, she asked us the same question: the overwhelming answer was at home in hospice. Our text book, which helped me understand all the various questions about the dying process, is THE LAST DANCE: ENCOUNTERING DEATH AND DYING" BY LYANNE ANN DeSPELDER AND ALBERT LEE STRICKLAND. That class helped me during my mother's death, and since then, all the deaths of many of my friends and relatives who left our conscious world with grace and love. I really recommend this book.
I am a doctor and there is, I believe, reasons to end life. My mother died from Alzheimer’s and it was painful to watch her decline and death which was in a nursing home. She did not recognize anyone while being belligerent, hitting and biting care givers. Many patients with terminal and painful cancer will take extra pain killers to do the same thing. My daughter bought a home from a real estate broker who knew the previous owner committed suicide who had terminal cancer. So, end of life takes many forms by various means. I am a Christian and I would have to ask for forgiveness as my last prayer, if put in a position of ending my life due to cancer, Alzheimer’s or any number of horrible medical illnesses. This, of course does not include the financial burden to the surviving spouse or family members. So, I understand these end of life issues. There is no painless way out of this situation for all involved in this process. But I do agree there is a compassionate place for end of life in these circumstances.
I think death and dying have become way more complicated than they used to be before technology and scientific "progress" became more highly valued than health and life. Our health has, ironically, declined with the rise of the medical industrial complex. We are sicker than we have ever been, at younger ages, with new and more baffling auto-immune diseases. Perhaps this is where we should throw more of our energy, time, money and brain power...in helping our country to get healthier. Much of what we witness at end of life (at all ages, not just in the very elderly) is directly connected to how we view life, health, science, progress and death. I also think there is a direct connection between how we think about aging, dying, and the value of our elders, and how we think about family and community. In an increasingly more isolated, mobile and fragmented society in which our wise elders end up completely alone rather than surrounded by family, they have become an inconvenience rather than a gift of wise counsel, encouragement, and grounding for us. We tell them that they are a burden to society when they cease to be productive, no matter how many glitzy AARP magazine articles try to convince them otherwise. No wonder some want to call it quits.
I have been blessed to witness the deaths of 4 loved ones so far. I found it to be a beautiful and mysterious process, and an honor to witness. ...A realization of how thin the "veil" is between life and death. Yes. It was hard. It was painful to watch my loved ones suffer. But it was THEIR journey, their wrestling with that transition. It is NOT ABOUT ME or alleviating MY discomfort in watching them suffer. There is a difference between causing someone's suffering and bearing some of their suffering. Sometimes it seems that folks are permitted to suffer, and/or have more extended last days or months in order to find closure with people in their lives or for reasons we may not fully comprehend. Although I do appreciate hospice and their general premise, I think giving people pain meds that make them unconscious can rob them of being fully present on that journey and able to say goodbye, ask or grant forgiveness, or whatever they need to do. Timing is important. There is a time for drugs like morphine. Personally, I think it is sometimes given too soon, more to alleviate the pain of the other people in the room and not of the dying person.
We should have some say in our own dying process, how conscious we want to be. We should make those wishes known to several trusted people and put them in writing. It is shocking to me how few people do this, often because it is "unpleasant" to think about their own death. No one gets out of here alive. Acknowledging that can change the way we live.
It's an important topic, and I appreciate your perspective, Dr. Aijian.
Your ethics are out of order, but it is certainly understandable in the world the way it is today. Still, you don't seem to understand the nature of human life as it relates to reality. You hold an implied utilitarianism where the highest and lowest things are pleasure and pain, your stance is not Christian, it is secular humanist and the two are diametrically opposed, thus your suggestion of a futile prayer. You don't give life, God does. You can't take life not matter how horrible or inconvenient it seems to you. Read the Hippocratic Oath if you are a doctor. Read the Book of Job if you are a Christian.
Prayer is never futile. Maybe you don’t understand the Bible?
A prayer is futile if one is asking God to grant license to sin. My statement is predicated on the fact that it goes against Divine and natural Law to take any innocent life, including your own, and so to willfully commit a mortal sin while praying for God's forgiveness is not only futile but a radical misunderstanding of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. Dr. Lederhaus, making a general appeal to the Bible does not help your case, clearly I understand the Bible much better than you, so it was a silly statement. You are wrong on this one as a doctor and as a Christian, but you are right on as a secular humanist, which is contrary to both the true doctor and the true Christian.
If I ever get to a point in life where death is easier than life due to a severe illness I would rely on forgiveness from Jesus. I wonder what you would do?
I would rely on Christ's promise of everlasting life he made to us from the Cross and proved to us by the resurrection. There is never a time when death is easier than life, unless you are a secular humanist. For a Christian, life is infinitely better than death. You are not God that you may give and take life Dr. Lederhaus. I will pray for you.
You have a history degree from UCSB. In my 31 years as a neurosurgeon I’m sure I have dealt with death and dying more than you. These decisions are very difficult with patients who have minimal or no neurological function. Would you want everything done to keep you “alive” in that existence? Or would your living will or relatives know or follow your wishes to do everything to keep your heart beating?
You must be a Catholic Priest? Being a retired neurosurgeon I had to make daily decisions about life and death. Does that condemn me? Would you prefer to be in a persistent vegetative state?
I do understand the arguments for assisted suicide. One scenario that comes to mind is the person about to be captured by those who are known to torture people before killing them. Fortunately very few will ever face this scenario.
My conscience will not allow me to participate.
Where there is incapacity to make decisions it is not assisted suicide for family to choose comfort care only which excludes nutrition and hydration. It is a very rare scenario where a person with poor quality of life cannot be given a peaceful end through good hospice care.
I have never given a patient medications to end their life. When a patient is comatose permanently generally those patients die from a pulmonary embolism, pneumonia with sepsis or brain death. Having said that, I would not choose to continue with all medical efforts to sustain a heart beat. That is why we have advance directives and physicians and family along with the patient’s wishes are honored.