Need to ensure a patient’s choice, limit coercion
Editor, The Times:
The Times’ article on “death with dignity” demonstrates a not-so-subtle shift in messaging by assisted-suicide advocates [“Why some couldn’t die on their own terms,” page one, March 7]. Before the vote on Initiative 1000, advocates of assisted suicide assured voters that no doctor would be forced to assist his or her patients to commit suicide and that a physician’s medical judgment would never be compromised.
Now, doctors are criticized for not suggesting suicide to patients who may not even be terminal. For a physician to even raise the issue of suicide with an ill and elderly patient it could be highly coercive. The patient who fears being a burden may interpret the suggestion of suicide as encouragement.
The so-called protections of I-1000 are minimal enough without attempting to hurry up the process.
— Theresa Schrempp, Seattle
Hippocratic oath bars assisted suicide
Whether you see merit in “physician-assisted suicide” or not, it is an inconvenient truth that the Hippocratic oath clearly states: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”
It is true that many medical schools have abandoned this oath from the start — probably because it also swears to take no fee for teaching students medicine. Nonetheless, this oath is etched in the minds of our society as the cornerstone for the profession of medicine.
How can a physician possibly prescribe — or suggest — an intentional lethal dose and still claim the dignity of the Hippocratic oath?
— Gerald N. Yorioka, Mill Creek
Personal story disproves need for I-1000
Carol Ostrom’s article faulting some doctors for not better advising patients on the new assisted-suicide law is written from the premise that one has a right to die on his or her own terms. Since when?
In 2005 I was diagnosed with an incurable neuroendocrine cancer and told I had six months at best. A doctor in Houston would not even see me for a second opinion; they essentially said it was hopeless.
Yet I’m still alive and kicking. Why do we want the state involved with incentivizing people to prematurely give up hope? Why do we have to alter a doctor’s role? Why are we sanctioning the selfishness of suicide? It’s insanity masquerading as sanity.
The logical outcome is identified in this month’s Atlantic Monthly in a profile on the founder of Dignitas, the Swiss-based firm that helps anyone commit suicide for any reason. The founder brags about helping 1,000 people kill themselves. With the help of death-with-dignity laws, that’s where we are headed.
— Chris Carlson, Medimont, Idaho
Personal experiences with terminally-ill patients affirms need
Thank you for the extensive articles on death with dignity and the organization Compassion and Choices in Sunday’s paper. This is a very important issue and the articles were very informative, telling people the how, why and who.
As a clergy person who sits by the beds of many dying in our church families, it is very important that they get the best information and this kind of support.
I am all in favor of death with dignity, which doesn’t prolong the suffering of the patient or the family.
— Rev. Richard K. Gibson, Lynnwood