Death with vanity

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/4/5 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

THERE IS TRUE ROT in a state that regards those who want to kill the sick as more compassionate than those who want to treat the sick, but that is what the state California could become -- rotten -- if the Sacramento enacts a measure that would legalize physician-assisted suicide.

Assembly member Patty Berg, D-Eureka, is working on a bill, modeled on Oregon's assisted-suicide law, for California. Why? Her husband died of a stroke in 1987, she told The Chronicle, and "had he survived the stroke, he would not have been able to swallow on his own. I know he would have begged me to hasten his death. And, of course, I would have done it."

I called Berg to discuss her measure, but she could not get back to me by my deadline.

Oncologist H. Rex Greene, medical director of the Dorothy E. Schneider Cancer Center in Burlingame, bristled at Berg's assessment. "It ridiculously oversimplifies the details of decision-making in end-of-life care," he said. If a stroke victim was massively disabled and made it clear that he wanted no artificial feeding, no care on a machine, "that person can refuse feeding and hydration: End of story," he said.

But that's not assisted suicide. There is a world of difference between refusing extraordinary care -- a basic right -- and asking a doctor to give you poison.

[Jaysun]

I've always wondered if the people in Sacramento are secretly being held their against their will. Surely if they were able to move about the country like the rest of us the place would be a ghost town.

[SmithL]

Debra's Note: My husband, Wesley J. Smith, is a consultant to the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.