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Death With DignityAn Argument in Favor of Assisted Suicide
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Death with Dignity: An Argument in Favor of Physician Assisted Suicide Allow me to present you with a hypothetical situation: A patient walks into his oncologist’s office at Tacoma General Hospital. His body has been ravaged by cancer and the aggressive treatments used to combat it. The patient has done everything that the doctor has suggested; chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and investigational drug therapy, and all have failed. Both doctor and patient agree that there is nothing else that can be done. The patient is forced to take medication to combat the pain the cancer causes and cannot do the things they were once able to due to the effects of these drugs. In effect, this patient is waiting to die. At the appointment this patient asks the doctor, “How long do I have left?” The doctor responds, “Months…. maybe six months at most.” The patient replies, “Doctor, I’ve had it. I can’t take the pain anymore. The pain medication you’re giving me isn’t working. My quality of life is zero. I am in constant pain. Can you help me end my life?” What should the doctor do? What can the doctor do? In the State of Washington the answer is - not much. The doctor might refer the patient to a hospice for end of life care and wash his hand of the problem. The doctor may suggest that once at the hospice the patient could decide to refuse food and liquids, and that he (the doctor) could sedate him to the point of unconsciousness (a process called terminal sedation and dehydration) and inform the patient that it might take as long as two weeks to die using this method, which is considered to be legal in all 50 states. The doctor, if compassionate, may prescribe a lethal overdose of some type of sleeping pill or barbiturate to the patient. This last scenario takes place everyday in this country and is illegal in every state but Oregon. Physicians who chose this path put themselves in legal peril. In an article in the Washington Post, Marcia Angell, a physician and executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote, “Compassionate doctors have always helped their patients to end their lives. They do so not only by turning off life supports but by giving large doses of morphine or by prescribing more sleeping pills than necessary. The problem is the practice is secret and unpredictable.” (A19) I believe that patients should have all of these options available to them safely and legally. If this patient happened to be a resident of Oregon and his physician practiced medicine in Oregon, the physician would be able to assist his patient in carrying out his final wishes legally and safely. I believe that the State of Washington should implement a Death with Dignity law as soon as possible based on the model currently used in the State of Oregon. Opponents of physician assisted suicide argue that Death with Dignity Laws are a slippery slope that will lead to the eventual killing of the retarded and disabled, and that people will use it when they have many years to live. These allegations have been proven false.
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