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OLYMPIA, Wash. – Terminally ill patients with less than six months to live will soon be able to ask their doctors to prescribe them lethal medication in Washington state. But even though the "Death with Dignity" law takes effect Thursday, people who might seek the life-ending prescriptions could find their doctors conflicted or not willing to write them. Many doctors are hesitant to talk publicly about where they stand on the issue, said Dr. Tom Preston, a retired cardiologist and board member of Compassion & Choices, the group that campaigned for and supports the law.

When I saw this headline, I wondered what it could possibly mean: "Drugs like LSD and Ecstasy 'could help terminally ill'." Turns out (drat!) that it doesn't mean that those hits of acid you may have swallowed when you were young and irresponsible will help you live longer. The first clinical trial involving LSD since the 1970s began in Switzerland in June with the aim of using "psychedelic psychotherapy" to help terminally ill patients come to terms with imminent death to improve the quality of their remaining life. Eight subjects will receive 200 micrograms of LSD - enough to induce...

Rabbi Gurkow: Welcome to the Rabbi's one on one chat room, how can I help you today? jewishscoller: whats the jewish take on assisted suicide Rabbi Gurkow: itis forbidden to take one;s own life or to help another take theirs jewishscoller: but why, whats so bad about puting somebody out of there misery jewishscoller: im sry to argue im am 100% against it i just want to get more details about it Rabbi Gurkow: let me ask you if you think it is ok to help a young functional man or woman out of their misery because they want you...

The Vermont House of Representatives voted against a proposal yesterday that would have made the state the second in the country to permit physician-assisted suicide, following Oregon. House members voted 82-63 against the measure euphemistically entitled "Patient Choice and Control at End of Life," after a week of impassioned debate on the issue, the Associated Press reported. The legislation would have made it legal for a doctor to assist a patient with a terminal illness to commit suicide by prescribe lethal medication. "In my view, (the bill) goes too far in enforcing one group's preferences on the traditional values of...

THE MAN I KILLED did not want to die, but he no longer felt he had much of a choice. He had gone from being tall and strapping, full of appetites and a brilliant manner of speech, to a skeleton, weak and full of messy needs. He and his wife still loved each other very much, but... he was 60 when he was diagnosed with cancer. ...One day over lunch, I told him that if he ever experienced too much pain or diminishment, I would try to help him die on his own terms, if he wanted. He was amazed,...

A long-dormant bill that would allow the terminally ill to obtain life-ending drugs from their physicians appeared to be headed for defeat Tuesday in a Senate committee after a wavering Democrat turned against it. Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, said he struggled with how to vote on the bill and ultimately decided it could lead to a broader use of assisted suicide than contemplated by the measure's authors because of future pressures to cut medical costs. "In this society, more often than not, public policy decisions are driven unfortunately by money concerns, not by policy concerns," said Dunn, the chairman...

The U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the Bush administration's heavy-handed threats to prosecute Oregon physicians has revived the debate over whether California should allow doctors to help their terminally ill patients commit suicide. The fact that Oregon's law has survived the court challenge does not make physician-assisted suicide good public policy. It emphatically is not, for the simple reason that it exposes the most vulnerable members of society – the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the mentally impaired, the terminally ill – to unwarranted pressures to take their own lives because they are a financial burden on their families and...

"If one state can say it's legal for doctors to prescribe morphine to make people feel better, or to prescribe steroids for bodybuilding, doesn't that undermine the uniformity of the federal law and make enforcement impossible?" he asked

SACRAMENTO — Facing a potentially narrow defeat in the Assembly, Bay Area and Los Angeles lawmakers used an eleventh-hour political maneuver late Wednesday to catapult their landmark doctor-assisted suicide bill into the Senate. The move, called a "gut and amend," which transfers the legislation into a Senate bill, bypassed a Friday deadline for passage out of the house of origin and keeps the measure alive. The proposal has triggered widespread, emotional debate, with major forces lining up on either side. In committee hearings and behind the scenes, the clash has grown for months to the point where numerous Assembly members...

Years before he categorized Terri Schindler Schiavo in the persistent vegetative state, which led to her death by dehydration, neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford was building the case for removing feeding tubes from society’s vulnerable. "…The United States has thousands or tens of thousands of patients in vegetative states; nobody knows for sure exactly how many," Cranford wrote in a 1997 Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion piece titled: When a feeding tube borders on the barbaric. (WorldNetDaily. Com, March 23, 2005). "But before long, this country will have several million patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. The challenges and costs of maintaining vegetative state...

Starving Terri Schiavo is Illegal Assisted Suicide Judge Greer's decision is controlled by Florida law, specifically Florida's Health Care Advance Directives, Chapter 365 of Florida Statutes. The judge may only rule on questions of fact and law relating to these provisions. He may not write new law from the bench. Judge Greer ruled that Michael Shiavo, Terry Shiavo's husband, was legally entitled to act in place of Terri and carry out her wishes regarding her medical treatment. He ruled that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and would have wished to refuse artificial extension of her life by...

Thirty-seven Oregonians died by doctor-assisted suicide last year, a slight decrease from 42 the year before, according to a new state report. During the seven-year history of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, assisted-suicide has accounted for 208 deaths -- roughly one in 1,000 deaths in the state. In 2004, 40 doctors wrote a total of 60 prescriptions for lethal doses of barbiturates. The prescription total fell from 68 the year before -- the first decrease in prescriptions since doctor-assisted suicide became legal in Oregon. The numbers released March 10 by the Oregon Department of Human Services, are unremarkable in light...

SACRAMENTO - A series of e-mails and telephone calls related to two high-profile environmental decisions in California has prompted criticism that business interests may be gaining too much influence over the U.S. Interior Department. According to court records, Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald tried to change scientific recommendations related to protecting wetland species and endangered fish. In the first instance, the correspondence was between MacDonald, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managers and the California Farm Bureau Federation in April. A month later, the federation used the information to back a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the...

DETROIT (AP) — An attorney for Jack Kevorkian is seeking to have the assisted suicide proponent pardoned, or his sentence commuted. Mayer Morganroth said Tuesday he filed the necessary papers with both Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the state Department of Corrections. The announcement came the same day an Oakland County judge denied a motion seeking to have Kevorkian released because of health problems. The request to the governor was filed last month, reported The Daily Oakland Press. Morganroth said there was little to be gained from keeping the ailing 75-year-old in prison. Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years...

"Hellary Lies Again? Ho-Hum..." Posted by Doc Farmer Saturday, June 14, 2003 For the past week or so, we've all been inundated by the MAJOR NEWS EVENT that is Hellary Clinton's new book ''Living History.'' Yes, the tentacles of this monster news story have stretched to the farthest reaches of the globe. From New York City to Pango-Pango to Doha to a primitive mud-hut in Newark, New Jersey, you just can't get away from her. No matter how hard you try. And you can't get away from the many opinions about her new book. Including here. So sit back, relax,...