Posted on 06/22/2006 3:46:06 PM PDT by BykrBayb
Only a few politicos paid attention last month when Sen. Sam Brownback held a hearing on the way doctor-assisted suicide impacts society. No legislation emerged from the session. None is forthcoming this year. Major news media did not pick up on the item until weeks later.
But during that May 25 meeting of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, those who oppose Oregon’s controversial experiment met their new legislative champion.
Since the 2003 retirement of Sen. Don Nickles, the Catholic Republican from Oklahoma, it was not clear who would step in as chief opponent of assisted suicide.
Brownback, a Kansas Republican and a convert to Catholicism, left little doubt that he has taken up Nickles’ mantle.
“States should understand the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia,” Brownback said during the panel hearing. He chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights.
In a lengthy statement, Brownback said that legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead to involuntary euthanasia, which has already come to pass in the Netherlands. He asserted that legal assisted suicide creates financial incentive for insurance companies to “encourage prematurely ending the lives of those in need of long-term care.”
Brownback argued that allowing killing as a medical treatment blurs society’s “moral guidelines,” and warned that lethal prescriptions could “gain acceptance as a solution for the chronically ill or vulnerable.”
During the late 1990s, before disputes over federal drug law and Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act made their way through the courts, Nickles led several attempts in Congress to thwart what he saw as Oregon’s unilateral breakaway from federal regulation. A state should not be allowed to exempt itself from laws the other 49 must follow, he said.
Nickles’ ultimate proposal would have, in addition to outlawing the use of federally controlled drugs for assisted suicide, allowed for more aggressive treatment to control pain.
That line of argument was blocked by a filibuster threat from Oregon’s Sen. Ron Wyden, and the effort eventually sputtered in the courts. Early this year, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that, as the law now stands, federal authorities have no way to impede Oregon’s assisted suicides.
Opponents of the practice said that Congress must now clarify drug law to close the loophole through which Oregon slid.
In his May 25 comments, Brownback focused on the same argument the Catholic Church and many Oregon physicians have put forward for a dozen years — patients who want to be killed need psychological aid, not an intentional overdose. “Often a terminally ill patient needs the reassurance that his or her life has value and is worth living,” Brownback said.
Dr. Chuck Bentz, a Beaverton internist who specializes in end-of-life issues, says he welcomes Brownback’s hearing and anything that keeps what he considers the perils of assisted suicide before the public eye.
“We need to educate the public on the dangers of giving doctors license to kill,” Dr. Bentz says. “That is something you have to worry about. Also, how can you trust your health plan? How can you trust your insurance company? How can you trust somebody who is paid for performance? There needs to be a very clear discussion.”
Dr. Bentz cites Oregon’s status as the state with the most geriatric suicides. Those numbers do not include assisted suicide. Many Oregon seniors are isolated, living the state’s individualistic ideals.
“There is a huge issue here with geriatric depression,” he says, asserting that assisted suicide tends to make elders feel their lives are of little value.
Dr. Bentz says that seniors respond well to mental health treatment, if they get it.
“Senator Brownback’s concern is being seen in Oregon,” Dr. Bentz says.
Dr. William Toffler, a family medicine physician at Oregon Health and Science University, says there is something wrong in a state that restricts end-of-life care dollars but will pay 100 percent of the costs of an assisted suicide.
Writing to a member of the British House of Lords, which has been considering assisted suicide for the United Kingdom, Dr. Toffler cites the case of a Corvallis doctor who euthanized a patient but was never prosecuted and the case of a man who awoke 60 hours after taking the lethal drugs. He tells the story of Michael Freeland, a patient with a history of depression and suicide attempts who received a lethal prescription without a psychiatric evaluation. A judge even declared Freeland incompetent. He eventually died of natural causes after Physicians for Compassionate Care interceded in his case.
About 5 percent of assisted suicide patients get referred for mental health evaluations.
“How many others have trouble is open to speculation — as doctors aren’t even present in over 70 percent of cases,” Dr. Toffler wrote. “In truth, assisted suicide has been performed secretly with very little oversight by the state health department.”
Tony Farrenkopf, a Portland clinical psychologist with expertise in end-of-life care, says the Oregon law’s safeguards seem to work. Physicians usually screen out people with mental health needs early in the process, Farrenkopf says. If not, he adds, the mental health professional usually steps in when needed.
“And most people who are applying are not mentally incompetent,” Farrenkopf says. He insists that terminally ill patients who want to choose the time of death should not be placed in the same category with people who are suicidal because of despondency.
Farrenkopf was on a committee that has lobbied to have the term “assisted dying” replace “assisted suicide.”
Dr. Jim Werth, a psychologist at the University of Akron, warns that too few data exist to claim that assisted suicide affects mental health care.
“We haven’t seen the abuse, but we also know the reports are not complete,” says Werth.
He is wary of looking to the Netherlands to predict what could happen in the United States. The Dutch law, for example, does not limit euthanasia to the terminally ill or even the physically ill.
But Wesley Smith, an attorney and author on assisted suicide, warned the Brownback subcommittee that the Oregon law’s founding principles mean it may spread easily beyond its current bounds.
“Assisted suicide is usually couched in terms that would limit assisted suicide to those who are terminally ill,” he said. “But given the philosophical/ideological principles that underlie the euthanasia movement — that autonomy is paramount and killing is a valid answer to human suffering — restricting assisted suicide to the dying becomes utterly illogical.”
Smith points to the Netherlands, where people have been given assisted suicide for psychological suffering and disabled infants have been euthanized. In many cases, the family requests euthanasia for a relative.
Oregon has had its share of questionable deaths, with at least one patient getting a lethal prescription from a stand-in doctor after her attending physicians refused because of concerns over mental health. About 5 percent of assisted suicide patients get a psychological referral.
One man died after someone else gave him the drugs, which are supposed to be self-administered only. One patient died apparently after family pushed to have the prescription filled.
In Oregon, 246 patients are reported to have used the assisted suicide law so far.
BlueOregon.com, a website that supports the Oregon law, accused Brownback of using his opposition to assisted suicide to push along a run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Wyden, a Democrat who says he opposes assisted suicide but has fought zealously to protect the law, was on guard again after Brownback’s hearing.
“While I do not know how I would vote if the issue were to appear on the Oregon ballot once more, I believe it is time for me to acknowledge that my fears concerning the poor elderly were, thankfully, never realized,” Wyden said. “The law has not been abused.”
Wyden again vowed to block any attempt by Brownback or any other lawmaker to bring Oregon in line with the other states.
California legislators this week took up a bill that would legalize assisted suicide in their state. The state’s Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to approve the plan, despite opposition from a coalition that included disability rights groups, medical organizations and church alliances.
Hispanic groups are also opposed to the legislation, which is based on Oregon’s law.
The California proposal is sponsored by Democratic assemblywoman Patty Berg, who helped found a local Planned Parenthood clinic.
Last year, a measure to legalize assisted suicide never emerged from committee when some Democrats joined Republicans in opposing it.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he would veto any assisted suicide legislation, saying the matter should be taken up by voters.
In 1992, Californians rejected an assisted suicide proposal by a 54-46 margin.
slavery AND fugitive slave laws ( which the south despised)
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