Monthly Archives: May 2021

An industry-wideshortage of the main drug used for euthanasia is forcing veterinarians to conserve supplies and consider using alternate methods to humanely end animals lives.

Pentobarbital, the active ingredient in the most commonly used euthanasia drugs for horses and small animals, has been in short supply since the beginning of the year. It was added to the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations list of animal drug shortages this month. The shortage was not reported widely at first; veterinarians around the country began to notice the issue as they tried to replace dwindling supplies, only to learn the drugs were backordered and largely unavailable.

None of us knew. I went to order a bottle; it was out of stock, said Jill McNicol, DVM, of Cool Springs Equine LLC in Leetonia, Ohio. She soon learned from her drug distributor representative that they, too, were scrambling to fill orders.

In response, organizations including the American Veterinary Medical Association, American Association of Equine Practitioners and the Companion Animal Euthanasia Training Academy are urging veterinarians to conserve supplies by adhering strictly to dosage guidelines and have shared guidance on alternative euthanasia methods.

The AAEP is aware of the shortage and has published guidelines for preferred humane euthanasia methods that offer practitioners a number of alternatives, including gunshot, captive bolt or several other combinations of drugs, spokesperson Sally Baker said.

The AAEP joins the AVMA and other veterinary organizations in closely watching how the pentobarbital shortage may affect veterinary care, Baker said in an email. We are not at this time receiving phone calls from our members about this issue, and so right now practitioners appear to be managing the situation. The AAEPs euthanasia guidelines provide information to veterinarians about options other than pentobarbital for the humane euthanasia of horses.

Horse owners should recognize that those alternative methods, while they may involve a different process from pentobarbital euthanasia, are humane in a veterinarians trained hands.

I would encourage horse owners to bear with their veterinarian and be open to alternative methods that this shortage will inevitably necessitate, said Bonnie Kibbie, VMD, cVMA, cIVCA, of Balanced Care Equine in Unionville, Pennsylvania. The AAEPs guidelines for humane euthanasia and accepted methods are well-researched and designed to minimize animal suffering. Things like gunshot or captive bolt sound scary, especially compared to a simple injection, but when done correctly are instantaneous and do not cause suffering or pain.

While veterinarians hope the shortage will be resolved this summer, the FDAs Center for Veterinary Medicine said it is too soon to speculate on exactly when pentobarbital and pentobarbital combination drugs will be readily available again.

FDAs Center for Veterinary Medicine is aware of the issue and has reached out to sponsors/manufacturers of pentobarbital products to determine the extent of the shortage and possible avenues for resolution, spokesperson Anne Norris said in an email. Although we continue to evaluate the situation, it appears that various market factors are impacting the supply of finished product.All parties are working cooperatively with the FDA and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to address the availability of pentobarbital active pharmaceutical ingredient. This is an ongoing process, and until the agency learns more, it would be premature to speculate about when the shortage will be resolved.

Euthanasia solution is still being manufactured, she noted.

Until the supply chain is back to normal, however, veterinarians are taking extra steps to preserve their supplies.

To conserve euthanasia solution, a wise choice is to dial back how much is used, CAETA founder Kathleen Cooney advised in a recent blog post addressing the shortage. When euthanasia is warranted to end patient suffering, only using the recommended dose is called for.Many practitioners give a little extra to ensure death is complete, but its really not needed.

McNicol, who treats both small animals and horses, says she and her fellow veterinarians have been able to stretch supplies thus far by adhering strictly to AVMA guidelines, and they are getting new orders, albeit infrequently. Veterinarians are doing their best to ensure that the euthanasia process remains as smooth as possible for animals and their owners alike, she said.

From a veterinarians perspective, we deal with [medication shortages] often; its just usually not so impactful, McNicol said. The reason pentobarbital has been used so long is its worked so well.

Most of the alternative drug combinations that can be used in place of pentobarbital solution involve anesthetizing the animal first, which, particularly for small animals, changes the look, the time and potentially the cost of the process, all of which could be upsetting for the pet owner.

Be kind to your vet, she said. Ive put down a lot of animalsa lot of horses, a lot of small animals over the yearsand its still tough. When its harder on us, its harder on the client; when its harder on the client, its harder on us.

Link:

The Chronicle of the Horse - The Chronicle of the Horse

Photo credit: Piron Guillaume, via Unsplash.

In an essay in Slate in March 2020, Dahlia Lithwick bemoaned a legal strategy to protect women and unborn children from abortion. Her commentary was on the legal case of June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, decided by the Supreme Court, which ultimately rejected by a vote of 5 to 4 the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that required abortionists to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of their abortion clinic.

The legal issues raised are labyrinthine, although the principles are very straightforward. Louisiana required abortionists to be close enough to a hospital in which they had admitting privileges to protect the safety of the women undergoing abortion. Regulations of this nature are common for physicians performing dangerous procedures outside of a hospital setting and the rationale is quite obvious. Should a woman who was a victim of abortion suffer severe bleeding during the procedure, it is obviously vitally important that she be near a hospital and that the doctor involved in the procedure have privileges at that hospital to care for the complication caused. The law also had the effect of making it more difficult for abortionists to commit abortions in Louisiana which obviously protects unborn children who would otherwise be their victims.

Abortion proponents characteristically lobbied against the safety and welfare of women just as they of course lobby against the lives of the children who are aborted. Lithwick inadvertently gets to the heart of the issue:

Once again, womens reproductive freedom is more concerned with doctors than women. Following the briefing and oral arguments inJune Medical,the Louisiana case that calls into question the continued force ofPlanned Parenthood v. CaseyandWhole Womans Health,its now quite clear that the primary questions opponents of reproductive freedom are asking have nothing to do with maternal autonomy or decision-making, and everything to do with abortion providers and whether they are bad people and unfit doctors.

That abortionists are unfit doctors is self-evident. The practice of medicine by its very nature precludes the deliberate taking of innocent human life. Deliberate killing is never a medical procedure, and merely because a licensed physician commits it for profit in a legally sanctioned environment doesnt make abortion a bona fide medical treatment.

The medical profession should take a clear stand on this issue: doctors who deliberately kill whether by abortion or by physician-assisted suicide or by euthanasia are not practicing medicine when they kill. Medical practice always entails the maintenance of health, the treatment of disease, and the relief of suffering. Ending the life of a patient or of the child in his mothers womb is neither the maintenance of health nor treatment of a disease nor the alleviation of any suffering. It is simply the killing of an innocent unwanted child.

I am realistic, of course, and I realize that in our current political and moral environment the practice of abortion will continue to be sanctioned widely by the medical profession. Abortion is generally sanctioned in the U.S., physician-assisted suicide is gaining acceptance in many nations and is permitted in several states, and euthanasia has been accepted in many countries and undoubtably will eventually be accepted in the United States. Their acceptance as medical practice is a grave development and reflects shame on our culture and particularly shame on the medical profession.

If abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are to be sanctioned in our rapidly degenerating culture, I plead with the medical profession to wash its hands of any kind of deliberate killing. If the American people insist upon abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia, doctors as healers should refuse to play any role.

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Are Abortion, Physician-Assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia Medical Practice? - Discovery Institute

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

Sign up for afree trial to The Week magazineby Monday and youll get a free coffee table book, The Art of The Week, as well as your first six issuesfree. The Art of the Week contains more than 250 sketches and paintings by our cover artist Howard McWilliam, spanning more than 30 years of political coverage. Visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter promo code HOLIDAY

In this weeks episode, we discuss:

A company which rents out clothes instead of selling them is experiencing a surge in demand as lockdown comes to an end. Is fashion about to undergo the sort of cultural shift as music, with people subscribing to subscribing to a library instead of owning individual outfits or tracks? And if people really are willing to borrow clothes, how will this affect what we wear?

A surge in demand for consumer electronics, combined with disruption to supply chains and a combination of freak circumstances has led to a severe shortage of microchips. The knock-on effects has resulted in delays to production lines building everything from cars to games consoles - and is likely to lead to higher prices

A private members bill which received its first reading in the House of Lords this week proposes legalising assisted dying in England and Wales for adults who are terminally ill, mentally competent and in the final six months of their life. Its the first time the issue has been debated in Westminster for more than five years - and while it is unlikely to become law without government backing, it restarts the debate at a time when public opinion appears to be shifting.

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Fashion for rent, a chip shortage and euthanasia - The Week UK

The edifice of public support for euthanasia is built on a lie, that people know what they might want in the face of dying. The truth is almost all of us dont, especially in a culture where there is a marked taboo around death.

Our inability to consider broader risks in the wake of the pandemic highlights our aversion to even consider facing our mortality. This feeds further misconceptions about painful death and end-of-life care, corrupting informed debate about assisted dying.

It is quite the contradiction when hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on suicide prevention, yet the act is deemed perfectly rational in the face of life-limiting illness. Existential suffering remains at the heart of both.

There is overwhelming public support for assisted-dying laws. Public surveys in recent years hover around ninety per cent in favour.

Only this month South Australia passed a Bill in its Upper House. Victoria and Western Australia already have laws permitting assisted dying. Draft legislation in Queensland offers earlier access and includes the amorphous concept of mental trauma as a category. New South Wales is likely to introduce a bill in the coming months.

Doctors and religious groups are increasingly the last line against laws for assisted dying, defending what French author Michel Houllebecq calls the honour of civilisation. The Australian Medical Association is officially opposed but says it will cooperate with the public will, as long there is a right for individual doctors to undertake conscientious objection.

Yet the public arent entirely aware that the pain most people associate with choosing an early death is usually more psychic than physical.

We wrongly associate those who choose euthanasia with intolerable physical pain, but they usually report an existential suffering, of being a burden or feeling abandoned by loved ones, says Associate Professor Leeroy Williams, President of the Australia and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine.

The existential torture is worsened in a society that does not have obvious idioms to process suffering. The modern climate is more therapeutic than religious.

The steep rise I see in diagnoses like post-traumatic stress disorder is in part because a psychological language replaces a lost metaphysical one. This is especially the case if life is framed as a quest for pleasure and its associated parallel, an avoidance of suffering.

In a pandemic era when the application of science in public policy has become central, one branch of medicine remains sidelined in the euthanasia debate.

That is the practice of palliative care. While doctors saving lives rightly enjoy hero status, helping people die better is neither sexy nor well paid.

Williams says its not just the public. Most health professionals are also poorly trained in end-of-life care. Monash University devotes one day in a six-year course to its medical students. Other medical schools or training programs dont fare much better.

Yet in the past two decades managing nerve or bone pain has become more advanced. The delivery methods for artificial feeding have improved. There are also better strategies for minimising vomiting associated with cancer medications.

It is also the branch of palliative care that is best aware of the inaccuracies associated with giving a prognosis. Many patients are told they only have six or twelve months to live, yet survive years or even decades. A sizeable minority of patients, as much as between 15 and 20 per cent I am told, who are under palliative care are discharged home and not to the Pearly Gates.

Given how poor our feelings are in computing probability and mathematics, you can bet a percentage of sufferers who go through with assisted dying would have otherwise survived. This is especially the case in the draft laws drawn up in Queensland where if youve received advice that death is likely within twelve months the assisted dying laws may apply.

Discussions about death are taboo in Western culture, something that is brought into striking contrast when burning pyres of corpses are broadcast from India. Cultures like India more readily accept that death is thoroughly intertwined with life.

In a world where assisted dying is legal, doctors are forced to contend with a new medical environment where assisted dying becomes thoroughly intertwined with the curing of illness. The so called double effect of increasing pain medications like morphine knowing they are likely to induce death, something I have undertaken in hospital wards and in nursing homes, is in a very different legal and moral territory.

While politicians and well-meaning advocates are cautiously assuring us of the opposite, there can be little doubt there is indeed a slippery slope.

In Netherlands there is now the tired of living movement where there are demands that any elderly person over a certain age should be allowed to administer drugs leading to their death. In Belgium, fifteen thousand deaths have occurred throughout the process since the law was instituted in 2002.

There are multiple cases being fought in Europe over people euthanased for diagnoses like autism, deemed a form of unbearable suffering and therefore meeting the legal test.

It is generally accepted that people should be allowed to do what they like with their bodies and their lives as long as they dont harm others.

But a key facet of modern conservatism must be placing limits on the corrosive hyperindividualism of progressives, including many on the moderate side of the Liberal party.

This principle of autonomy reaches its zenith for rational suicide.

The act is fundamentally at odds with the field of mental health which frames suicide as pathological. There is a marked societal contradiction in prioritising suicide prevention and euthanasia simultaneously. We consider existential suffering unacceptable when there is no defined life-limiting illness, yet perfectly rational in the alternative setting.

But we live in a culture that struggles to process suffering and avoids all confrontation with death. Few people know what they might think about death when faced with its stark reality.

The polls suggesting widespread euthanasia support, views which inform enthusiastic legislation, wrongly assume the opposite.

Read more here:

The lies of euthanasia - The Spectator Australia

TRAVERSE CITY, MI A black bear that caused mischief in Traverse City for months before it was relocated in April apparently got homesick, the Associated Press reports.

A radio collar indicates that the bear trekked 90 miles back to Grand Traverse County from the Alpena area, according to AP and the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

The bear had raided bird feeders and trash cans, and evaded several capture attempts by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources before he was finally lured by birdseed in April. Wildlife officials gave him a lip tattoo, ear tag and an electronic collar before he was taken to the less populous eastern Lower Peninsula.

RELATED: Black bear making mischief in Northern Michigan city for months captured by DNR

The DNR used weekly plane flyovers to track the collar heading back west.

For some reason he likes the Lake Michigan coast, said Steve Griffith, a wildlife biologist for the DNRs Traverse City office.

Sightings of the ear-tagged bear have been reported by residents, but there hasnt been any plundering any birdfeeders or trashcans.

Hes stubborn. But hopefully hes a little bit reformed, Griffith said. Well keep our fingers crossed.

In April, Griffith said the DNR might have to consider euthanasia if the bear showed up in neighborhoods again.

Michigan is home to approximately 12,000 black bears. About 10,000 live in the Upper Peninsula, while 2,000 are in the Lower Peninsula, according to the DNR.

The bears can be attracted to residences by the smell of birdfeed even if the feeder is currently empty grills, trash and pet food, Griffith said.

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Homesick black bear treks 90 miles back to Northern Michigan town after DNR relocation - MLive.com