Letters: September 2014


Assisted Suicide: Reframe the Debate
With great interest I read Barry Corbet’s May, 2003 essay, “Physician Assisted Death: Are We Asking the Right Questions?” [as excerpted in NM, July 2014]. It is now 11 years later and medical devices are more sophisticated, medications more specific, and physicians and their patients have Internet knowledge at their fingertips. Please note, legislation is about the terminally ill with six months to live and mentally competent. It does not single out the disabled community.

Suicide occurs when a generally healthy, irrational, or despondent person acts impulsively to end his or her life. Aid-In-Dying is a concept applied to a terminally ill individual who is rational and realistic, competent, and thoughtful, who does not want to suffer painfully and values a dignified death when a disease is killing him or her.

When an individual takes a position against “physician-assisted suicide,” that argument is using biased terminology and missing the point at the very essence of the debate. The point is to honor a life worth living, to give aid when it is needed most, and to respect a patient’s autonomy, choice, and dignity. Doctors give aid in birthing; doctors should be able to give aid in dying. Their patients need to know this.

When a terminal illness is diagnosed, when there is no hope for cure, when the patient is aware that hospice and palliative care may not be adequate, when dignity needs to be preserved, an option to end one’s life peacefully at a time and place of one’s choosing ought to be legally available.

We, as physicians, are guided by rational thoughts, even as our interactions with patients often take place during unusually emotional life moments for them. We have heard a lot of inflammatory rhetoric in public debates about dying. But beyond the rhetoric is the fact that medicine is about delivering care that is in our patients’ best interests. It is between a patient and their doctor to decide what that best interest is based on facts. There are those who oppose aid in dying for idealogical reasons, but the evidence in Oregon is that it is both good medical practice and policy.

Terminal patients deserve a reasoned approach to end-of-life care that takes into account the modern realities of false hope, the tyranny of technology, death by starvation, and even bankruptcy.  Compassionate and caring physicians need to reframe their position on aid-in-dying, and so does the community of the disabled.

Death is not the enemy, inhumanity is.
Eric J. Ruby, M.D.
Taunton, Massachusetts

Assisted Suicide Ad Misleading
This letter is being written to protest your magazine’s running an ad by a leading organization supporting physician-assisted suicide. The late author Hugh Gallagher was a strong proponent of assisted suicide in the disability community until later in his life. However, he resigned from the board of Compassion and Choices because he saw they were headed in a dangerous direction, especially for people with disabilities. It is misleading and dishonest that Compassion and Choices still issues an annual Hugh Gallagher award.

As an Oregon resident (where assisted suicide is legal) and person with a disability, I am painfully aware of the potential for abuse of the law’s stated intentions. We are cheaper dead than disabled. Assisted suicide, which costs about $300, is the least expensive medical treatment. The Oregon Health Plan issued letters to Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup stating they would not pay for chemotherapy prescribed by their doctors but offered the option of assisted suicide. Also, diagnoses of terminal illness are often wrong and people give up on treatment and lose years of life.

Abuse of people with disabilities and older people is growing and that abuse can extend to an heir or caregiver coercing a person to choose assisted suicide. The laws’ safeguards are empty so it makes abuse easy. The same heir or caregiver could get the deadly prescription and even give the drug. No agency enforces the law’s guidelines or restrictions.

Assisted suicide laws are not only dangerous, with no protections, they are needless. People already have the right to refuse treatment and get palliative care.

Fortunately, disability rights advocates have given compelling testimony against assisted suicide proposals in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut this year, and those states did not make Oregon’s mistake.
Janine Bertram
Zigzag, Oregon

Faith and Family
The love of God was truly a huge part of what Joe [“Joe Delagrave: Family Man,” July 2014] used to guide him down the path to his amazing accomplishments as a husband, dad and athlete. He is a light that shines for all to see, that guides all who know him. Great article.
Debbie Morovits, via newmobility.com


Support New Mobility

Wait! Before you wander off to other parts of the internet, please consider supporting New Mobility. For more than three decades, New Mobility has published groundbreaking content for active wheelchair users. We share practical advice from wheelchair users across the country, review life-changing technology and demand equity in healthcare, travel and all facets of life. But none of this is cheap, easy or profitable. Your support helps us give wheelchair users the resources to build a fulfilling life.

donate today

Comments are closed.