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Warnings from Medical Study Confirm Dangers of In Washington state, the July deadline is drawing near for assisted suicide advocates to submit the 224,800 signatures needed to place Initiative 1000 on the November ballot. At the moment Oregon has the dubious distinction of being the only state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The initiative is virtually identical to Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide measure. In 1991 a similar initiative in Washington state narrowly failed. But this time around assisted suicide advocates are better prepared, better funded, and have as their point man former governor Booth Gardner, who remains very popular. However, the initiative is beginning to face mounting opposition. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Washington legislature issued a statement stating their opposition. They’re urging state residents not to sign petitions to get Initiative 1000 on the November ballot. Sen. Margarita Prentice, a Democrat, said there is a danger that “physicians can already prescribe lethal drugs to patients who are depressed or mentally ill.” In a statement, she noted, “In 2007, according to the Oregon Department of Health, not one patient in Oregon was referred for psychological counseling, a sure sign to me there is nothing to protect those suffering psychological distress.” She added, “It has virtually no protection for low-income and vulnerable people from being pressured into prematurely ending their life.” Prentice, a registered nurse, concluded, “This very dangerous initiative never would have passed the Legislature.” Additionally, Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire opposes the initiative. “I find it on a personal level very, very difficult to support assisted suicide,” he said. Another powerful critique of the initiative has come in the form of a recent critical review of Oregon’s “Death With Dignity” law (which is in its 10th year of operation) offered by two medical doctors. Titled “Physician-Assisted Suicide in Oregon: A Medical Perspective,” the Michigan Law Review article was written by Herbert Hendin, M.D., and Kathleen Foley, M.D. The authors found that reasonable-sounding safeguards, which proponents said were there to protect patients, do not appear to have achieved their purpose and are easily circumvented. (These are the same “safeguards” contained in the looming Washington initiative.) As a result, “Oregon physicians appear to have been given great power without being in a position to exercise it responsibly.” According to Hendin and Foley, the primary problem lies with the Oregon Public Health Division (OPHD). The OPHD is charged with monitoring the law and reporting certain information yearly, yet it “has interpreted its mandate in an extremely restrictive manner,” they write. They argue that OPHD does not collect the information it would need to effectively monitor the law. “[B]ased on the inadequate information it collects, OPHD has been issuing annual reports declaring that terminally ill Oregon patients are receiving adequate care,” Hendin and Foley write. “The available evidence, which we will present in this Article, suggest otherwise.” (In an interview with a Washington state newspaper columnist, Hendin bluntly said, “The law is monitored by people who wrote the assisted suicide law, support it and have a vested interest in its success.”) Although one troubling account has followed another for a decade, certain facts on the ground are ignored or their importance overlooked. The study details several alarming realities from a medical point of view. The first reality is that there is broad protection for physicians rather than patients. Most people would be shocked to learn that under the Oregon law physicians assisting in a suicide are exempt from the ordinary standards of care, skill, and diligence required of physicians in other circumstances. Instead, death-prescribing physicians are subject only to a weak “good-faith” standard, even though the physician may have acted negligently or behaved irresponsibly, according to Hendin and Foley. Additionally, if a physician does not comply with reporting guidelines, there is no way to force him or her to or to punish non-compliance under the Oregon law. Most observers believe that this loophole has meant that the real number of assisted suicides may be far higher than reported. Sadly, the OPHD has chosen to wrap doctor-patient confidentiality in a protective shroud at the expense of actually performing its duty to monitor compliance or abuse. Another often overlooked facet is the role of what the authors call “advocacy groups for assisted suicide.” Executives of “Compassion in Dying” proudly claim to have been involved in 75% of all cases of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. The study authors warn that “The role of the advocates was to help the patient and family get what they wanted, not to assess whether this was an appropriate option for the patient.” They cite a troubling account given in a1999 talk by Compassion in Dying of Oregon’s then-executive director. He described how a relationship was formed with a desperate wife of an ill husband. He explained how they were coached in how to access physician-assisted suicide by taking advantage of a loophole in the law. The authors go on to note the further problem posed by the organization’s deceptive new name. In 2005, Compassion in Dying merged with Derek Humphry’s Hemlock Society to form “Compassion and Choices.” According to Hendin and Foley, this name change “permits them to avoid the word ‘dying,’ and the association of the word ‘hemlock’ with lethality.” Compassion and Choices is the major organization leading efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the United States and is the driving force behind the Washington Initiative threat. “The bulk of the pro-I-1000 war chest comes from out of state,” wrote Seattle Post Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly. “The biggest bucks have flowed from five ‘Compassion in Choices’ committees across the country.” It is a sad state of affairs when the sick and vulnerable, often looking for comfort and encouragement at the end of their lives, are met with an organization whose goal is not to give them options, but to lead them down the quickest path to their death. |