Achieving Death With Dignity
Impressive advances in modern medicine have helped to reduce suffering in many ways. But in some respects they have added to the suffering. It’s now sometimes possible to keep humans alive long after they might have died. Or long after they want to live. What is technologically possible is not always desirable. As a result the complex issue of euthanasia has re-entered political debate--inspiring talk shows and generating best-selling books.
It has also inspired a major ballot measure in Washington state. On Tuesday voters will decide whether the law should allow doctors, under certain conditions, to end the lives of patients who have mere months to live and would live them in agony.
Euthanasia, or what the Washington ballot measure calls “aid-in-dying,” is a profound moral and ethical question. As Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center, a medical think tank, puts it, the question pits the powerful fear of dying against the fear of not dying--a fear held by people who face prolonged suffering.
Some parts of the measure are uncontroversial and would simply permit any adult to designate another to decide whether to continue heroic measures to sustain life if the patient was unable to decide for himself or herself. California law already authorizes such a designation with a “durable power of attorney for health care decisions.” Since 1985, the California Medical Assn. has printed and distributed 2 million such forms.
However, another part would legalize euthanasia, making “death with dignity” a human right under the law. For the first time in any state, Washington physicians would provide what the proposition calls “a medical service” that would end the patient’s life in a “dignified, humane and painless manner.”
However, on this point Initiative Measure 119 is cloudy and fails to specify that the two physicians who would certify that a patient was terminally ill must be qualified to do so, on a case-by-case basis. Under this far too broadly drawn measure, theoretically at least, a pair of dermatologists could certify a cancer patient. That’s ridiculous.
Interestingly, Washington state’s doctors are about evenly divided on the ballot proposition itself. Understandably, doctors favor clarifying the law to permit withholding extraordinary measures to prolong life; such a clarification could cover their malpractice exposure. But most physicians polled said they would refuse to administer a lethal injection or actively do anything else to terminate life.
Americans are likewise divided about euthanasia, even if they agree something must be done about unnecessarily prolonged life. So if the Washington measure is not the answer, its defeat should not stop the search for answers to the agonizing questions to which modern medicine has given birth.
