Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat  –  Duane Bates

January 15, 2008

ASSISTED SUICIDE STUDIES PUBLISHED

Duane Bates

Two studies, one from the Netherlands and one from the state of Oregon, indicate that the concern that legalizing assisted suicide would expose vulnerable groups such as the mentally or physically disabled to coerced euthanasia are unfounded.  The “slippery slope” arguments against legalizing doctor-assisted suicide asserted that once terminally ill adults were allowed to choose to end their lives it would eventually lead to the expansion of the principle to include those persons considered unworthy of continued life for a variety of reasons.

The Dutch study covered the twenty-year period from 1985 to 2005, while the Oregon study covered the eight-year period from 1998 to 2006.  The only group that was disproportionately represented in the study was AIDS patients who were thirty times more likely to request doctor-assisted suicide that other chronically ill or terminally ill patients. There is no evidence that any racial or ethnic minority, the mentally or physically disabled, poor or elderly or any other vulnerable groups were disproportionately represented among those persons who requested doctor-assisted suicide in either study.

About eighty percent of the persons requesting doctor-assisted suicide in the Netherlands and Oregon were cancer patients with an average age of seventy.  Under the Oregon law two doctors have to diagnose the patient as terminally ill with less than six months to live.  The patient then administers the lethal drugs to himself or herself.  In the Netherlands doctors are permitted to administer the lethal drugs to the terminally ill patients.

Regardless of the above results, the subject of suicide, doctor assisted or not, remains a highly controversial subject in America, with most people, and doctors, firmly opposed. Our experience with the actions of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in assisting over 100 people to commit suicide, for which he served eight years in prison, shows us the worst possible way to deal with this issue.  As the US population ages and medical science allows us to live longer, substantial numbers of persons will face the last months of their lives incapacitated and in pain as the result of terminal diseases.

I freely admit that I have a personal bias on this issue.  In 2003 at the age of 62 I was diagnosed with stage one colon cancer.  That year I had two surgeries followed by six months of chemotherapy that was completed in June of 2004. Although there is never a guarantee, I never thought that my illness was terminal in the near term. Since my cancer was discovered at an early stage, I had confidence that advances in cancer treatment would allow me to have many more years of life.  Yesterday (10/8/07) I underwent a colonoscopy as part of my five-year exam cycle.  It confirmed, along with a PET scan I had two months ago, that I am cancer free as of now.

One brother, who was ten years older than me, died of colon cancer and another brother, six years younger than me, had part of his colon removed last year.  There is clearly a pattern with the three of us, in spite of the fact that I could not find any cancer in my family going back two generations.  All of us lived in different parts of the country and had different life styles, so there is a high probability that our cancers are to some degree genetic.

Even though my health is good now, I must face the fact that ultimately all of us die.  I believe that many people, including myself, want to have some control over the end of life experience. Poor health and advancing age tends to focus more of ones attention on what our final days of life will be like.  I view this issue as a basic question of automony and personal freedom, but there are also ethical and moral issues on both sides of the debate. I intend to do everything in my power to make sure that my end of life process does not selflessly utilize medical resources to extend my life my a few weeks or months, even if that means moving to Oregon. The same medical advances that extend our lives and improve our quality of life are also being used in some cases to extend our lives beyond the natural limits of our bodies. 

As a society we certainly do not want an assisted suicide process that allows anyone who has a serious illness or injury to expect to be helped to end her or his life.  In at least two instances Dr. Kevorkian helped persons commit suicide that who’s only illness was severe depression.  At the other extreme, society should not demand that terminally ill persons to spend that last months, or sometimes years, in extreme pain or in vegetative comas like Terry Schiavo. Our society quite rightly insists that we as individuals assume more personal responsibility in managing every aspect of our lives while refusing to allow us to make decisions on how our impending death will occur.

We know that a substantial amount of medical and financial resources are devoted to caring for terminally ill patients in their last six months of life.  In spite of Living Wills and “ do not resuscitate” instructions families and doctors ignore the wishes of the patient to control the final days of their lives. We understand the desire of the families to maintain their loved ones life as long as possible and the very real concern on the part of doctors and hospitals that they will be criticized and sued for not using all of their medical skill to maintain life regardless of the medical realities, but we also need to respect the wishes of the patient.

Even more importantly, we need to understand that expending our finite medical expertise and resources on maintaining the lives of terminally ill elderly patients automatically deprives younger patients of needed medical care.  This year a poor thirteen-year-old boy in New Jersey died of a brain infection because his mother did not have enough money to have an abscessed tooth treated.

The reports from Oregon and the Netherlands demonstrate that we can design a rational system of assisted suicide where no person can be pressured into accepting a premature death and no medical professional can be required to participate in a process that he or she believes is immoral, unethical or illegal.     

Duane Bates

batesduane@yahoo.com