NH law clarifies dying wishes with new form
A dying person's last wishes for what lengths they want doctors to go to keep them alive will be better spelled out after a New Hampshire law takes effect with the New Year. State Sen. Peggy Gilmour,...
View ArticleDoctor Helps Grandma Die to Avoid Japanese Feeding Tube
Kojiro Tokutake wanted to be a doctor since he was a teenager. His grandmother bought him his first stethoscope when he was in medical school. A decade later, he helped her die. Tokutake, 33, is a...
View ArticleCourt in France says end life support for tetraplegic
France's highest court, the Council of State, has ruled in favour of ending life support for a man who has remained in a vegetative state for six years. Vincent Lambert, 39, was left a tetraplegic...
View ArticleEuropean rights court: Keep tetraplegic on life support
25 June 2014 From the section Europe Strasbourg has the power to implement urgent measures if there is an "imminent risk of irreparable harm" The European Court of Human Rights says French doctors must...
View ArticleCanada court rules doctors can help ill patients die
TORONTO (AP) — Canada's highest court unanimously struck down a ban on doctor-assisted suicide for mentally competent patients with terminal illnesses, declaring on...
View ArticleSome families would consider terminal sedation for brain injured relatives in...
(Source: University of York) Posted on 15 January 2014 The families of some very severely brain injured patients believe that once all treatment options are exhausted, allowing their relatives to die...
View ArticleFamily sues caregivers to stop feeding mom
Katherine Hammond holding a photo of her mother, Margaret Bentley. A lawsuit has been filed by the daughter of a Canadian Alzheimer’s patient against members of a nursing home staff claiming that their...
View ArticleAlzheimer's patient must be fed
The B.C. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the care and feeding of Margot Bentley, the 82-year-old Alzheimer's patient whose family insists is being kept alive against her will in an Abbotsford care...
View ArticleNursing staffwho stop feeding woman risk charges: lawyer
Nursing home staff would be helping an Abbotsford Alzheimer's patient commit suicide if they stopped feeding her, risking criminal charges of culpable homicide, a lawyer representing the provincial...
View ArticleFamily asks court to let Abbotsford woman die
The family of an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer's so advanced she's in a vegetative state asked the B.C. Supreme Court on Tuesday to order her nursing home to live up to her living will and stop...
View ArticleCanadian case may rewrite standards on advanced directives
DALLAS, August 15, 2013 ― The British Columbia Supreme Court will hear a case this fall that may redefine the standard of care for people with disabilities. The family of Margaret Bentley, an 82 year...
View ArticleComplexities of choosing end game for dementia
VSED voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is being debated by ethicists, lawyers and the elderly Jerome Medalie keeps his advance directive hanging in a plastic sleeve in his front hall closet,...
View ArticleTwo videos tell story of a fight to die
Two brief, painful-to-watch videos say - and show - it all: Margaret (Margot) Bentley in what's commonly called a vegetative state, uncommunicative and unresponsive to her husband's tender touch, to...
View ArticleFraser Health says it is legally obliged to spoon-feed vegetative patient
The Fraser Health Authority denies it agreed to stop feeding an Alzheimer's patient at the centre of a precedent-setting right-to-die case and contends that to do so would amount to a criminal offence....
View ArticleFamily says mother being force-fed against her will
The family of an 82-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer's disease says the Fraser Health Authority is ignoring the woman's own wishes, expressed years ago, to be allowed to die with dignity. Margot...
View ArticleMargot Bentley: The fine legalities of death
You want to die? Get a good lawyer. If Monday's decision in the Margot Bentley case demonstrates anything, it's how the law and its exacting interpretation can change the course of one's life, or in...
View ArticleCourt rules Alzheimer patient must be feed despite advance directive
Here is a sad but true story, which I believe anyone over 50 should pay attention to. An Alzheimer’s patient is being forced feed even with a living will. This is a story in Canada of a family that...
View ArticleJeb Bush's Suggestion to Require Medicare Recipients to Complete Advance...
Compassion & Choices President Barbara Coombs Lee Facebook Twitter Pinterest Compassion & Choices logo. Facebook Twitter Pinterest × Compassion & Choices President Barbara Coombs Lee...
View ArticleWho's given the legal right to starve a senior? An ethical gray area
Many of the legal and ethical options for refusing unwanted interventions are not available to people with dementia because they lack decision-making capacity. But one way for these people to ensure...
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