>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <069601bf260d$51415650$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: A New York Times editorial >Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 07:08:42 -0800 >X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >Pubdate: Sat, 20 Oct 1999 >Source: New York Times (NY) >Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company >Contact: letters@nytimes.com >Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ >Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ > >MEDDLING WITH OREGON'S LAW > >There is something cruel and intrusive about a bill passed by the >House of Representatives this week making it a federal crime for >doctors to prescribe lethal drugs so that terminally ill patients can >end their own lives. > >Congress is behaving like a bad-tempered elephant, stomping and >trumpeting to overturn an assisted-suicide law approved twice by the >voters of Oregon. The Oregon law, a responsible effort to ease >suffering at the end of life, allows physicians to aid suicides of the >terminally ill under carefully defined circumstances. > >As America's population ages and medicine's ability to keep people >alive improves, some terminally ill patients may want to end their >lives rather than endure more misery. > >But as captives to a system whose ethic is to help them live, they >cannot do so. To fill that void, Dr. Jack Kevorkian emerged in >Michigan as a self-anointed angel of death who helped more than 100 >people end their lives. > >But when he actually killed someone himself, public sympathy ended and >a jury sent him to prison. > >In Oregon, an alternative was developed with the help of the >terminally ill, their families, the legislature, the voters, the >courts and the state health bureaucracy. Oregon's Death With Dignity >Act allows a terminally ill adult -- judged by two physicians to be of >sound mind, with less than six months to live -- to request a lethal >dose of drugs. > >There has been no rush to death as a result. > >Only 15 people killed themselves that way in 1998, many with their >families around them. But Congress, alarmed by the Oregon example, is >determined to overturn it. The bill that passed the House masquerades >as a progressive attempt to ensure pain relief. > >It says that doctors may legitimately prescribe high doses of drugs to >alleviate pain, even at "the risk of death." But if the drugs should >be prescribed "for the purpose of causing death," then the prescribing >doctor could spend 20 years in prison. > >That draconian provision will discourage aggressive pain relief, since >doctors may fear they could be charged with intent to kill whenever a >patient dies from the effects of pain medication. > >The House vote is already stirring anxiety and worry that the Drug >Enforcement Agency will be hanging over the shoulders of physicians >caring for people at the end of life. The Senate or, failing that, >President Clinton should kill this bill, and let people deal with >their own issues of life and death, in states that permit it. > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: