Not Dead Yet



Not Dead Yet (NDY) is a United States disability rights group that opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia. Diane Coleman, JD, is the founder and president of this national group. Stephen Drake, a research analyst with NDY, is one of the group's chief spokespersons and contacts for press releases.

The group was founded on April 27, 1996. It got its name from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which plague victims were thrown into a cart and hauled off to be buried. A man being given up as a corpse by his family protests that he is "not dead yet!"

In 2004 NDY was in the news for having protested the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, and for protesting the movie Million Dollar Baby, in which a man's removal of a ventilator from a suicidal quadriplegic woman is depicted as a rational and compassionate act. The group has been highly critical of utilitarian philosophers such as Peter Singer of Princeton University. Coleman has called Professor Singer "the most dangerous man on earth" and accused him of advocating genocide.

NDY is neither a partisan nor a sectarian group, but rather includes participants from a wide range of political and religious leanings. The group takes a disability rights stance, demanding equal access to the suicide prevention measures taken for non-disabled people. Noting that people already have the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, the group opposes public policy that singles out individuals for legalized killing based on their health status.

Criticism
Many utilitarian philosophers and bioethicists have been highly critical of Not Dead Yet. Some disability rights advocates have also been highly critical of NDY. Disability scholar Lennard Davis has accused NDY of making strategic alliances with the anti-abortion movement and also of insufficient and inaccurate documentation of its claims.