Warning From a Minneapolis Meeting

The New York Times reported:

 

When 12,000 public health professionals gathered in Minneapolis last week for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in the first administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, issued a pointed warning about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“If R.F.K. has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people’s willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines,” Dr. Adams said. “I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation’s health, on our nation’s economy, on our global security.”

Now, Mr. Kennedy, a vocal skeptic of vaccines, is in a position to have significant influence, and over a broad range of policy. Mr. Trump’s sweeping electoral victory, with Mr. Kennedy at his side, is — in the eyes of their supporters — not only a mandate but also a repudiation of the public health establishment that has long kept Mr. Kennedy at bay.

Mr. Kennedy’s worldview is embodied in two of his most frequent refrains: “There is nothing more profitable for much of the health care system than a sick child” and “Public health agencies have become sock puppets for the industries they are supposed to regulate.”

John Kelly Provides Written Testimony Opposing Assisted Suicide

John Kelly, Boston Globe Photo

There is no way to contain eligibility to a narrow set of people. Especially when thousands of disabled Americans now live with conditions that in some states are seen as “worse than death.” Anorexia nervosa and diabetes can now qualify as terminal conditions. Once death is accepted as a positive outcome of medical care, it inevitably gets offered to more and more people.

The problem for us disabled people is that we are already treated badly in the medical system. As medicine has focused increasingly on patient “quality-of-life” as a barometer of life-worthiness, death has been re-characterized as a benefit to an ill or disabled individual. Most physicians (82%,  a 2020 Harvard study found) view our “quality-of-life” as worse than non-disabled people.

Jesse Bethke Gomez Regarding Physician Assisted Suicide

In my healthcare career in service to people with apparent, and non-apparent disabilities and to older adults, I am deeply concerned about why legislation to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Minnesota is especially harmful to people with disabilities and also to older adults. The proposed bill would exacerbate many complex problems in healthcare, and would result in the devaluation of people with disabilities and older adults.

Physician-assisted suicide is opposed by the National Council on Independent Living, the National Council on Disability and the American Medical Association. In my role as Executive Director of Metropolitan Center for Independent Living, we provide services to people with apparent and nonapparent disabilities in advancing independent living. I join these national organizations and the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Healthcare in opposition to this harmful legislation that has the potential to place in great risk people with disabilities and older adults.