October 26, 2011

Aloha;

If you wish to contact Dr. Robert Nathanson, please phone Compassion & Choices at 1-800-247-7421 to speak with a counselor or to leave a message. They will return your call as quickly as possible. For more information about the Compassion & Choices End-of-Life Consultation services, go HERE

The most-recent media stories of note are archived HERE

The full page ad promoting our recent (October 5, 2011) public presentation was published twice in the Honolulu Star Advertiser. Please scroll down for that. The video of the 2-hour “Standing Room Only” event, Physician Aid In Dying in the State of Hawaii, may be viewed HERE

October 9, 2011

HDWDS Communication Director, Scott Foster and Kathryn Tucker, JD, Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion & Choices after the momentous announcement.

Yes, it’s all true! As announced during our historic October 5, 2011, event at the Hawai`i State Capitol (below), Hawaii now becomes the fourth state in the US where terminally ill patients can openly ask their doctors for aid in dying, and doctors may openly respond. Read our detailed media release HERE. Please contact your own GP or another physician to discuss your wishes.

Things are rapidly evolving and we will continue to only send emails with particularly important and time-sensitive updates. Try come back here often to learn the most current news. As you might imagine, we’re being deluged with calls for information. If you do not find the information you seek here, please feel free to contact our Communications Director, Scott Foster by email or phone 808-988-1708 on O`ahu.

Read the important new Hawai`i Fact Sheets

prepared by Compassion & Choices:

Hawaii Aid in Dying HERE

Why Physician Support Aid in Dying HERE

Aid in Dying & People with Disabilities HERE

Aid in Dying Polling HERE

Is Physician-Assisted Dying

Already Legal in the State of Hawaii?

You are invited to a free conference to discuss this important issue.
Open to the press and public.

When: Wednesday, October 5, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Where: Hawaii State Capitol, Main Auditorium

PANEL CHAIR: Representative Blake Oshiro,
Hawaii House Majority Leader

KEY PRESENTER: Professor Kathryn Tucker, Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion & Choices served as lead counsel representing terminally-ill patients and physicians in several landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases.

PANEL MEMBERS
- Eve Anderson, former State Representative
- Mitch Burns, Attorney of Elder Law
- Dante Carpenter, Chair, Democratic Party of Hawaii
- Scott Foster, Co-Founder, Hawai`i Death With Dignity Society
- Ernest “Juggie” Heen, former State Representative
- Pamela G. Lichty, MPH, Board Member, ACLU of Hawaii
- Robert Nathanson, MD, a founder of Hospice Hawaii
- Robert Orfali, Author of Death with Dignity
- Laura Thompson, Hawaii community volunteer
- Deborah Zysman, MPH, President, Hawaii Public Health Association

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
by Kathryn Tucker, JD

Hawaii’s existing law already empowers patients to make autonomous decisions regarding their end-of-life care and treatment for pain. Further, Hawaii does not have a criminal prohibition against aid in dying. Hawaii law also contains a unique provision that gives physicians broad discretion when treating terminally-ill patients. Specifically, Hawaii law provides that:

“When a duly licensed physician or osteopathic physician pronounces a person affected with any disease hopeless and beyond recovery and gives a written certificate to that effect to the person affected or the person’s attendant nothing herein shall forbid any person from giving or furnishing any remedial agent or measure when so requested by or on behalf of the affected person.” — Hawaii Revised Statute § 453-1

Added in 1909, the purpose of this provision was to give terminally-ill patients the option to obtain treatment that had not yet been approved by the government. This provision gives terminally-ill patients significant freedom of choice to determine their course of medical care at the end of life. Interestingly, the statute also appears to encompass a patient’s choice of aid in dying.

Under the law, a physician may give or furnish any measure requested by a patient who is “hopeless or beyond recovery.” With aid in dying, a physician prescribes medication that may then be ingested by a terminally ill patient to bring about a peaceful death; a physician does not administer the medication. Supported by this framework, a standard of care already exists that accepts other life-ending practices such as withdrawing life-sustaining treatment, stopping of all food and fluids, and palliative sedation. It is reasonable to assume that amidst this background Hawaii is a jurisdiction in which physicians can provide aid in dying subject to standard of care.

Read the media release HERE

Death With Dignity
The Case for Legalizing Physician-Assisted Dying and Euthanasia
By Robert Orfali

“Orfali approaches this agonizing subject with common sense informed by extensive research and an acute sensitivity to the dilemmas faced by dying patients and their families and doctors. The result is a thought-provoking contribution to the debate over this explosive issue. A lucid, powerful argument for letting dying patients go gentle into that good night.” — Kirkus Star Review

Learn more about this exceptional new book HERE.