(NRL News Today) Earlier this year, New York passed a sinister and deadly assisted suicide bill. In February, to her great shame, Governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law. Now, nearly 180 days later, the law goes into effect.

Beginning on August 5th of this year, doctors in New York state can begin to prescribe a lethal mix of drugs to patients who qualify under the law. The guardrails she and the state legislature promised are soon to come off.

The governor and legislature sold it as compassionate and dignified. In hospitals, hospices, and private homes, patients will be given a poison mixture and told they must drink it themselves. The law cynically requires them to take the final step alone.

No one is allowed to help. No monitors are watching what happens next. Just the ending Hochul’s allies said would be peaceful.

It is not peaceful.

An hour after the patient takes anti-nausea pills that may or may not work, she is handed the glass that contains the poisonous concoction. A pharmacist mixed the powdered compounds earlier into a thick, bitter slurry, which her friends and family then stir into a little juice or wine. She has to lift it, put it to her lips, and swallow the whole thing. The law does not allow for assistance. 

The mixture burns as it goes down. Once it reaches the stomach and then the small intestine, the drugs start taking hold. A massive dose of morphine, often 15 grams or more, hits first. It saturates opioid receptors in the gut, slowing the normal muscle contractions that move material through the digestive system. The morphine crosses into the bloodstream and heads for the brain and spinal cord. Breathing starts to get shallower. Oxygen levels begin to drop.

There was Digoxin in the brew, and it’s prescribed in a huge overdose of around 100 mg, which absorbs more slowly. It binds to heart muscle cells and throws off their electrical signals. The heart starts contracting chaotically. Irregular rhythms develop. Over the next hour or two, the pulse becomes erratic as dangerous arrhythmias take over. 

Amitriptyline, often given in doses of 8 grams or more, blocks sodium and potassium channels in the heart cells. On an EKG, the QRS complex, the sharp spike that shows the ventricles firing, would widen dramatically. The electrical impulses grow disordered. This sets up the possibility of severe and incredibly uncomfortable arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation.

READ: Culture of death: Nations allowing doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia

 No EKG or EEG is used. In a real emergency, those monitors would be on immediately to track the heart and brain. Here they are left off on purpose. Clear evidence of what the drugs are doing to the heart and brain would destroy the picture of a calm, dignified death. Family members see a mostly still body instead of the pharmacological Armageddon happening inside.

 The patient may lose consciousness as the sedatives, diazepam and phenobarbital, shut down higher brain function. Control of the body disappears. The sphincter muscles relax. The bladder and bowels empty into the bed. There is no dignity here.

 The bitter mixture in the stomach often causes retching. She vomits. The slurry comes back up, burning the esophagus. Some of the dose ends up on the sheets, so less is absorbed. Acidic material can slip into the lungs, causing choking and coughing even while she is mostly unresponsive. This leads to chemical pneumonitis. The lungs fill with fluid. Breathing becomes more labored, as if she is drowning in her own secretions.

 In some cases, consciousness is not complete. The remaining drugs keep working while the body deals with vomit, incontinence, choking, and struggling for air.

 Then the combined effects hit hard. Morphine’s depression of breathing, joined by the barbiturates and benzodiazepines, causes severe hypoventilation. Carbon dioxide builds up. Oxygen crashes. Brain cells switch to anaerobic metabolism and produce lactic acid. Neurons in sensitive areas start dying from lack of oxygen and energy failure.

 The heart, already damaged by digoxin and amitriptyline, keeps throwing off arrhythmias. Cardiac output falls. Blood flow to the kidneys and liver drops. Organs begin failing in sequence. The brainstem’s drive to breathe weakens further. The heart may fibrillate or stop. In some cases, the lungs fill with fluid from circulatory failure.

 When absorption is slowed by vomiting or incomplete ingestion, the process can drag on for 4, 6, or even more than 24 hours. The person stays unconscious or nearly so. The body continues: slow agonal breaths, mottled skin, cooling limbs as circulation fails. Cells die across tissues. The brainstem is the last to quit.

 Then, after all the trauma, unseen by her family and friends, she is finally dead.

 Welcome to Kathy Hochul’s New York.

(NRL News Today) Earlier this year, New York passed a sinister and deadly assisted suicide bill. In February, to her great shame, Governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law. Now, nearly 180 days later, the law goes into effect.

Beginning on August 5th of this year, doctors in New York state can begin to prescribe a lethal mix of drugs to patients who qualify under the law. The guardrails she and the state legislature promised are soon to come off.

The governor and legislature sold it as compassionate and dignified. In hospitals, hospices, and private homes, patients will be given a poison mixture and told they must drink it themselves. The law cynically requires them to take the final step alone.

No one is allowed to help. No monitors are watching what happens next. Just the ending Hochul’s allies said would be peaceful.

It is not peaceful.

An hour after the patient takes anti-nausea pills that may or may not work, she is handed the glass that contains the poisonous concoction. A pharmacist mixed the powdered compounds earlier into a thick, bitter slurry, which her friends and family then stir into a little juice or wine. She has to lift it, put it to her lips, and swallow the whole thing. The law does not allow for assistance. 

The mixture burns as it goes down. Once it reaches the stomach and then the small intestine, the drugs start taking hold. A massive dose of morphine, often 15 grams or more, hits first. It saturates opioid receptors in the gut, slowing the normal muscle contractions that move material through the digestive system. The morphine crosses into the bloodstream and heads for the brain and spinal cord. Breathing starts to get shallower. Oxygen levels begin to drop.

There was Digoxin in the brew, and it’s prescribed in a huge overdose of around 100 mg, which absorbs more slowly. It binds to heart muscle cells and throws off their electrical signals. The heart starts contracting chaotically. Irregular rhythms develop. Over the next hour or two, the pulse becomes erratic as dangerous arrhythmias take over. 

Amitriptyline, often given in doses of 8 grams or more, blocks sodium and potassium channels in the heart cells. On an EKG, the QRS complex, the sharp spike that shows the ventricles firing, would widen dramatically. The electrical impulses grow disordered. This sets up the possibility of severe and incredibly uncomfortable arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation.

READ: Culture of death: Nations allowing doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia

 No EKG or EEG is used. In a real emergency, those monitors would be on immediately to track the heart and brain. Here they are left off on purpose. Clear evidence of what the drugs are doing to the heart and brain would destroy the picture of a calm, dignified death. Family members see a mostly still body instead of the pharmacological Armageddon happening inside.

 The patient may lose consciousness as the sedatives, diazepam and phenobarbital, shut down higher brain function. Control of the body disappears. The sphincter muscles relax. The bladder and bowels empty into the bed. There is no dignity here.

 The bitter mixture in the stomach often causes retching. She vomits. The slurry comes back up, burning the esophagus. Some of the dose ends up on the sheets, so less is absorbed. Acidic material can slip into the lungs, causing choking and coughing even while she is mostly unresponsive. This leads to chemical pneumonitis. The lungs fill with fluid. Breathing becomes more labored, as if she is drowning in her own secretions.

 In some cases, consciousness is not complete. The remaining drugs keep working while the body deals with vomit, incontinence, choking, and struggling for air.

 Then the combined effects hit hard. Morphine’s depression of breathing, joined by the barbiturates and benzodiazepines, causes severe hypoventilation. Carbon dioxide builds up. Oxygen crashes. Brain cells switch to anaerobic metabolism and produce lactic acid. Neurons in sensitive areas start dying from lack of oxygen and energy failure.

 The heart, already damaged by digoxin and amitriptyline, keeps throwing off arrhythmias. Cardiac output falls. Blood flow to the kidneys and liver drops. Organs begin failing in sequence. The brainstem’s drive to breathe weakens further. The heart may fibrillate or stop. In some cases, the lungs fill with fluid from circulatory failure.

 When absorption is slowed by vomiting or incomplete ingestion, the process can drag on for 4, 6, or even more than 24 hours. The person stays unconscious or nearly so. The body continues: slow agonal breaths, mottled skin, cooling limbs as circulation fails. Cells die across tissues. The brainstem is the last to quit.

 Then, after all the trauma, unseen by her family and friends, she is finally dead.

 Welcome to Kathy Hochul’s New York.