Assisted Suicide in Washington: Tragic, unsafe, and unnecessary
Compassion & Choices, formerly The Hemlock Society, says that the assisted suicide numbers for the first 6 months in Washington State show that physician-assisted suicide is “safe, legal, and rare.” One wonders:
Safe? For whom? 100% of the patients receiving the state-sanctioned lethal drug overdoses die prematurely and unnaturally. And, it turns, out, some of them die uncomfortably as well. According to the Oregon’s Department of Health Services, some patients regurgitate the lethal prescription and take up to 3 and a half days to die. In the latest year for which data are available, seven percent of those dying from lethal prescription in Oregon experienced “complications” relating to regurgitation. Furthermore, a British Medical Journal study published last June documents that the majority of Oregonians requesting assisted suicide met criteria for clinical depression. Giving suicidal depressed people lethal drug overdoses surely can’t be accounted as safe.
Also, in Washington and elsewhere, giving lethal barbiturate doses to death row prisoners is called ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ by some, and even Washington State’s chief prison physician resigned rather than participate in the gruesome process. And lethal barbiturate overdosing is what we’re advocating as ‘safe’ for our vulnerable ill friends and relatives? Besides, since most assisted suicides in both Washington and Oregon are presided over by the Compassion & Choices, how would one know if the reported deaths were, in fact, safe? Self-reporting by the self-same radical suicide advocacy organization which wrote the law and has vowed to replicate and export it to other locales?
Rare? We can’t actually be sure. The Washington Death With Dignity Act (DWDA) requires physicians to lie on the death certificate—that is, to pretend and to certify that the patient died from the underlying disease rather than from a lethal prescription. Then they’re supposed to separately send in a form to the Department of Health which documents the lethal procedure. But how will DOH know if the physician doesn’t send in the form? Not from the death certificate—it actually masks the fact that the lethal procedure was administered to the patient. Not from the patient’s family—they’re not required to be notified, and they may not even know how their relative died. Not from the doctor who chooses not to send in the form. (Oregon statistics show that most of the physicians writing lethal drug prescriptions are a small group of pro-suicide doctors affiliated with Compassion & Choices.)
But look at the news reports themselves. The Department of Health (DOH) says 16 people have died from lethal prescriptions so far this year. Compassion & Choices says 11. That’s something like a 30% discrepancy, and we’re only half way through the first year of the law. In addition, it’s been only 6 months since the law took effect. It’s too soon to say whether physician-assisted suicide is rare in Washington. In Oregon, the per-year rate of physician-assisted suicide actually tripled over the first ten years and is continuing to trend upward. And in Oregon, the suicide rate for seniors is anything but rare. In fact, since the legalization of assisted suicide, the senior suicide rate has increased steadily, until now, Oregon has one of the highest rates of senior suicides in the country.
More importantly, back when it was still called The Hemlock Society, Compassion & Choices did not consider the rarity of physician-assisted suicide a good thing. Its founder, Derek Humphrey, is famous for saying that legalized assisted suicide will ultimately prevail everywhere because it makes economic sense—and he’s not talking about limiting it to terminally ill people. And, indeed, under the logic of the Compassion & Choices position, and in the context of health care rationing, why should physician-assisted suicide be rare? Under that logic, why would it be good for it to be rare? Shouldn’t a good thing that can save expensive private insurance and Medicare dollars be more widespread? Wasn’t Derek Humphrey right after all, about it making economic sense once you accept the assumptions underlying physician-assisted suicide?
Legal? Well, at least Compassion & Choices got that part right. Unfortunately.
Uncategorized | Eileen | 
September 8, 2009 7:59 pm
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