I followed the Brittany Maynard story in the final weeks and days. I appreciate the weight of what this Marine is saying, but I don't like him sullying her legacy.
To say that they had the same condition is likely a mistatement. As you know there are many subgroups and variation in mutations within the subgroups. I don't know the details of these two patient's tumors, but I would not assume that this marine knows either.
His point that he does not want anyone to feel that they should just die to avoid expenses is a very good point. To the extent that making assisted suicide legal would generate such emotion, then his point is important. But two other sides to that multi-faceted coin; it is not the patient's responsibility to support the medical industry, and the separation of church and state is part of the US constitution.
Brittany's concern was that if she degenerated into a painful situation she might not be functional enough to have a say in her future, even after moving to Oregon where assisted suicide was legal.
Assuming Brittany's concern was real; if even the Oregon laws were relaxed to accomodate that concern, then she would not have committed suicide on a pre-chosen date. She would have waited till the last minute. And she would have received the last email that I sent to her, the night before she died, begging her to get genetic testing to determine which drugs/therapies might benefit her.
I wrote to Les Goldman about a month or so ago stating just that: That in the final weeks, days, and hours of the Brittany Maynard story, the smoke progressively cleared, leaving the most disturbing glaring fact, that many patients go into GBM treatment not knowing if their genetics align with that treatment. It's crazy!
That was why I was so happy to read the post a few days ago linking to a report about the feds' Moonshot program to cure cancer. According to the report, the program includes a plan to allow patients involved to get genetic testing prior selecting treatment.
Such a plan brings up some very difficult questions about how to test efficacy across all subgroups, once preliminary subgroup efficacy data is at hand, but the answer has to be that patients and their physicians have all such information available to them as they select a given treatment path.
