Re Newsweek article on Dr Larry Egbert in which a lawyer said this “The idea of someone gagging to death in a helium-filled hood is “ghoulish and frightening,” says Kathryn Tucker, legislative director for Compassion & Choices.
Which brought this response:
I, as an Exit member since 2005, found that article very disturbing. I can only hope the good doctor was misquoted regarding the “gasping for breath” death induced under hood and helium
—————-June Lennon, NJ
(It was not the doctor but a lawyer who said this.)
The words “gagging” and “gasping” readers of the article are likely to think of highly unpleasant, maybe traumatic suffocation instead of the real cause of death which is brain death due to its lack of oxygen. It has been replaced by the helium.
In the several events I have observed the person breathes the odorless, tasteless helium deeply about three or four times and then is unconscious, no gagging or gasping. Death follows in 4-5 minutes. A peaceful process.
————Jim Chastain, Florida
The allegation about ‘gagging’ was made within the Dr. Egbert Newsweek web article by the lawyer for Compassion and Choices, not Dr Egbert. In the approximate 300 cases which have been reported to me there has never been mention of choking or gagging. When I witnessed the helium death of a friend of mine it could not have been more peaceful.
———–Derek Humphry, Oregon
