The harm of physician-assisted suicide to patients and the healing profession of medicine was lamented in 400 BC by the Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates when he wrote: “The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients … and not for their hurt or for any wrong. I will give no deadly drug to any, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such.”
From my perspective, physician-assisted suicide is not a political or religious issue — it is a societal and a bioethical calamity.
The primary proponents of Proposition 106, Compassion & Choices, have been spending millions of dollars in numerous states to pass laws with misleading phrases such as “Death with Dignity” or “Right to Die.” Alternative terminology is used by proponents to avoid the uncomfortable term “suicide.”
With Proposition 106, an overdose of medication is ingested with the intention of ending one’s life — by definition: suicide — an action we desperately try to prevent among those feeling hopeless.
What the proponents of Proposition 106 are looking for is the “right” of a physician to prescribe with impunity a lethal dose of a medication. The patient can ingest the deadly, caustic cocktail at any time, without requiring a health care provider to be present.
In the 2014 report of Oregon’s law, there were no health care providers present in 80 percent of the deaths to document the circumstances around the ingestion and death. Less than 5 percent of patients requesting assisted suicide are referred in order to assess their mental capacity despite documentation that a large percentage of terminal patients suffer from untreated depression. And there is no agency set up to monitor worrisome abuses after the patient receives their lethal medications. Thus their deception in claiming there are “no abuses” when there are no reporting requirements. There’s no way to know.
And here is another consequence. An Oregon doctor wrote this in The Wall Street Journal:
“Also concerning are the regular notices I receive indicating that many important services and drugs for my patients — even some pain medications — will not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program. Yet physician-assisted suicide is covered by the state and our collective tax dollars. Supporters claim physician-assisted suicide gives patients choice, but what sort of a choice is it when life is expensive but death is free?”
The healing profession, with hospice and palliative care, is entrusted with the sacred privilege of assisting their patients compassionately through the dying process, ensuring that patients have the comfort and dignity they deserve. With “intensive caring” we strive to ease their suffering, their fear of death — and their fear of living.
Patients can choose to forgo life-sustaining interventions that may excessively burden them or prolong the dying process. They can choose to allow a natural death in the comfort of their home, surrounded by loving caregivers. This is the difference between blowing out the candle vs. allowing it to flicker out on its own. Physicians and nurses are to help the patients as their life is ending, not end their life by an unethical act.
In reality, most states are very cautious about following the Oregon example. In only two states, Oregon and Washington, have ballot initiatives passed. Voters rejected ballot measures in Michigan, Maine and Massachusetts. And think about this: State legislatures in 30 states — including Colorado — have considered and rejected assisted-suicide laws.
These are some of the “Trojan Horse” policy issues that voters must carefully weigh in making their decision on Proposition 106. If you have doubts, vote “no.” Colorado’s elected representatives and senators had enough bipartisan doubts about this flawed law that the bills never made it to a floor vote two years in a row. Follow the lead of other states in rejecting this idea. Elections are serious. Votes make a difference. Rarely are voters called on the make what is truly a life-or-death decision. But that is exactly what Proposition 106 is all about. Life or death.
Alan Rastrelli, M.D., is medical director for Divine Mercy Supportive Care, a nonprofit hospice affiliated with the Catholic Church.
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