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| health > story page |         |
Assisted suicide: Should it be legal?January 25, 2000
By Michael Pretzer (WebMD) -- In March 1998, an Oregon woman dying of breast cancer asked her physician to prescribe a drug that would allow her to end her life. The doctor agreed. Later in the month she took the medication. With that action, she became the first person in the United States to commit suicide with the help of a doctor -- legally. This has come to be known as "physician-assisted suicide." A physician honors a patient's voluntary request for a lethal dose of medication, which the patient later administers to him -- or herself. It's legal only in the state of Oregon, and has been only since late 1997. A few other states are making efforts to legalize assisted suicide. But soon Congress may put a stop to it everywhere. The issue of physician-assisted suicide is emotional and controversial -- it ranks right up there with abortion. According to Dr. Clarence H. Braddock III, a faculty member of the University of Washington's departments of medicine and medical history and ethics, the arguments in favor of legalizing assisted suicide generally run along these lines:
The arguments against legalization, Braddock says, usually go something like this:
An age-old debatePhysicians have been divided over the issue of assisted suicide since the birth of Western medicine some 2,000 years ago. "The ancient Hippocratic Oath enjoins physicians to 'neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor make a suggestion to this effect,'" oncologist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote in the March 1997 issue of Atlantic Monthly. "The oath was written at a time when physicians commonly provided euthanasia and assisted suicide for ailments ranging from foot infections and gallstones to cancer and senility. Indeed, the Hippocratic Oath represented the minority view in a debate within the ancient Greek medical community." Two thousand years later, though, opposition to assisted suicide is the majority view within the medical community. After Oregon passed its assisted-suicide law, 67 percent of the state's physicians said they would refuse to participate in an assisted suicide -- and even those physicians who have helped patients terminate their lives said they did so reluctantly, according to a survey conducted by the Oregon Health Division. "It was an excruciating thing to do," said one doctor in the survey. Last October, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Pain Relief Promotion Act, which would undermine Oregon's law and dampen other states' efforts to legalize assisted suicide. The Senate is likely to consider the bill sometime this year. The Pain Relief Promotion Act would make it illegal for a doctor to prescribe a controlled substance if he or she knows that the patient plans to use it to commit suicide. The act's net effect is to take away a physician's only realistic means of assisting a suicide. The bill has a host of supporters, including the American Medical Association, which officially opposes physician-assisted suicide, and several House members who are physicians. The most strident of the latter group is family physician Dr. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma. While arguing in favor of the act in October, he denounced physicians who take part in assisted suicides. "As soon as doctors have made the decision that they are the givers or takers of life, they no longer are physicians," he said. But others, such as psychiatrist Dr. Jim McDermott, a Democratic representative from Washington, oppose the Pain Relief Promotion Act. McDermott feels Congress should not legislate how physicians help their patients cope with serious illnesses. McDermott and fellow opponents also fear that passage of the act will make physicians hesitate when prescribing pain medications for nonsuicidal patients. "Every day in the legitimate and accepted treatment of terminally ill patients, physicians prescribe controlled substances in dosages that will hasten death," Dr. John A. Kitzhaber -- the Democratic governor of Oregon and an emergency room physician -- wrote in the Washington Post in November 1999. "This leaves thousands of cases each year in which the intent of the physician could be questioned. Faced with the specter of investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, prison, or loss of their practice, many doctors will treat pain less aggressively than is required for full relief." No matter what legislation Congress and state governments pass, and no matter what position organizations such as the AMA take, assisted suicide -- like euthanasia -- will remain a personal matter. To end the life of a terminally ill patient will continue to be a decision that a patient and the patient's family and physician reach privately. RELATEDS AT  :
Exploring Medical Options for End-of-Life Care RELATED SITE: American Medical Association Reaffirms Support for Pain Relief Promotion Act LATEST HEALTH STORIES: China SARS numbers pass 5,000
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