Thaddeus Mason Pope is an attorney.

Medical aid in dying: time for evidence-based legislation

Conditions and Diseases
January 16, 2024

Medical aid in dying (MAID) is poised to be one of the hottest political health care issues of 2024. As in 2023, more than a dozen states will hold both impassioned hearings in legislative chambers and equally fervent debates in the community. Already, nearly twenty states have introduced bills to authorize MAID this year. They seek to join the eleven states that already authorize MAID for 73 million Americans (California, …

Read more…

Medical aid in dying: time for evidence-based legislation

Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment over family objections

Conditions and Diseases
August 24, 2022

“We can keep your loved one alive. but we won’t. Even though you think their life is worth living, we do not.”

The first time I helped a hospital convey this type of offensive message to a patient’s family, it deeply humbled me. My service on a hospital medical appropriateness review committee forged charitable respect for alternative viewpoints that now pervades my work to protect patient rights.

Hospital review committees adjudicate medical …

Read more…

Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment over family objections

Avoiding late-stage dementia with advance directives for stopping eating and drinking

Conditions and Diseases
October 6, 2019

On October 1, 2019, Nevada began allowing individuals to avoid living in late-stage dementia. The new statute recognizes the legitimacy of an advance directive that instructs health care providers to stop hand feeding food and fluid by mouth. Individuals have already been completing such directives in New York and Washington. The Nevada law is the first that explicitly authorizes such instructions.

Growing …

Read more…

Avoiding late-stage dementia with advance directives for stopping eating and drinking