Final Exit Nework draws criticism from assisted suicide supporters

Critics charge that the Georgia-based suicide assist organization, Final Exit Network, is undermining national efforts to make “aid in dying” universally accepted and legal.

But supporters and members of FEN said the group merely wants to extend the right to die beyond people who are terminally ill to include those who simply believe their quality of life isn’t worth living.

They believe Georgia — where four members of the group are being charged with assisted suicide after a Georgia Bureau of Investigation sting operation last week — is now the new battleground in the fight to extend this right of “self-deliverance” to those who doctors have not diagnosed as terminally ill.

“We shall keep going — we will fight this case,” said Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society and the author of the 1991 handbook, “Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide.”

“This [Georgia] is a test case. We didn’t look for this. They handed us a case. The public is enormously interested.”

Humphry said the five-year-old organization may have aided in as many as 200 suicides. The GBI this week charged four members of the group in last June’s asphyxiation death of John Celmer, 58, of Cumming. FEN claims a national membership of 3,000.

The GBI said the members — Thomas “Ted” Goodwin, 63, of Kennesaw and Florida; Claire Blehr, 76, of Atlanta; Dr. Lawrence Egbert, 81, and Alec Sheridan, 60 both of Maryland — assisted in the death of Celmer, who was asphyxiated by inhaling helium. They were also charged with tampering with evidence and violating the state Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization (RICO) act.

According to an affidavit, Celmer’s physician, Dr. Brant Carlson, told investigators Celmer had head and neck surgeries that left him cancer-free but Celmer was “concerned about his public appearance” because the surgeries disfigured him.

“John Celmer was making a remarkable recovery” from two surgeries, according to the affidavit.

Dr. Carlson told investigators he last saw Celmer two days before he committed suicide, alledgedly with the help of FEN members. The doctor said he had made an appointment for Celmer to see a psychiatrist three days later, on June 23, to “help John Celmer improve his lifestyle so he could recover quicker.”

Celmer also suffered from arthritis in his hip, according to the affidavit, and his pain “could have been greatly reduced if he had taken his pain medication properly and stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.”

In a second case detailed in the affidavit, investigators allege that an Arizona woman, Jana Van Voorhis, 58, whose April 15, 2007 suicide was assisted by members of FEN, also was not “terminally ill but was mentally unstable.”

On Friday, yet another case of an apparent suicide of someone not terminally ill was linked to FEN when a woman pleaded not guilty in a Stockton, Ca. courtroom to charges that she assisted in the Dec. 8, 2008 suicide of her brother.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the brother had been crippled by a series of strokes and other health problems but was not diagnosed as terminally ill.

Investigators found a helium tank in the family’s home, and a copy of Humphry’s Final Exit handbook. Her attorney said she helped her brother kill himself because “no other resources would work. Mercy, not a crime, was the result.”

But others, who are pushing for acceptance of physician-assisted suicides — including Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the assisted suicide advocate so controversial he’s been nicknamed “Dr. Death” — claim the group has gone too far in assisting people in taking their own lives.

They said the standard should be more in line with Oregon and Washington, which allow physician-assisted suicide for people judged to have no more than six months to live. In Montana, the state is appealing a judge’s decision that physician-assisted suicide is not a crime.

Valerie Vollmar, a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon who has written about physician-assisted death, said she considered the FEN legal case and precedent “a whole different ball of wax” from other efforts to make assisted suicide legal since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 state’s could make their own laws about assisted suicide.

“The people who have supported efforts in Oregon and Washington have been very above board, and professionally qualified,” said Vollmar. “They have not resorted to tactics that are questionable like the ones associated with this group.”

Vollmar said she is stunned by the sweep of the GBI investigation of the assisted suicide group. So far the GBI has searched 14 sites in nine states. “It’s unprecedented by anything I’ve seen in the United States,” she said.

GBI director Vernon Keenan acknowledged Saturday a lot of law enforcement officials were involved. “We knew it was going to be a sensitive case so we weren’t going into it wihtout appropriate resources,” said Keenan.

Dr. Mark P. Mostert, director of the Institute for Disability and Bioethics at Regent University at Virginia Beach, said many groups worldwide advocate assisted suicide, and “some are less radical than others.”

“The Final Exit Network is probably one of the most radical groups,” said Mostert. “They have decided this is a major issue that needs to be brought to the attention of the public.”

Mayer Morganroth, the Michigan attorney who represents Dr. Kevorkian, who served eight years in prison for second degree murder for assisting in a suicide, said physician-assisted suicide is one of the dirty little secrets of the medical profession.

“It’s something that is done all the time but it’s kept private,” said Morganroth. “They [doctors] keep giving terminal patients more and more morphine until it shuts down the body.”

Russel Ogden, a criminology professor at Polytechnic University in British Columbia who wrote an article on helium suicides for the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, said the FEN case could change things nationally.

“The advantage of a prosecution is it will expose the diversity of state laws and may be an initiative to some states to try and harmonize their legislation,” Ogden said.

For the FEN, the landscape has already changed. Frank Kavanaugh, 74, a member of the group and one of Ted Goodwin’s closest friends, said Saturday that the organization and Goodwin are getting a bad rap.

“Many older people who are a part of the network look upon it as an insurance policy, should they ever need it, and should they find themselves in an intolerable situation at the end of their life,” said Kavanaugh.

He the arrests and press coverage are double-edged. On the upside, he said “We have a tremendous effort trying to spread the word nationally about critical end of life issues [and] this is publicity we couldn’t buy.

“The downside is all the organization’s funds have been frozen around the country, and this may very well put us out of business.”

He said he has not talked to Goodwin since his arrest. But he doesn’t believe what he’s read about Goodwin allegedly helping with the suicide of the undercover GBI agent.

“If that turned out to be true [he assisted], I would be quite surprised,” said Kavanaugh. “Because that’s not the Ted Goodwin I know.”