Brittany Lauren Maynard (November 19, 1984 – November 1, 2014) was an American activist with
terminal cancer
Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer, dementia or advanced ...
who decided that she would end her own life "when the time seemed right." She was an advocate for the legalization of
assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is suicide undertaken with the aid of another person. The term usually refers to physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which is suicide that is assisted by a physician or other healthcare provider. Once it is determined that the p ...
for the terminally ill.
[Brittany Maynard, Advocate for Death With Dignity, Ends Her Life]
/ref>
Biography
Maynard was born in Anaheim, California
Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the 10th-most p ...
, on November 19, 1984.[ Maynard graduated from the ]University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
with a bachelor's degree in psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
in 2006 from the College of Letters and Science and the University of California, Irvine School of Education in 2010 with a master's degree in education.[ Interested in international travel since high school, Maynard taught at orphanages in ]Kathmandu
, pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia
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, Nepal
Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...
and traveled also to Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
, Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...
, and other Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
n countries. She also took frequent trips to Europe and engaged in adrenaline-inducing activities such as trekking, mountain climbing, and bungee jumping. Following her death, Maynard's mother reflected that this risk-taking behavior was likely symptomatic of the brain tumor, which had been growing for a decade.
On January 1, 2014, she was diagnosed with grade 2 astrocytoma
Astrocytomas are a type of brain tumor. They originate in a particular kind of glial cells, star-shaped brain cells in the cerebrum called astrocytes. This type of tumor does not usually spread outside the brain and spinal cord and it does not usu ...
, a form of brain cancer, and had a partial craniotomy
A craniotomy is a surgical operation in which a bone flap is temporarily removed from the skull to access the brain. Craniotomies are often critical operations, performed on patients who are suffering from brain lesions, such as tumors, blood clots ...
and a partial resection of her temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe ...
. The cancer returned in April 2014, and her diagnosis was then elevated to grade 4 astrocytoma, also known as glioblastoma
Glioblastoma, previously known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is one of the most aggressive types of cancer that begin within the brain. Initially, signs and symptoms of glioblastoma are nonspecific. They may include headaches, personality ch ...
, with a prognosis of six months to live.[
She moved from ]California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
to Oregon
Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
to take advantage of Oregon's Death with Dignity Law, saying she had decided that "death with dignity was the best option for me and my family."[ She partnered with ]Compassion & Choices
Compassion & Choices is a nonprofit organization in the United States working to improve patient autonomy and individual choice at the end of life, including access to medical aid in dying. Its primary function is advocating for and ensuring acc ...
to create the Brittany Maynard Fund, which seeks to legalize assisted death in states where it is now illegal.[ She also wrote an opinion piece for ]CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
titled "My Right to Death with Dignity at 29".
On October 29, 2014, she stated that "it doesn't seem like the right time right now" but that she would still end her own life at some future point. Maynard planned to end her life on November 1, 2014, with drugs prescribed by her doctor.
Personal life
Maynard married Daniel Esteban "Dan" Diaz in September 2012, and before she received her diagnosis, they had hoped to have a family. In October 2014 she stated that she had checked off the last item on her bucket list
Bucket list may refer to:
* A list of activities to do before dying ("kick the bucket")
* Wish list
* ''The Bucket List'', a 2007 comedy film
* ''Bucket List'' (2018 film), a 2018 Indian Marathi comedy-drama film
* "Bucket List" (song), a 2013 ...
by visiting the Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon (, yuf-x-yav, Wi:kaʼi:la, , Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, ) is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a m ...
. Aside from her husband, she was guided by her mother, Deborah Ziegler, and her stepfather, Gary Holmes.
Death
It was reported on November 2, 2014, by ''People
A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...
'' and various other media sources that Maynard had ended her life on November 1 surrounded by her loved ones. In accordance with Oregon state law regarding death with dignity, a brain tumor is the official cause of death on her death certificate.[
Maynard wrote in her final online post: "Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me ... but would have taken so much more."
]
Activism and legacy
In the weeks leading up to her death, Maynard was said to have become the face of the United States right-to-die debate, commanding public attention,[ with over 16 million unique visitors reading her story on ]People.com
''People'' is an American weekly magazine that specializes in celebrity news and human-interest stories. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC. With a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, ''People'' had the l ...
. Arthur Caplan
Arthur L. Caplan (born 1950) is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics.
Caplan has made many contribut ...
, of New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
's Division of Medical ethics
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. T ...
, wrote that because Maynard was "young, vivacious, attractive … and a very different kind of person" from the average patient seeking physician-assisted dying—then averaging age 71 in Oregon—she "changed the optics of the debate" and got people in her generation interested in the issue.[ ]Marcia Angell
Marcia Angell (; born April 20, 1939) is an American physician, author, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the ''New England Journal of Medicine''. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social M ...
, the former editor-in-chief of the ''New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
Hist ...
'', wrote that Maynard was a "new face" of the assisted dying movement who had "greatly helped future patients who want the same choice." However, some terminally ill individuals publicly criticized Maynard's promotion of assisted suicide. Terminal cancer patients Kara Tippetts and Maggie Karner both sent letters to Maynard asking her to reconsider.
Three days after Maynard's death, a top Catholic church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
official mentioned her decision to die in the context of reiterating the Catholic Church's position on the right-to-die debate, noting that, "Suicide is not a good thing. It is a bad thing because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our mission in the world and toward those around us." The National Right to Life Committee
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is the oldest and largest national anti-abortion organization in the United States with affiliates in all 50 states and more than 3,000 local chapters nationwide.
Since the 1980s, NRLC has influen ...
(NRLC) asserted that from its perspective, Maynard's chosen non-profit, Compassion & Choices
Compassion & Choices is a nonprofit organization in the United States working to improve patient autonomy and individual choice at the end of life, including access to medical aid in dying. Its primary function is advocating for and ensuring acc ...
had "exploited the illness of Brittany Maynard to promote legalization of doctor prescribed suicide in the states."[ Brittany's mother defended her daughter's decision via a letter released by Compassion & Choices, stating "My twenty-nine-year-old daughter's choice to die gently rather than suffer physical and mental degradation and intense pain does not deserve to be labelled as reprehensible by strangers a continent away who do not know her or the particulars of her situation."
At the time of Maynard's death, only three states had death-with-dignity laws, with two others having court rulings protecting physicians who help patients die, and bills having been introduced in seven other states.] Polls have found the American public divided on the introduction of such laws. Maynard's activism has been a strong focus of Connecticut's proposed assisted death legislation.
Maynard's family have played video testimony that she recorded for proposed legislative change in her home state of California. On September 11, 2015, California lawmakers gave final approval to Senate Bill (SB 128) End of Life Option Act. A modified version of the bill, ABx2 15, was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
on October 5, 2015. It went into effect on June 9, 2016. On May 15, 2018, a state judge struck down this law on the grounds that it was improper to consider a right-to-die bill during a special session of the state legislature that was supposed to be focused on health care spending and access issues. The law was reinstated by a state appeals court the following month.
Hawaii has become the seventh state to legalize medically assisted suicide. Hawaii Governor David Ige
David Yutaka Ige (; born January 15, 1957) is an American politician and engineer who served as the eighth governor of Hawaii from 2014 to 2022. A Democrat, he served in the Hawaii State Senate from 1995 to 2014 and the Hawaii House of Represen ...
signed the bill into law in Honolulu on Thursday, April 5, 2018. The law took effect on January 1, 2019.
See also
* Lecretia Seales
Lecretia Anne Seales (4 April 1973 – 5 June 2015) was a New Zealand lawyer who, upon suffering a brain tumour and enduring treatments for it, became an advocate of physician-assisted dying.
Background
Seales was born in 1973. She received her ...
* Ramón Sampedro
Ramón Sampedro Cameán (5 January 1943 – 12 January 1998) was a Spanish seaman and writer. Sampedro became a quadriplegic at the age of 25 (on 23 August 1968), following a diving accident, and fought for his right to assisted dying for the fol ...
* List of people with brain tumors
A brain tumor is an abnormal growth of cells within the brain or inside the skull, and can be cancerous (malignant) or non-cancerous (benign). Just over half of all primary brain tumors are malignant; the rest are benign, though they may still be ...
Notes
References
External links
The Brittany Maynard Fund website
accessed November 2, 2014.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maynard, Brittany
1984 births
2014 deaths
Euthanasia in the United States
Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Assisted suicide in the United States
Deaths from brain cancer in the United States
People from Anaheim, California
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of California, Irvine alumni
Schoolteachers from California
American women educators
Euthanasia activists
Deaths from cancer in Oregon
21st-century American women