U.S. Life Expectancy Reaches New High, But Suicide Rate Rises

U.S. Life Expectancy Reaches New High, But Suicide Rate Rises


BY A. PAWLOWSKIAs major diseases become a little less lethal, American life expectancy has reached a new high, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. A baby born in the U.S. in 2012 can expect to live 78.8 years on average — or just over a month longer than a baby born the previous year.

As usual, women can expect to live longer: 81.2 years, compared to 76.4 years for men. “Although changes in mortality are relatively small from one year to the next, long-term trends show the apparent progress in reducing mortality,” the CDC said in the report.

The overall death rate fell by 1.1 percent, with most deaths caused by heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide. The number of Americans succumbing to eight of those 10 leading causes of death “decreased significantly,” the National Center for Health Statistics found. But the suicide rate rose by 2.4 percent, something that’s puzzling researchers.

http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscm...ux-720-520.jpgCDC/NCHS, NATIONAL VITAL STATISTICS SYSTEM, MORTALITY
The ten leading causes of death in 2012. IN-DEPTH

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Better health care will make it so that more people can live longer.

That doesn't mean that all of them will want too.

• Terminally ill woman plans to die November 1

Terminally ill woman fighting for others’ rights to end their own lives

Published October 08, 2014 FoxNews.com

http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncsta....jpg?ve=1&tl=1Courtesy Brittany Maynard (©2012 Arrowood Photography)

When doctors told Brittany Maynard that her days were numbered due to a progressive brain tumor, the 29-year-old decided to take charge of her life, MyFox8.com reported.

Maynard has chosen November 1 as the day she will die.

After her wedding last year, Maynard began having severe headaches. In January, doctors diagnosed her with grade II Astrocytoma— a severe brain tumor— while she was vacationing with her husband. Doctors initially gave her 10 years to live, according to the report.

“I have to tell you, when you’re 29 years old, being told you have that kind of timeline still feels like being told you’re going to die tomorrow,” Maynard said in a video posted to her website, The Brittany Fund.

Maynard’s tumor ended up progressing to glioblastoma multiforme, the deadliest form of cancer with an average life expectancy of 14 months. Doctors told Maynard her death would likely be slow and painful.

But the newlywed decided to choose her own ending.

Days after her husband’s October 30 birthday, Maynard will end her life using medication prescribed by a doctor in Oregon, surrounded by her husband, mother and best friend, MyFox8.com reported.

Maynard’s family moved with her to Oregon earlier this year because the state’s “Death with Dignity Act” allows people to choose to die using medication, according to Maynard’s website. Since the act was instated in 1997, more than 750 people have taken advantage of it.

During the last days of her life, Maynard plans to raise awareness of end-of-life rights by working with life-rights advocacy organization Compassion & Choices and The Brittany Maynard Fund.

“There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die,” Maynard told People.com. “I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease but there’s not. … Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.”

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Death With Dignity advocate Brittany Maynard dies in Oregon

SFGate

- ‎18 minutes ago‎

Brittany Maynard, the East Bay newlywed who touched off a national debate over whether terminal patients wishing to avoid suffering should have access to life-ending drugs, has died in Portland, Ore...

Brittany Maynard’s death could spur action on assisted suicide in California

BY JEREMY B. WHITE
JWHITE@SACBEE.COM
11/03/2014 2:01 PM
11/03/2014 5:17 PM

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-...0/Brittany.JPG

This photo provided by the Maynard family shows Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill woman who died under Oregon’s law that allows the terminally ill to end their own lives. Maynard, who was weeks shy of her 30th birthday, had to move from California to Oregon to be given the lethal drugs legally.MAYNARD FAMILY/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




Prodded by a terminally ill California woman’s public decision to end her life in Oregon, lawmakers are again mulling legislation that would allow Californians to usher in their own deaths.

Brittany Maynard, who intentionally and legally ingested lethal drugs on Saturday, was in her early 20s when the California Legislature last debated an aid-in-dying bill. At 29, her losing bout with lethal cancer led her to cross state lines and made her the latest public face of an issue that raises vexing policy questions and stirs deep ethical quandaries.

California lawmakers might soon have to grapple with those questions. Maynard has recorded a message for legislators in which, from beyond the grave, she will urge them to act. Multiple lawmakers have discussed potential legislation, staff members said.

Advocates believe their time has come. They point to polls suggesting that more people view expanding end-of-life options as an act of mercy. They argue that Oregon’s aid-in-dying law has set a precedent for making the policy work, with 803 people availing themselves of the option between 1998 and the end of June.

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“The visibility of the issue is so much more,” said Toni Broaddus, the California campaign director for the organization Compassion and Choices. “We’re seeing a lot more media coverage around end-of-life issues in general in part because of baby boomers dealing with their parents’ deaths and starting to think about their own.”

Policies addressing death carry an emotional heft like few others.

Debate last year over a bill allowing doctors to inform severely ill patients about their existing right to end-of-life counseling options spurred a raw, soul-baring conversation on the Assembly floor.

Lawmakers reflected on the suffering of loved ones and questioned what constitutes a terminal diagnosis – two talked about their mothers outliving six-month death sentences by years – and 20 voted against the measure.

“This is too complex of an issue to be dealt with in this way,” said Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside.

If even talking to loved ones about impending death seemed a step too far to some, offering to give people the tools to purposefully end their lives promises to provoke a profound backlash.

Past bills that would have permitted Californians to take their own lives fomented furious opposition, particularly from the Catholic Church, and failed. The most recent attempt was shelved in the waning moments of the 2007 session. The year before, a similar measure withered in committee.

During the last legislative attempt, then-Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez offered the measure a significant boost by lending his support.

It was not enough to surmount the opposition, including denunciations from pulpits that were encouraged by Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and that Núñez said prompted a concerned phone call from his churchgoing mother.

Núñez is among the advocates saying the landscape has changed and pushing another look at aid in dying. His mother has come around, he said, joining other devout Californians who accept the concept. He likened the issue to wrenching debates over same-sex marriage, both for how rapidly opinions on same-sex marriage have shifted and because the issue entailed not just questions of prudent policy but deeper moral convictions.

“The decision people made to vote or not vote on same-sex marriage was a very personal decision, as this will be,” Núñez said. “People made the decision on same-sex marriage not based on what was going to happen in the election – these issues transcend politics.”

Opposition to the idea goes beyond religious or ethical objections.

Death’s finality presents too great a risk of people ending their lives prematurely, with recovery on the horizon, or being prodded toward the decision by caregivers and family members, critics say.

“The number of people who are at risk of significant harm (is) so much larger than the people who would be helped,” said Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. “If assisted suicide is legal, some people’s lives will be ended without their consent through mistakes and abuse.”

Offering death as an option would influence not just patients, Golden said, but also doctors and insurance companies who help guide end-of-life decisions.

“There is a deadly mix between our broken profit-driven health system and the option of assisted suicide, which will become the cheapest so-called treatment,” Golden said. “Will insurers do the right thing or the cheap thing?”

Another likely adversary would be the California Medical Association, a formidable lobbying group that has repeatedly affirmed its opposition to physician-assisted suicide over the last two decades.

The group declined to comment on a potential legislative push in 2015.

But a document laying out the organization’s point of view details several reasons for opposing assisted suicide: the potential for abuse, the risk of initiating broader acceptance of suicide, the uncertainty of a diagnosis given how swiftly someone’s condition can change, and the violation of the physician’s fundamental precept of “do no harm.”

“Proponents seek the moral authority of the medical profession to legitimize an attempt to overturn ancient prohibitions against taking the life of another,” the document states. “Placing physicians in the dual role of healer/killer would undermine trust in the physician-patient relationship, since patients may fear that physicians will steer them toward a lethal injection.”

Acknowledging the prospect of a heavy lift in the Legislature, activists have not ruled out pursuing aid-in-dying via a ballot initiative.

Broaddus said Compassion and Choices has been ginning up interest with local organizing, including reaching out to receptive district attorneys and city governments.

“The ground strategy for us is still going strong, and we expect it will escalate over the next few months while we look at our statewide options,” Broaddus said. “We are convinced we can move this forward in California.”

Opponents reject that prediction. Golden said the idea appeals to people in the abstract, but “you need to learn about the issue, you need to read the fine print” – the uncomfortable details of hastened death.

Brittany Maynard will not live to see either outcome. In a video recorded before her death, separate from the one that will be played for legislators, she talks about her declining health before saying that “the worst thing that can happen to me is I wait too long.”

“If all my dreams came true, I would somehow survive this,” Maynard says. “But I most likely won’t.”

Call Jeremy B. White, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5543.

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