Tag: terminal illness

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The vote in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29th November, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm by the bourgeois media. Photos featuring jubilant campaigners for voluntary euthanasia were plastered across web front pages. The real promise of this Bill is far from joyful for many. The Bill, which will now go to parliamentary committee with the opportunity for amendment, if finally passed into law, would represent a major political attack at a time of huge inequality and significant shortages in access to health care, social care, support for independent living, and end of life care, including adequate, high quality palliative care. Despite all this – and the loud opposition of disabled people’s organisations in particular – this measure is still mistakenly understood by some on the left as merely a matter of personal choice: an enabler rather than a threat.

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

HuffPost: I’m Ending My Life Today. Here’s What I Want You To Know Before I Go.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Mary Elizabeth Holliday

I am ending my life at a clinic in Switzerland today. This piece was written three weeks ago. I’ve been trapped for decades in a body that doesn’t function the way other bodies do and I am ready to finally be free.

I’m Ending My Life Today. Here’s What I Want You To Know Before I Go. (archived)

I have multiple chemical sensitivities and fibromyalgia, too, but I’ve never considered “assisted-suicide”. My MCS isn’t as bad as hers was, though. It just seems selfish to me, but that may be because I was brought up in a strict religious household. The biggest problem, here, is that there’s no profit in finding cures.

Disabled need help living, not help dying

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

AS NEW HAMPSHIRE considers legalizing assisted suicide, also referred to as medical aid in dying (MAID), I would like to draw attention to the potential impacts this bill could have on disabled and other marginalized residents.

I was 19 years old the second time I attempted to die by suicide. I had just been diagnosed with a chronic but not life-threatening illness, I had rapidly lost about 70% of my hearing in the middle of completing a music degree, and I was struggling with untreated anorexia that was taking a serious toll on my health.

At my intake appointment with a new therapist a few days after my attempt, I explained my situation and the hopelessness I was feeling. She nodded along, then looked me in the eyes and said something I will never forget:

“I would probably kill myself if I were you.”

She wasn’t the first person to say this to me as I started becoming more noticeably disabled, but she was probably the last person I expected to do so. Now that I work in disability policy, nothing surprises me. I hear stories from other disabled people about doctors pressuring them to sign DNRs because they are assumed to have a low quality of life due to their disability. I get messages on social media from people asking me how to advocate for appropriate pain management when their doctors don’t believe the amount of pain they’re in. I pore over story after story of people like Michael Hickson and Tinslee Lewis having treatment withdrawn, withheld, or threatened because of the pervasive view that it’s better to be dead than disabled.

Jules Good: Disabled need help living, not help dying

Wisconsin Republicans unveil restrictive state-run medical marijuana plan

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Wisconsin Republicans unveil restrictive state-run medical marijuana plan

Wisconsinites would need a doctor’s diagnosis to meet a list of numerous conditions: 

  • Cancer, HIV or AIDS, seizures and epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, severe chronic pain (tightly defined in the legislation), severe chronic nausea, severe muscle spasms, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, chronic motor or vocal tic disorder, Tourette syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, any terminal illness with a probable life expectancy of less than one year
  • A state pharmacist would then prescribe the amount of medical marijuana in various forms, excluding smoking.
  • According to the proposal:
  • Medical cannabis concentrates, oils, tinctures, edibles, pills, topical forms, gels, creams, vapors, patches, liquids, or forms administered by a nebulizer.

Basically, you have to be near death! 🙄

FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

This is why fentanyl is used in black-market opioids in the first place. Users did not demand a substance that is 40 times more potent than heroin for recreational use; prohibitionist policies made it more challenging to procure pain medication, leading pain patients to seek out heroin. Heroin, however, is a crop drug, which makes it expensive to produce, ship, and buy. Fentanyl is synthetic, making it cheaper to produce, ship, and buy. When the law makes it harder to get legal pain pills, everybody adapts, and you get illegal fentanyl with no quality control.

Related:

The opioid crackdown leaves chronic pain patients in limbo

They Call Me a Drug Seeker. Here’s What Their Opioid Policies Did to Me.

The new CDC guidelines aren’t much better.

Euthanasia Used in Canada to Get Rid of Poorest People

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Euthanasia Used in Canada to Get Rid of Poorest People

Related:

Canadians Turn to Euthanasia as Solution to Unbearable Poverty

Why is Canada euthanising the poor?

The problem is neoliberalism—or capitalism, whatever you want to call it! The government doesn’t want to spend more on healthcare (Medicare), welfare, or affordable housing—things that fiscal conservatives, and corporate democrats won’t fund! Yet, there’s always money for war!