A Vermont doctor who fought hard against the legalization of assisted suicide gave us the letter linked here: pas website c and c letter to drs. He received it from an apparently new organization calling itself Compassion and Choices Vermont. Its website, linked in the letter, is not yet up and running.
According to Wikipedia, “Compassion & Choices is the successor to the Hemlock Society,[4] founded by Derek Humphry in 1980; the original group was dedicated to “fighting for voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to be made legal for terminally and hopelessly ill adults.” Two choice-in-dying rights organizations emerged from the Hemlock Society, and were merged in 2005: Compassion in Dying and End-of-Life Choices The organization changed its name, according to Humphry, for reasons of ‘political correctness’.” This is a nationwide movement that has lobbied everywhere but has succeeded in enacting assisted suicide laws in only three states, Oregon, Washington, and now Vermont. Dick Walters of Patient Choices of Vermont was quite correct when he stated that enactment in Vermont was a victory for “the movement”.
In the letter the logo of Compassion and Choices Vermont is placed beside the logo of Patient Choices, the Vermont group that successfully lobbied for the enactment of the law. The two groups are one and the same. They always were, and they are now.
Make no mistake: Vermont doctors will not write the majority of prescriptions for poison. Only one practicing Vermont physician, Diana Bernard, testified in favor of the legalization bill. Doctors who are among the minority of death-prescribing doctors in Oregon will write the prescriptions. These doctors are not all experts in end of life care. They are Compassion and Choice advocates.
The doctor signing this letter is a naturopath with an office in Portland, Oregon. We could find absolutely no online patient reviews of her practice.
We find it ironic that a person whose specialty is alternative, “natural” medicine would be advocating for and possibly writing prescriptions for entirely unnatural drugs to bring about entirely unnatural deaths.
We thank Vermont doctor Brian Kilpatrick for allowing, and indeed wanting, his name to remain in this posting of the letter.