Fasting to Death The disclosure came 43 minutes into the hour-long radio program about aid-in-dying laws. Diane Rehm, the 77-year-old public radio host whose call-in show reaches 2.5 million listeners, revealed that her ailing husband, John, had hastened his death by stopping eating and drinking. She broke the news quietly, in a matter-of-fact way, and quickly returned to her guests–advocates for laws allowing doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for competent terminally ill patients, like her husband, who request it. But Rehm’s announcement, later amplified on NBC News, shed light on terminal fasting or VSAD (voluntarily stopping eating or drinking) as it is called in the medical literature. It’s a legal and surprisingly simple option for speeding up death. And people seem to do it more often than most of us realize, often with the support of doctors or hospice programs. John Rehm had advanced Parkinson’s disease. “He no longer had the use of his arms, his legs, his hands,” Diane Rehm told her listeners. “He could no longer feed himself or walk.” He told his doctor he was ready to die. continue below psychologytoday/blog/changing-the-way-we-die/201407/fasting-death #psychology #news
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 15:11:06 +0000
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