EUTHANASIA REPLACING MEDICINE by Gary L. Morella
Euthanasia Is Not Just Changing Medicine; It's Replacing Medicine.
any questions arise pertaining to the application of physician-assisted
suicide. In particular, "How do we strike a rational balance among all
considerations and ensure approximate 'equal justice under the law,'"?
Typically, advocates admit to "not having answers to these questions" but go
on to offer some interesting "suggestions".
One such suggestion that I've observed deserves examination. "In the absence
of a power of attorney the patient-doctor relationship should be the main
focus on terminal decisions. If, however, medical personnel refuse to follow
patients' wishes ... they should be subject to legal liability."
What do you do when someone in a fit of despair is heard to say, "I don't
want to live any longer", and horror of horrors, a family member, neighbor, or
"friendly" doctor just happens to take this literally? Is this carte blanche
for the plug to be pulled on this individual's life when at some future
date he finds himself incapacitated in a hospital? If so, the Hippocratic oath
has become the "hypocritic" oath and no medical professional could ever be
trusted which is the consequence of subjecting same to "legal liabilities"
for keeping patients alive. Legal liabilities for keeping patients alive,
is this what advocates call a "rational balance"? If something sounds wrong,
more often than not, it is. The confusion is a primary example why
there are no strictly legalistic answers to these questions.
According to a Dutch Commission report, 11,800 patients were euthanized in 1990
through active measures, most often by administering lethal drugs, and 5,941
of these were performed without the patient's consent. Only 400 patients
opted for assisted suicide. An additional 13,506 patients were denied
"nonfutile medical treatment with intention to terminate life," a practice the
Dutch call "euthanasia by omission" because it denies lifesaving treatment.
The great majority of these cases, 64%, involved persons who had given no
prior consent to such a fate.
A Dutch physician, Richard Fenigsen, in the Journal of ISSUES AND LAW AND
MEDICINE states, "Euthanasia is not just changing medicine; it is replacing
medicine. This suppression of traditional medical thinking, medical working
habits, and the medical way of reacting to events has an impact on both the
emergency care and the long term care of patients," he writes.
Fenigsen describes several case studies. In one teaching hospital,
anesthetists stopped providing anesthesia for cardiac surgery involving Down's
syndrome patients. In other cases, hospitals and doctors refused to apply
simple, lifesaving measures to patients whose lives they determined were
"unlivable."
In one case, a physician did not administer insulin to a 6-year old, mildly
retarded boy who developed juvenile diabetes, thereby causing his death. In
another, a doctor persuaded an elderly woman to stop taking medicine needed to
treat an enlarged heart because she was living a "limited life" - she depended
on several medications, needed help cleaning her house, and could walk only a
few blocks at a time.
In all, 65% of Dutch doctors believe that physicians may propose active
euthanasia to patients who do not ask for it themselves, according to Dutch
surveys.
A study recently published in the British medical journal Lancet involved
patients who expressed a desire to end their own lives -- the sort
of patients who would be most likely to seek a physician's help in committing
suicide. Doctors at the Dana-Farber cancer institute found that 80 percent of
such individuals were suffering primarily from clinical depression, rather
than from unendurable pain. With the help of modern pain-killing medication,
most terminal cancer patients can be spared from extreme suffering, the
researchers point out.
Since clinical depression can be treated successfully through the use of
medication and counseling, the Lancet report suggests that four out of five
potential candidates for physician-assisted suicide may change their minds
with appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment.
More to the point, if 80 percent of the people who opt for suicide are
clinically depressed, it follows that an overwhelming majority of such
individuals are not able to make clear and logical decisions. Thus, prudent
lawmakers should protect these vulnerable patients from the potential
consequences of a decision they might make under the influence of an emotional
disturbance.
The movement to make assisting suicides legal was made virtually inevitable by
the Supreme Court's creation of a right to abortion with abortion being
nothing more than pre-natal euthanasia and euthansia being post-natal abortion.
Since we have made it legal to destroy human lives for the convenience of
others via abortion, what's to stop us from terminating dear ole Mom and Dad
when they become inconvenient? After all, isn't inconvenience, situated on the
extreme ends of the bell curve of life, defined by those currently in power!
Minus a moral compass rooted in recognizing universal truths, the answer is
nothing.
As Judge Robert Bork has pointed out in SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH, "It is
ironic that our supposed 'freedom' to choose death has made it far easier for
others to choose our death as the autonomy is often theirs, not ours."