Physician-Assisted Dying is Now Legal in Multiple Places, But the Taboo Persists

A female doctor giving encouragement to an elderly patient.
Taboo topics occupy a difficult place in the history of medicine. Society has long been reticent about confronting stigmatized conditions, forcing many patients to suffer in silence and isolation, often with poorer care.
"Classically, doctors don't purposely kill people. That is really the core of the resistance."
AIDS activists recognized this in the 1980s when they coined the phrase Silence = Death to generate public debate and action over a growing epidemic that until then had existed largely in the shadows. The slogan and the activists behind it were remarkably successful at changing the public discourse.
It is not a lone example. Post-World War II medicine is better because it came to deal more forthrightly with a broad range of medical conditions from conception/abortion, to cancer, to sexually transmitted infections. The most recent issue to face such scrutiny is physician-assisted dying (PAD).
"Classically, doctors don't purposely kill people…that is really the core of the resistance" to PAD from the provider perspective, says Neil Wenger, an internist and ethicist at the University of California Los Angeles who focuses on end-of-life issues.
But from the patient perspective, the option of PAD "provides important psychological benefits ... because it gives the terminally ill autonomy, control, and choice," argued the American Public Health Association in support of Oregon's death with dignity legislation.
Jack Kervorkian, "Dr. Death," was one of the first to broach the subject when few in polite society were willing to do so. The modern era truly began twenty years ago when the citizens of Oregon embraced the option of death with dignity in a public referendum, over the objections of their political leaders.
Expansion of the legal option in North America was incremental until 2016 when the Supreme Court in Canada and legislators in California decided that control over one's body extended to death, at least under certain explicit conditions.
An estimated 18 percent of Americans now live in jurisdictions that provide the legal option of assisted death, but exercising that right can be difficult. Only a fraction of one percent of deaths are by PAD, even in Oregon.
Stakeholder Roles
Few organizations of healthcare professionals in the U.S. support PAD; some actively oppose it, others have switched to a position of neutrality while they study the issue.
One doctor wanted to organize a discussion of physician-assisted dying at his hospital, but administrators forbade it.
But once a jurisdiction makes the political/legal decision that patients have a right to physician-assisted death, what are the roles and responsibilities of medical stakeholders? Can they simply opt out in a vow of silence? Or do organizations bear some sort of obligation to ensure access to that right, no matter their own position, particularly when they are both regulated by and receive operating funds from public sources?
The law in California and other U.S. jurisdictions reflects ambivalence about PAD by treating it differently from other medical practices, says David Magnus, an ethicist at Stanford University School of Medicine. It is allowed but "it's intentionally a very, very burdensome process."
Medical decisions, including withdrawing life support or a do not resuscitate [DNR] order, are between a physician and the patient or guardian. But PAD requires outside consultation and documentation that is quite rigorous, even burdensome, Magnus explains. He recalls one phone consult with a physician who had to re-have a conversation with a patient at home in order to meet the regulatory requirements for a request for assistance in dying. "So it is not surprising that it is utilized so infrequently."
The federal government has erected its own series of barriers. Roused by the experience in Oregon, opponents tried to ban PAD at the national level. They failed but did the next best thing; they prohibited use of federal funds to pay for or even discuss PAD. That includes Medicare, Medicaid, and the large health delivery systems run by the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs. The restrictions parallel those on federal funding for access to abortion and medical marijuana.
Even physicians who support and perform PAD are reluctant to talk about it. They are unwilling to initiate the discussion with patients, says Mara Buchbinder, a bioethicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has interviewed physicians, patients, and families about their experience with assisted dying in Vermont.
"There is a stigma for health care workers to talk about this; they feel that they are not supported," says Buchbinder. She relates how one doctor wanted to organize a discussion of PAD at his hospital, but administrators forbade it. And when the drug used to carry out the procedure became prohibitively expensive, other physicians were not aware of alternatives.
"This just points to large inadequacies in medical preparation around end-of-life conversations," says Buchbinder, a view endorsed by many experts interviewed for this article.
These inadequacies are reinforced when groups like the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC), a 140-member organizational alliance that champions improved end-of-life care, dodges the issue. A spokesman said simply, PAD "is not within the scope of our work."
The American Medical Association has had a policy in place opposing PAD since 1993. Two years ago, its House of Delegates voted to reevaluate their position in light of evolving circumstances. Earlier this year the Council of Ethical and Judicial Affairs recommended continued opposition, but in June, the House of Delegates rejected that recommendation (56 to 44 percent) and directed the Council to keep studying the issue.
Only those with the economic and social capital and network of advocates will succeed in exercising this option.
Kaiser Permanente has provided assisted dying to its members in multiple states beginning with Oregon and has done "a wonderful job" according to supporters of PAD. But it has declined to discuss those activities publicly despite a strenuous effort to get them to do so.
Rather than drawing upon formal structures for leadership and guidance, doctors who are interested in learning more about PAD are turning to the ad hoc wisdom of providers from Oregon and Washington who have prior experience. Magnus compares it with what usually happens when a new intervention or technology comes down the pike: "People who have done it, have mastered it, pass that knowledge on to other people so they know how to do it."
Buchbinder says it becomes an issue of social justice when providers are not adequately trained, and when patients are not ordinarily offered the option of a medical service in jurisdictions where it is their right.
Legalization of PAD "does not guarantee practical access, and well-intentioned policies designed to protect vulnerable groups may at times reinforce or exacerbate health care inequalities," she says. Only those with the economic and social capital and network of advocates will succeed in exercising this option.
O Canada
Canada provides a case study of how one might address PAD. They largely settled on the term medical aid in dying – often shortened to MAID – as the more neutral phrase for their law and civil discourse.
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) decided early on to thread the needle; to not take a position on the core issue of morality but to proactively foster public discussion of those issues as the legal challenge to the ban on assisted dying headed to that country's Supreme Court.
"We just felt that it was too important for the profession to sit on the sidelines and not be part of the discussion," says Jeff Blackmer, CMA's vice president for medical professionalism.
It began by shifting the focus of discussion from a yes/no on the morality of MAID to the questions of, "If the court rules that the current laws are unconstitutional, and they allow assisted dying, how should the profession react and how should we respond? And how does the public think that the profession should respond?"
"I had to wear a flack jacket, a bulletproof vest, and there were plainclothes police officers with guns in the audience because it is really really very controversial."
The CMA teamed up with Maclean's magazine to host a series of five town hall meetings throughout the country. Assisted dying was discussed in a context of palliative care, advanced care planning, and other end-of-life issues.
There was fear that MAID might raise passions and even violence that has been seen in recent controversies over abortion. "I had to wear a flack jacket, a bulletproof vest, and there were plainclothes police officers with guns in the audience because it is really really very controversial," Blackmer recalls. Thankfully there were no major incidents.
The CMA also passed a resolution at its annual meeting supporting the right of its members to opt out of participating in MAID, within the confines of whatever law might emerge.
Once legislation and regulations began taking shape, the CMA created training materials on the ethical, legal, and practical consideration that doctors and patients might face. It ordinarily does not get involved with clinical education and training.
Stefanie Green is president of Canadian Association of MAID Assessors & Providers, a professional medical association that supports those working in the area of assisted dying, educates the public and health care community, and provides leadership on setting medical standards. Green acknowledges the internal pressures the CMA faced, and says, "I do understand their stance is as positive as it gets for medical associations."
Back in the USofA
Prohibitionism – the just say no approach – does not work when a substantial number of people want something, as demonstrated with alcohol, marijuana, opioids for pain relief, and reproductive control. Reason suggests a harm reduction strategy is the more viable approach.
"Right now we're stuck in the worst of all worlds because we've made [PAD] sort of part of medicine, but sort of illicit and sort of shameful. And we sort of allow it, but we sort of don't, we make it hard," says Stanford's Magnus. "And that's a no man's land where we are stuck."
A newly discovered brain cell may lead to new treatments for cognitive disorders
Swiss researchers have found a type of brain cell that appears to be a hybrid of the two other main types — and it could lead to new treatments for brain disorders.
Swiss researchers have discovered a third type of brain cell that appears to be a hybrid of the two other primary types — and it could lead to new treatments for many brain disorders.
The challenge: Most of the cells in the brain are either neurons or glial cells. While neurons use electrical and chemical signals to send messages to one another across small gaps called synapses, glial cells exist to support and protect neurons.
Astrocytes are a type of glial cell found near synapses. This close proximity to the place where brain signals are sent and received has led researchers to suspect that astrocytes might play an active role in the transmission of information inside the brain — a.k.a. “neurotransmission” — but no one has been able to prove the theory.
A new brain cell: Researchers at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering and the University of Lausanne believe they’ve definitively proven that some astrocytes do actively participate in neurotransmission, making them a sort of hybrid of neurons and glial cells.
According to the researchers, this third type of brain cell, which they call a “glutamatergic astrocyte,” could offer a way to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other disorders of the nervous system.
“Its discovery opens up immense research prospects,” said study co-director Andrea Volterra.
The study: Neurotransmission starts with a neuron releasing a chemical called a neurotransmitter, so the first thing the researchers did in their study was look at whether astrocytes can release the main neurotransmitter used by neurons: glutamate.
By analyzing astrocytes taken from the brains of mice, they discovered that certain astrocytes in the brain’s hippocampus did include the “molecular machinery” needed to excrete glutamate. They found evidence of the same machinery when they looked at datasets of human glial cells.
Finally, to demonstrate that these hybrid cells are actually playing a role in brain signaling, the researchers suppressed their ability to secrete glutamate in the brains of mice. This caused the rodents to experience memory problems.
“Our next studies will explore the potential protective role of this type of cell against memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as its role in other regions and pathologies than those explored here,” said Andrea Volterra, University of Lausanne.
But why? The researchers aren’t sure why the brain needs glutamatergic astrocytes when it already has neurons, but Volterra suspects the hybrid brain cells may help with the distribution of signals — a single astrocyte can be in contact with thousands of synapses.
“Often, we have neuronal information that needs to spread to larger ensembles, and neurons are not very good for the coordination of this,” researcher Ludovic Telley told New Scientist.
Looking ahead: More research is needed to see how the new brain cell functions in people, but the discovery that it plays a role in memory in mice suggests it might be a worthwhile target for Alzheimer’s disease treatments.
The researchers also found evidence during their study that the cell might play a role in brain circuits linked to seizures and voluntary movements, meaning it’s also a new lead in the hunt for better epilepsy and Parkinson’s treatments.
“Our next studies will explore the potential protective role of this type of cell against memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as its role in other regions and pathologies than those explored here,” said Volterra.
Scientists implant brain cells to counter Parkinson's disease
In a recent research trial, patients with Parkinson's disease reported that their symptoms had improved after stem cells were implanted into their brains. Martin Taylor, far right, was diagnosed at age 32.
Martin Taylor was only 32 when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, a disease that causes tremors, stiff muscles and slow physical movement - symptoms that steadily get worse as time goes on.
“It's horrible having Parkinson's,” says Taylor, a data analyst, now 41. “It limits my ability to be the dad and husband that I want to be in many cruel and debilitating ways.”
Today, more than 10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson's. Most are diagnosed when they're considerably older than Taylor, after age 60. Although recent research has called into question certain aspects of the disease’s origins, Parkinson’s eventually kills the nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine, a signaling chemical that carries messages around the body to control movement. Many patients have lost 60 to 80 percent of these cells by the time they are diagnosed.
For years, there's been little improvement in the standard treatment. Patients are typically given the drug levodopa, a chemical that's absorbed by the brain’s nerve cells, or neurons, and converted into dopamine. This drug addresses the symptoms but has no impact on the course of the disease as patients continue to lose dopamine producing neurons. Eventually, the treatment stops working effectively.
BlueRock Therapeutics, a cell therapy company based in Massachusetts, is taking a different approach by focusing on the use of stem cells, which can divide into and generate new specialized cells. The company makes the dopamine-producing cells that patients have lost and inserts these cells into patients' brains. “We have a disease with a high unmet need,” says Ahmed Enayetallah, the senior vice president and head of development at BlueRock. “We know [which] cells…are lost to the disease, and we can make them. So it really came together to use stem cells in Parkinson's.”
In a phase 1 research trial announced late last month, patients reported that their symptoms had improved after a year of treatment. Brain scans also showed an increased number of neurons generating dopamine in patients’ brains.
Increases in dopamine signals
The recent phase 1 trial focused on deploying BlueRock’s cell therapy, called bemdaneprocel, to treat 12 patients suffering from Parkinson’s. The team developed the new nerve cells and implanted them into specific locations on each side of the patient's brain through two small holes in the skull made by a neurosurgeon. “We implant cells into the places in the brain where we think they have the potential to reform the neural networks that are lost to Parkinson's disease,” Enayetallah says. The goal is to restore motor function to patients over the long-term.
Five patients were given a relatively low dose of cells while seven got higher doses. Specialized brain scans showed evidence that the transplanted cells had survived, increasing the overall number of dopamine producing cells. The team compared the baseline number of these cells before surgery to the levels one year later. “The scans tell us there is evidence of increased dopamine signals in the part of the brain affected by Parkinson's,” Enayetallah says. “Normally you’d expect the signal to go down in untreated Parkinson’s patients.”
"I think it has a real chance to reverse motor symptoms, essentially replacing a missing part," says Tilo Kunath, a professor of regenerative neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
The team also asked patients to use a specific type of home diary to log the times when symptoms were well controlled and when they prevented normal activity. After a year of treatment, patients taking the higher dose reported symptoms were under control for an average of 2.16 hours per day above their baselines. At the smaller dose, these improvements were significantly lower, 0.72 hours per day. The higher-dose patients reported a corresponding decrease in the amount of time when symptoms were uncontrolled, by an average of 1.91 hours, compared to 0.75 hours for the lower dose. The trial was safe, and patients tolerated the year of immunosuppression needed to make sure their bodies could handle the foreign cells.
Claire Bale, the associate director of research at Parkinson's U.K., sees the promise of BlueRock's approach, while noting the need for more research on a possible placebo effect. The trial participants knew they were getting the active treatment, and placebo effects are known to be a potential factor in Parkinson’s research. Even so, “The results indicate that this therapy produces improvements in symptoms for Parkinson's, which is very encouraging,” Bale says.
Tilo Kunath, a professor of regenerative neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh, also finds the results intriguing. “I think it's excellent,” he says. “I think it has a real chance to reverse motor symptoms, essentially replacing a missing part.” However, it could take time for this therapy to become widely available, Kunath says, and patients in the late stages of the disease may not benefit as much. “Data from cell transplantation with fetal tissue in the 1980s and 90s show that cells did not survive well and release dopamine in these [late-stage] patients.”
Searching for the right approach
There's a long history of using cell therapy as a treatment for Parkinson's. About four decades ago, scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden developed a method in which they transferred parts of fetal brain tissue to patients with Parkinson's so that their nerve cells would produce dopamine. Many benefited, and some were able to stop their medication. However, the use of fetal tissue was highly controversial at that time, and the tissues were difficult to obtain. Later trials in the U.S. showed that people benefited only if a significant amount of the tissue was used, and several patients experienced side effects. Eventually, the work lost momentum.
“Like many in the community, I'm aware of the long history of cell therapy,” says Taylor, the patient living with Parkinson's. “They've long had that cure over the horizon.”
In 2000, Lorenz Studer led a team at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Centre, in New York, to find the chemical signals needed to get stem cells to differentiate into cells that release dopamine. Back then, the team managed to make cells that produced some dopamine, but they led to only limited improvements in animals. About a decade later, in 2011, Studer and his team found the specific signals needed to guide embryonic cells to become the right kind of dopamine producing cells. Their experiments in mice, rats and monkeys showed that their implanted cells had a significant impact, restoring lost movement.
Studer then co-founded BlueRock Therapeutics in 2016. Forming the most effective stem cells has been one of the biggest challenges, says Enayetallah, the BlueRock VP. “It's taken a lot of effort and investment to manufacture and make the cells at the right scale under the right conditions.” The team is now using cells that were first isolated in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin, a major advantage because they’re available in a virtually unlimited supply.
Other efforts underway
In the past several years, University of Lund researchers have begun to collaborate with the University of Cambridge on a project to use embryonic stem cells, similar to BlueRock’s approach. They began clinical trials this year.
A company in Japan called Sumitomo is using a different strategy; instead of stem cells from embryos, they’re reprogramming adults' blood or skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells - meaning they can turn into any cell type - and then directing them into dopamine producing neurons. Although Sumitomo started clinical trials earlier than BlueRock, they haven’t yet revealed any results.
“It's a rapidly evolving field,” says Emma Lane, a pharmacologist at the University of Cardiff who researches clinical interventions for Parkinson’s. “But BlueRock’s trial is the first full phase 1 trial to report such positive findings with stem cell based therapies.” The company’s upcoming phase 2 research will be critical to show how effectively the therapy can improve disease symptoms, she added.
The cure over the horizon
BlueRock will continue to look at data from patients in the phase 1 trial to monitor the treatment’s effects over a two-year period. Meanwhile, the team is planning the phase 2 trial with more participants, including a placebo group.
For patients with Parkinson’s like Martin Taylor, the therapy offers some hope, though Taylor recognizes that more research is needed.
BlueRock Therapeutics
“Like many in the community, I'm aware of the long history of cell therapy,” he says. “They've long had that cure over the horizon.” His expectations are somewhat guarded, he says, but, “it's certainly positive to see…movement in the field again.”
"If we can demonstrate what we’re seeing today in a more robust study, that would be great,” Enayetallah says. “At the end of the day, we want to address that unmet need in a field that's been waiting for a long time.”