SOMETIMES DEATH NEEDS A HAND
by William A. Collins
When we know,
The end is near;
Why must others,
Interfere?
You can tell when columnists are aging…they write more about death. It comes from more time visiting friends in nursing homes, from reflecting on their own parents’ final days, and from absorbing the morbid significance of their latest prescription. It’s generally not a pretty scene and it causes some writers to ponder an ideal society where late-term sufferers could pull their own plug.
Actually, such a Camelot already famously exists. It’s Oregon, where a recent count toted up 292 doctor-assisted suicides under that state’s unique 10-year-old law. So far, it has comfortably withstood several referendums and court challenges, thus demonstrating the sturdy independence of Oregonians. It also demonstrates the relative paucity of Catholic and evangelical presence in its precincts. California and Washington take periodic cracks at such a law too, but the zooming Latino population down south may have doomed such efforts there.
Prospects may be sunnier on the national level. You-know-who is leaving office in January, and with luck, federal agents will no longer waste our tax money trolling for occasional doctors who may have quietly lent a pill to a dying patient. Who knows --- maybe someday we’ll get a sane national law? Well, maybe not.
Meanwhile needless suffering and indignity continue unabated. The medical community has its protocols that allow no symptom to go untreated, especially in the hospital. To do otherwise gives an opening to a decedent’s heirs and their alert lawyers. For a patient’s heartfelt desires to be honored he’d better have a comprehensive living will and a full-time, experienced healthcare proxy. Once you’re on that respirator, it takes a magic trick to get you off.
Setting out to reform this perverse system is its relentless ancient foe, Jack Kevorkian, recently released from jail. Jack’s running for Congress now. Congress is the root of the problem to be sure, but his chances seem slim. Unfortunately none of his former patients can vote. But surprisingly, repeated polling on this issue may one day be what brings about its cure. Public sentiment is now up to 48 percent in favor of allowing physician-assisted suicide, with 44 percent opposed. And 68 percent believe that there are at least some circumstances where patients should be allowed to call it quits. Of course political success will take a lot bigger proportion of votes that that. While a majority of us might vote for it now, the zealous religious minority will make sure we never get that chance. They don’t just vote, they campaign.
All of which is too bad for the bulk of Americans. Tim Russert may have hit upon a relatively painless way to go, but that’s uncommon and undesirably early. A more typical demise follows the unremitting application of costly life extending mediations and treatments, often long after the quality of life has achieved absolute zero. And this in a setting where everyone is trying to do their best.
Unfortunately doing one’s best is not always the appropriate action, especially when the patient wants to pack it in. Even in Oregon, the doc can’t help unless you’re diagnosed with less than six months to live. It’s rarely an easy road. Does the patient really mean to depart, or is he just depressed? How bad are those treatments anyway?
And so control over this particularly morbid aspect of one’s impending demise lies with the zealots and the politicians. Diligent health proxies and doctors can and do often come to reasonable patient solutions, but it’s unfortunately the ideological outsiders who more often impose so much of today’s terminal suffering.
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Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. Reprinted from minutemanmedia.org
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