Posted on 04/04/2009 11:09:11 AM PDT by wagglebee
HELENA — While a district court judge has ruled it is a right protected in the state constitution, life-ending treatment has proved elusive for many patients in Montana, an advocacy group said Friday.
One such patient is Janet Murdock of Missoula, a 67-year-old woman who is dying from ovarian cancer and has asked doctor for a prescription that would bring about her death to no avail.
Murdock, through the Denver-based advocacy group Compassion and Choices, released a statement Friday in hopes of highlighting the issue that a spokesman for the group said is not unique.
“I feel as though my doctors do not feel able to respect my decision to choose aid in dying,” Murdock said in the statement. “Access to physician aid in dying would restore my hope for a peaceful, dignified death in keeping with my values and beliefs.
“I have suffered so much that I have considered throwing myself into a snow bank to die of hypothermia,” she said.
In December, District Judge Dorothy McCarter found that physician-assisted suicide is protected by the privacy provisions of the Montana State Constitution. With that ruling and no laws on the books in the state restricting physician-assisted suicide, Montana is considered to have the most liberal rights in regards to life-ending treatment. But assisted suicide, or “death with dignity,” advocates say that right is being frustrated by the unwillingness among doctors to aid in dying.
“In this context ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’” said Kathryn Tucker, a lawyer for Compassion and Choices who argued before McCarter.
Along with Murdock, at least one other Montanan, an unnamed man from Sheridan, has told Compassion and Choices that he is having trouble finding life-ending treatment, according to Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices.
That could at least be in part due to the Montana medical communities moral qualms with assisting in suicide.
The Montana Medical Association adopted a policy following the ruling that states the groups “does not condone the deliberate act of precipitating the death of a patient.”
The policy goes onto state that the organization “acknowledges” that some treatments to eliminate pain and suffering could hasten a patient’s death, but “does not accept the proposition that death with dignity may be achieved only through physician-assisted suicide.”
Dr. Kirk Stoner, a physician in Plentywood and president of the Montana Medical Association, said his group’s stance is the same as physician groups in other states and nations, including those jurisdictions where physician-assisted suicide is legal by law.
“(Assisted suicide) is really against our ethics,” he said. “Our reason for being is to care for our patients.”
Two things are at play in Montana and elsewhere, he said.
“One is society’s right to allow a person to kill themselves. The other is a physician’s right to participate in that,” he said.
Still, advocates for life-ending treatment said Friday that they are hopeful doctors will come forward to treat people like Murdock.
“It’s really sad. Here we are after the ruling and Janet Murdock can’t exercise that right,” said Tucker.
Tucker told reporters she does not know how many people, if any, have been assisted in dying by a doctor in Montana since the ruling.
She pinned the hesitancy for some doctors to perform the practice on ignorance or fear, and not the ethical reasons Stoner cited.
“I hope that physicians have heard about the decision, but we don’t actually know. My suspicion is that physicians are not aware of the decision or are still feeling at risk,” she said.
Exactly. Nobody is stopping the drama queen.
Next we will see the demand that doctors assist in the suicide (AKA murder) of their patients regardless of the phsyicians ethics. Look for such a law in about 5 years.
God bless these Montana dctors.
“Death with dignity” to these people means that you get to fix your hair before you blow your brains out.
most of those dying of oxycontin overdoses are druggies who grind it up to take it.
Those who take huge doses of oxycontin for pain might accidentally lower their respiration rate, but the death would be because they are terminal, often with pneumonia, and the amount needed to stop pain is near the fatal dose.
But in pro death articles, we see people in pain who refuse to “be sedated” and then insist on a huge overdose.
Giving high doses of narcotics at the end of life is what we docs call “terminal sedation”...
ironically, if you relieve the pain, sometimes the people do get better...the sedation relieves the pain but then the sleepyness goes away while the pain control continues, they wake up and figure they’d prefer to live.
Thanks for the info! My friend’s ex-husband was given liquid oxycontin at the ER for a pancreatitis attack. He was dead the next day from what was ruled an accidental overdose (they think maybe he forgot he had a dose and then gave himself another). We don’t believe he had an addiction problem with that. My husband’s step-grandfather was addicted (obtaining legally) and died of an overdose a few months later- I believe he was just popping the pills.
We have heard that there is apparently a trend for druggies to smoke ground up oxycontin these days. I don’t know much about it, but I would guess it’s not that smart of a thing to do.
most of these overdoses are accidental...
sometimes the patient waits until they can’t stand the pain, but the medicine takes awhile to act, so they keep popping more doses.
With ordinary narcotics, it may take an hour...but with the long acting medicines, it may take several hours to fully work, so you see the problem...
and addicts are more prone to pop extra doses trying to get instant relief...
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