Newspaper logo  
 
 
  The Fraud of Physician-Assisted Suicide

SPEAKING OUT:

The Fraud of Physician-Assisted Suicide

by Sheldon Richman

How can there be "death with dignity" when the patient must humbly petition the doctors, then meekly wait for a unanimous ruling?
Freedom is so little understood in this "land of the free" that it is often confused with its opposite. Case in point: Oregon's 1994 Death With Dignity Act, which a federal appeals court recently shielded from attack by US Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The law permits what has come to be known as physician-assisted suicide. It and the appellate ruling have been hailed as victories for patient autonomy and the right to commit suicide. Indeed, the New York Times, in praising the ruling, editorialized. "The voters of Oregon acted with great humanity when they decided to allow terminally ill people to determine when they have suffered enough."

But did the voters really do that? A closer look at the law shows they did not.

In fact the law lets a patient who is expected to die within six months ask his doctor for lethal drugs. The doctor can say no, as he has every right to do. But since a patient cannot end his own life without the doctor's consent, the law is no milestone on the road to individual freedom.

What happens when a patient makes such a request of his doctor? The state's requirements are "stringent," according to Dr. Peter Goodwin, a long-time family physician and an emeritus associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University. They include, Goodwin writes, "the attending physician's diagnosis/prognosis and determination that the patient is informed, capable and acting voluntarily."

Note that the attending physician must be convinced that the patient knows what he's doing. Whether or not you think doctors have a special ability to see the absence of volition in an action (I don't), this requirement is hardly consistent with "allow[ing] terminally ill people to determine when they have suffered enough."

But there's more. The law states, "A consulting physician must examine the patient and the medical records and concur with the attending physician's diagnosis/prognosis and assessment of the patient."

Dr. Goodwin comments: "If the attending physician or the consulting physician thinks the patient may suffer from a psychological disorder causing impaired judgment, the physician must refer the patient for evaluation and counseling. No medication may be prescribed unless it is certain the patient's judgment is not impaired" (emphasis added).

Although these requirements are called "stringent," they are actually elastic and stacked against the patient. What terminally ill patient in great pain could not be said to have impaired judgment? What's the difference between a judgment that's impaired and one that clashes with the doctor's? In a conflict between a patient who sees no better future and wants to die and a physician (perhaps supported by the patient's family) who sees the future differently, who will prevail? The doctor, of course. Yet the law is considered a blow for patient autonomy. How can there be "death with dignity" when the patient must humbly petition the doctors, then meekly wait for a unanimous ruling?

Whatever one thinks of the legal merits of Attorney General Ashcroft's attempt to use federal anti-drug laws to thwart Oregon's voters, physician-assisted suicide is a fraud. As Dr. Thomas Szasz writes in his book Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide, "The term 'physician-assisted suicide' [PAS] is intrinsically mendacious. The physician is the principal, not the assistant. In the normal use of the English language, the person who assists another is the subordinate; the person whom he assists is his superior.... However, the physician engaging in PAS is superior to the patient: He determines who qualifies for the 'treatment' and prescribes the drug for it."

In other words, the Oregon law has nothing to do with the freedom of the individual and everything to do with the power of doctors. If freedom were the concern, we would simply repeal the drug and prescription laws, and recognize each adult's right to buy any kind of drugs.

Why empower doctors? Suicide isn't a medical issue. It's a moral issue.


Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org) in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.


Copyright © 2004 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on June 28, 2004.
 
Bookmark and Share
Local News & Opinion

01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31

Ref. : Local Newsbriefs

Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education

02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason

Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Open Letters:
Health & Environment

Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries

02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients

01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients

Media Watching

02.04 Err-America

02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired'

Ref. : The Daily Howler

Legal Matters

01.25 Thinking About Fictions

01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road

01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy

01.22 Security Fools

US Politics, Policy & Culture

02.09 Growing Hunger in America

02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being

02.08 Thinking About Oracles

02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle

02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union

02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism?

02.04 The New War Against Money

02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers

02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts

02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite

02.01 Thinking About Definitives

02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)

01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo

01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual

01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship

01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power

01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform

01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding”

01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand

01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid

01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth

01.21 How Obama Lost His Way

01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts

01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements

01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors

01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors

“High Crimes?”

01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power

01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist

02.06 The Free Market Fetish

02.04 The Crisis is Not Over

02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block

02.02 Rule by the Rich

01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs

01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True

01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation

01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It

01.18 Thinking About Accelerants

International

02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic

02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes

02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine

02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti

01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry"

01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning

01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered

01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders

01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs

01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover

01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
Google
This site Web

Public Service Ads:
Verifiable Voting in Maryland