Harvard bioethics conference focuses on physician-assisted death
When Dan Diaz’s 29-year-old wife, Brittany Maynard, finally slipped away from him, she fell first into a drug-induced sleep and then deeper, into death. Though Diaz mourned her passing, which occurred in November 2014, he was grateful that she had avoided the “torture” that would have lain ahead — pain, nausea, seizures, blindness, paralysis — as her brain tumor slowly killed her. Diaz left her with a promise: to share her story and fight for others to have the same choice she did. Diaz brought Maynard’s story — and their campaign in support of MAID, or medical aid in dying — to Harvard Medical School on Thursday. His talk added the perspective of a patient and her loved one to a two-day discussion on the role of doctors in end-of-life choices and physician-assisted death. Diaz said Maynard didn’t fear death, but she did fear the suffering she would likely endure. She was diagnosed...