The Last Word

Perspectives on suffering

Comments (0) By Paul Rubin Thursday, Aug 23 2007
...continued from page 1

Appel is a fan of Oregon's controversial physician-assisted suicide law, which has been in effect since 1997 (voters passed the Death With Dignity Act by a narrow margin in 1994, but implementation was delayed by legal injunction).

Oregon remains the only jurisdiction in North America where doctors may, under strict guidelines, prescribe lethal overdoses for dying patients. (Twenty-one other states have failed to pass physician-assisted suicide laws since then, including, in recent months, California and Vermont.)

Barbara Lee, the president of right-to-die group Compassion and Choices, says "there’s an enormous amount of harm being done out there."
AP/Wide World
Barbara Lee, the president of right-to-die group Compassion and Choices, says "there’s an enormous amount of harm being done out there."

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But it's still considered second-degree manslaughter in Oregon to intentionally "cause or aid" another person to commit suicide. However, New Times could find no instances of that law being applied there.

"Dying" under the Oregon physician-assisted suicide statute means a prognosis of six months or less to live, an arbitrary length of time that troubles University of Arizona philosophy professor Michael Gill.

In 2005, Gill published a thoughtful piece in support of the Oregon law in the aptly titled journal Mortality.

"Supporters of the Oregon law, and I'm one of them, often tend to speak of terminal illness as if it's an undeniable scientific fact," Gill says. "More and more, though, it's not so cut and dried. People are given diagnoses of terminal illness and they live for years . . . But I'm still pretty sympathetic toward people who would want assisted suicide and aren't terminal, such as people with Lou Gehrig's Disease who may live for some years but won't be able to administer their own drugs at the end."

Gill suggests, however, that "it's a safer bet not to allow assisted suicide for unbearable [mental] suffering and to only allow it for the terminally ill, even though some people undergoing unbearable suffering — metaphysical or mental — probably are going to tug at our heartstrings."

Barbara Lee, the president of Compassion and Choices, a right-to-die nonprofit based in Colorado and Oregon, says she doesn't use the word suicide "in the context of a mentally competent, terminally ill person who wants to die. We use 'aid in dying,' and that's one of the tenets that we rest our case on that we're not breaking the law.

"It's not an irrational, impulsive repudiation of life to think that way. It's a rational judgment about an imminent death. If I have the medication in my hand, I will know when the time is right because I will be on the verge of that precipice, at the bottom of which is not life."

Lee, whose resumé includes stints as a nurse, physician's assistant, attorney and managed-care executive, says that Compassion and Choices — which lists more than 30,000 members — would not have assisted with the suicide of Jana Van Voorhis, as did the more-radical end-of-life group Final Exit Network.

"Not if she wasn't terminal in the way we define terminal — six months or less to live," Lee tells New Times, adding that about 90 percent of the clients served by her group die in a hospice setting.

"But I want to point out the difference between suicide and aid-in-dying. Suicide is a repudiation of life. It's different whether it's the result of a mental illness or a chronic physical illness, but both still involve a repudiation of life.

"A person who asks for aid in dying is not repudiating life — and, in our view, it's not suicide because of that. Frankly, it's an affirmation of the life that has been lived. If these people could make a choice to live, they would take it in a heartbeat."

Lee says "there's an enormous amount of harm being done out there, and this episode in Phoenix is not the worst of it. The worst of it is the people who do not find Compassion and Choices, do not find a compassionate doctor, and who are faced with what they feel is an unbearable situation for themselves and their families, and take matters into their own hands with violent means."

Wesley Smith, who opposes all forms of assisted suicide, says that for Barbara Lee and others to studiously avoid using the word suicide is telling.

"If your movement needs to change the lexicon to get people to accept something, then there's something wrong with the movement," Smith says. "That's just verbal engineering to say a suicide isn't a suicide, a spoonful of sugar to help the hemlock go down. Beneath the sophisticated talk, beneath the word-engineering, are people that get so caught up with this that they lose all sight of what's right and what's wrong."

Smith says "the social stigma for the term suicide is important and it helps save lives."

He stresses that he doesn't criticize people "who may engage in this type of behavior — I mean the people who are suicidal, not the facilitators. And it's obvious that the woman [Jana Van Voorhis] needed mental help. It's very sad."

Jacob Appel sees Jana's case through a different prism than Smith. He says it matters ethically under any circumstance about the persistence of someone's request for assistance in committing suicide.

"It's the difference between someone saying every time there's a crisis, 'I wish I was dead,' such as the teenage girl who wants to die after her boyfriend breaks up with her," Appel explains.

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Thomas O'Brien
Thomas O'Brien

I am astonished by the viewpoints written about the differentiation between psychic and physical pain. I am also astonished by the differentiation between "terminal" and "non-terminal" chronic illness. But what really agitates me is that society is attempting to regulate by law the "Right" to end existence.

I am a person who believes in personal responsibility...the so-called and oft- repeated "Republican Mantra". If someone chooses to end their existence...then who on God's green earth am I to tell them that they cannot do it? That is a PERSONAL CHOICE!!!

This choice harms no one but the person who chooses it...Right??? Oh...One can state that there are grieving survivors and I will agree to that fact. But let me clue you in...LIFE IS TERMINAL.

Nobody gets out of dying...You...I...Everyone breathing today...WILL DIE. There will still be grieving survivors...(Well...maybe not in my case. Forgive my Gallows Humorous Intent and give me some literary license.) The only difference is that the ones that choose to die know the time when they are going to die. Ones that choose to live...Well...They just don't know the time when they will die.

Do you suffer from pain? No...I am not writing of acute, temporary pain like the aftereffects of a root canal or...in a woman's case...childbirth (I do not know that because I am a man, but women have told me...). I am writing of chronic, irretractable pain. Do you suffer from that? The writer of the article supporting assisited suicide was writing of "unbearable" pain and then yet another viewpoint from Wesley Smith accused the movement for assisted suicide for attempting to "change the lexicon" when writing of the word "suicide". I wonder if Wesley Smith knows what the meaning of unbearable is? That is does he TRULY KNOW the meaning of UNBEARABLE? God forbid that he does or ever has to experience it. I would not wish that damnation on ANYONE living, not even my worst enemy because it is a living HELL.

It does not surprise me when I read comments and opinions from those who take a stand against assisted suicide because I know that they are not suffering UNBEARABLE pain. They haven't a clue about what it is and because of that, well...they are CLUELESS. It then follows that their opinions are WORTHLESS. Put them in my shoes for a day...a month...or maybe a few years and they may change their tune.

There is not one day that passes that I do not think about suicide...NO NOT ONE. I suffer from Tertiary Stage Lyme's Disease. Imagine a Charley Horse, a cramp in your thigh. Pretty painful, eh? Okay...Think about that pain, not just in your thigh, but in every single muscle in your body. More painful...right? Now think about having that pain 24 days, 7 days per week...for TWENTY FIVE YEARS without ending... Now add into that the bone grinding arthritis in every joint in your body. Oh...How I just love those spinal column muscle spasms that have my vertibrae grind together like children's building blocks...By the way...let that happen for TWENTY FIVE YEARS without ending.

Certainly there must be something that the doctors can do...right? My doctor told me to think of this disease "...like cancer.". I then asked her, "What?!? Without the benefit of death?!?"

Oh certainly there must be some medicines...right? Yeah...right. The truth is that there are the narcotics and NSAIDS (non steriodial anti inflamatory drugs) and antibiotics (yes the antibiotics kill some of the bacilli, which then release the neurotoxins that provide the pain, but most have hiding places in the brain and very little of the antibiotics pass through to the brain so they can hide there). The drugs provide only temporary relief at best. Adding to this there is the "criminalization" of using them. Yes, you are treated like a CRIMINAL for having these prescribed to you. You are a scapegoat for other people's behavior...for others drug abuser behavior.

Personally I do not want to use these drugs. One reason...I am treated like a criminal. I do not want to use these drugs...at all. I use the very minimum that I can. They fog my thinking. I want clarity of thought. Then, again, I do not want to experience the pain and suffering. What am I to do? My disease is INCURABLE. The pain is almost UNBEARABLE at this point. There is no prospect of getting better. The prognosis is poor. What am I to do?

Then some may say that I need to be cleansed from my sin. Oh yes...there are those out there whom believe that I must have commited some unpardonable sin to have been afflicted of this disease. I have had "ministers of God" tell me so. Those ministers remind me of Job's friends (Read the Book of Job in the Bible. Apparently these ministers haven't.) They tell me that God will heal me...if only I believe. God Almighty did not heal the Apostle Paul of affliction, his thorn in the side as he writes of it. Now do not get me wrong. I do believe in the miraculous healing power of God Almighty. But ONLY if it is in His will...NOT MINE. Perhaps He is testing the compassion of those whom are not afflicted...Maybe that is His purpose in this. I do not know. But I believe in Christ Jesus and know that He rose from the dead after being crucified so that I may have eternal life. I know that I crucified Him 2000 years ago...that is...my sin did. I also know that I am forgiven of that sin.

I know what I will do when the pain becomes UNBEARABLE. You know what I will do also. I know that I have life everlasting in an incorruptable body, free from disease.

So who are you to tell me anything, Wesley Smith? Who made you judge over my life and my death? I guess you are just a clueless writer and I just prayed and thanked God that you are.

 
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