Editor's note. Part Two offers the encouraging news that "New Jersey's Stem Cell Research Center on Hold."

A tip of the hat to the ever-vigilant Wesley Smith (www.wesleyjsmith.com) for continuing to keep us alert to the ever-encroaching ethos that sees medical treatment as optional and death as a preferred "option," particularly for those with a "low quality of life."

Early in June Wesley linked to a story from the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard newspaper which told about Barbara Wagner. The operative paragraphs are as follows:
"After a rough couple of weeks, Barbara Wagner finally got some good news Monday.

"Last month, she found out that her lung cancer, which had been in remission for about two years, had come back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn't cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide."

Yes, you read this correctly. Oregon--the home of the nation's only assisted suicide law--won't pay for Tarceva, a cancer drug that could extend Wagner's life but would be happy to cover "palliative, or comfort care" defined to include doctor-assisted suicide.

Fortunately, a pharmaceutical company came to the rescue and offered to provide the needed medicine free of charge to Wagner.

The Oregon Health Plan, established in 1994, expressly rations health care. The "priority" list for treatment has been a constant source of debate ever since.

As you would expect Wagner was extremely upset by the language of the unsigned letter she received from LIPA, a company in Eugene that administers the

"To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel," she told the newspaper, "I get angry. Who do they think they are?"

According to the Register-Guard, "The language in the letter referring to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act comes out of the Health Service Commission's statement of intent under examples of comfort and palliative care, said Dr. John Sattenspiel, senior medical director for LIPA.

"'I understand the way it was interpreted,' Sattenspiel said. 'I'm not sure how we can lift that. The reality is, at some level (doctor-assisted suicide) could be considered as a palliative or comfort care measure.'"

More recently Smith linked to and wrote about a related case in Great Britain.

"A cancer patient killed himself a day after being told he had been refused a wonder drug by his local primary care trust," the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. "Terminally-ill Albert Baxter, 75, committed suicide hours after learning he had been turned down for a drug which could have prolonged his life and shrunk his tumour."

Diagnosed with renal cancer in 2007, Baxter offered to pay for Sutent, a drug that his oncologist said was Baxter's only hope. "But he was told if he did so, he would also have to foot the bill for the rest of his treatment, which he could not afford," according to the Daily Mail.

Smith helped connect the dots so we could grasp "the total picture that is emerging." He wrote, "Extending life is being redefined as medically inappropriate or not worth paying for, while at the same time, killing is being redefined into palliative care. This is abandonment: If we legalize assisted suicide, one consequence would be to make treatment denials more palatable--since we will always offer abandoned patients 'death with dignity,' which is really just another way of saying, 'one-way street.' Caveat emptor!"

Please send any thoughts you might have to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part Two -- New Jersey’s Stem Cell Research Center on Hold