Posted on 08/21/2011 10:39:00 AM PDT by wagglebee
“I think that anyone who finds they’re terminal, and there’s no turning back, and they decide they want to go, they should have that right,” said the 72-year-old Quincy resident as he sat over morning coffee at Barry’s Deli in Wollaston.
The question dropped on Almeida’s breakfast table could be dropped in front of Massachusetts voters next year if a ballot initiative filed early this month with the state attorney general can pass legal reviews and muster some 70,000 signatures from registered voters.
The proposal to legalize assisted suicide for some terminally ill patients is likely to ignite a lot of debate. It was a controversial enough subject that 643 Patriot Ledger readers chimed in on a website questionnaire.
Nearly three-quarters – 474 – said they would vote in favor of such a referendum.
Backers of the ballot initiative have hired Quincy-based political consultant Michael Clarke to help push the “Death With Dignity Act” onto the 2012 ballot.
The proposed law would permit patients “with a terminal disease that will cause death within six months” to obtain drugs to “end his or her life in a humane and dignified manner.” The plan also requires the patient to be capable of making medical decisions and to consult with physicians.
Similar laws were passed in Oregon and Washington. In Oregon last year, 96 prescriptions for lethal medications were written, and 59 people took their own lives with those drugs.
Oregon enacted its own Death with Dignity Act in 1997, and a Brookline expert on the topic of assisted suicide said Oregon’s law is the standard to emulate.
“It was a wonderful experiment in Oregon when they started, and the experiment worked out,” said Dr. Milton Heifetz, a retired neurosurgeon and former professor at Boston College Law School.
Hiefetz cautioned that the decision should rest with the patient and not the doctor and added that the potential pitfall of these laws is a doctor’s terminal diagnosis.
“It’s very difficult to determine what is six months,” said Heifetz. “But I will say that it should certainly be passed if it’s written right.”
An opponent of such laws is Dr. Michael Grodin, a professor of health law at the Boston University School of Public Health, who called the initiative a symptom of a deeper problem, but not a solution.
“The problem is people don’t die very well. They die in hospitals and in pain when they should be at home with hospice care and with their loved ones,” he said. “I am very wary of assisted suicide when 45 million people don’t have health insurance or access to home health aides. The real issue is to support dying people.”
Outside of academia, the debate seems to elicit gut reactions from people.
Jude Sherman, who was shopping for used books at the Goodwill Store in Quincy, said she would vote against an assisted-suicide ballot question.
“It’s a slippery slope when you start that. Some people might just be weary of life and depressed,” she said. “I do believe people can have good and bad days and might make a bad decision.”
He's right.
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I can’t think of an easier way for Medicare to cut the $600 billion put required by Obamacare and the democrat party, than to kill off lots of expensive old people with euthanasia.
Those who are in love with death never explore and publish the centuries of experience with the exertion of undue influence upon the ill and elderly. Go to your probate cases for myriads of examples.
I wouldn’t even stipulate that they have to be terminal. We need to thin the herd, particularly in liberal meccas.
Just let the docs write a script and send you to a dark room so you can do it yourself. Only be sure to pay your co-pay first and schedule a follow-up. Those doctors have procedures.
It's not a far step from that, to "Anyone who does want to prolong their life is just being selfish, and is only using up valuable resources."
What about those who find they are terminal, there is no turning back, and they decide that they don't want to go, ever? Do they have that right?
It's ludicrous to call something a "right" when there is no choice about it. We can choose not to exercise our right to free speech, or our right to have firearms, but, as far as I know, it is impossible to choose not to die. Ergo, dying is not a right.
There is no such thing as a “right” to die. There is free will where someone can choose to kill himself, but it’s not a right.
If someone wants to off themself, they should go ahead and do it and not make a big production number out of it by dragging the damn government and voters into it with an “act” and ballot proposition.
“It didn’t take Roy Almeida more than a minute to shape an opinion”
Sounds like a genuine intellectual giant. I wish my mind worked that quickly.
If I’m able, and if the S doesn’t HTF by then, I plan to go as far back up in the mountains as I can by vehicle, then keep walking until I can neither go on nor go back.
“it is impossible to choose not to die.”
What? Does Obama know about this?
This is a scandal!
Then of course you also run into the issues of whether the declaration of wanting to die is coerced, whether financial or family matters are coming into play, and it just gets really ugly. Bottom line: do it yourself if you want to do it, but strongly reconsider before you do. I can't think of a case where it's worth it.
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But here is the real kicker -- I saw a study once that said more than two-thirds of terminally ill people with suicidal ideations were suffering from moderate to severe physical pain. That is immoral. Doctors are reticent to prescribe too many painkillers for terminally ill patients (who often require very large doses) because they are afraid of running afoul of state and federal (DEA) drug regulation authorities. As a result, pain patients suffer. In places like Oregon, the first to pioneer so-called "death with dignity", terminally ill patients receive a lethal dose of barbiturates (similar to painkillers) from their doctor, but they can't get their hands on enough PAIN MEDICATION for their PAIN. If these poor patients didn't have any PHYSICAL PAIN, their urge to kill themselves would be diminished in many cases.
Why is it that we have legalized abortion in this country but we throw doctors in jail for treating pain patients? I realize that pill-mills exist and corrupt doctors should be punished, but doctors who only have the best interest of the patient in mind should be IMMUNE from prosecution for prescribing painkillers.
Just let the docs write a script and send you to a dark room so you can do it yourself. Only be sure to pay your co-pay first and schedule a follow-up. Those doctors have procedures.
Is this sarcasm?
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I hope so.
I disagree completely.
And this comes from experience, and from a wife in the profession.
Hospitals, dealing with people in their final stages of disease go out of their way to ensure that they are as pain free as possible.
This statement makes it sound like the folks in the hospital are heartless animals.
And if you think people are not given increasing doses of morphine at the end, you are not paying attention.
That said, the law wouldnt pass in MA. While the legislature tends to be communist, we are still a pretty “church-going” state. And there is a large Catholic population.
I cannot see this passing.
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