MCIL News Release Archive
				National ADAPT
				M C I L
				Tennessee ADAPT
				Not Dead Yet!
				B F M S

March 10, 1997

Two disability rights groups, Not Dead Yet and ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), have filed a Friends of the Court Brief opposing physician assisted suicide in a prominent Florida case. The Florida Supreme Court will consider the case of McIver v. Krischer. Dr. Cecil McIver has asked the court's permission to provide a lethal drug to his patient, Mr. Charlie Hall, who has the AIDS virus, and who wishes to have the means to end his own life.

Not Dead Yet is a national organization of people with severe disabilities who oppose the legalization of assisted suicide, because it singles out people with significant health impairments for assistance to die. Legalizing this practice, according to Not Dead Yet, will deny to people with disabilities and chronic health conditions the equal protection of laws and medical practice standards automatically applied to healthy individuals who are suicidal. ADAPT is a national organization demanding a national system of non-institutional home care.

Given the pervasive prejudice against people with severe disabilities, and the absence of adequate health care and support services, abuses will occur and result in the wrongful deaths of numerous disabled persons, old and young. Courts have already determined that people with non-terminal disabilities are the same as people with terminal illnesses.

The Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court, in approving Hall's request, quoted from Bouvia v. Superior Court, a 1986 assisted suicide case. The judge wrote, "Does it matter if it be 15 to 20 years, 15 to 20 months, or 15 to 20 days, if such life has been physically destroyed and its quality, dignity and purpose gone?" This reasoning appears to support a "better dead than disabled" mentality, which will lead to coerced or involuntary "suicides".

"We support people's right to choice. But when suicide is elevated above many other choices, and when it's given legal sanction, dangerous logic is at work," says Diane Coleman,"We hope the Florida Supreme Court will keep killing out of the hands of doctors."

Local, Memphis:

Tim Wheat
(901) 726-6404 * (901) 726-6521 fax
1633 Madison Avenue  - Memphis TN 38104

National:

Steve Drake
Rochester, NY.

Diane Coleman
(708) 209-1500 ext. 11
7521 Madison St., - Forest Park, IL 60130

Lucy Gwin
Editor of Mouth
(716) 244-6599

The Memphis Center for Independent Living
1633 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 726-6404 v/tty (901) 726-6521 fax
mcil@mcil.org 

MCIL is a United Way of the Mid-South member Agency

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