Over the past several weeks, death seems to have lurked in my life.
My cousin died just over a month ago. The 23-year-old daughter of my wife’s friend passed away. A colleague suffered the unimaginable loss of his high school senior son.
Maybe that drew me to Jennifer Brown’s exceptional article on a Denver doctor working with patients suffering from severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN) seeking medical aid-in-dying (MAID) drugs.
It is a subject that sets off immediate emotional reactions for people on both sides of the debate. Some are vehemently opposed and believe it is tantamount to a crime to prescribe MAID drugs to someone suffering from a mental disorder. Others feel that self-autonomy is most important for those facing imminent death.
While I do not discount the arguments from the former, after reading the case presentation in the Journal of Eating Disorders that created the uproar I am firmly in the latter category. Providing the MAID option makes sense in the extraordinary circumstances detailed.
