On November 5, the San Jose Mercury News published an editorial enthusiastically supporting the adoption of an assisted suicide law similar to Oregon’s – and bemoaning the lack of one.
Predictably, it’s crap. Here’s one example:
Doctors, of all people, should know that for a small percentage – roughly 5 percent – of terminally ill patients, morphine and other drugs cannot control their pain, making the final weeks and months of their lives unbearable.
Where’d they get that number? And don’t they know there are other legal options that exist for whatever percentage of people whose needs can’t be met with standard palliative care?
But the real kicker is that the implied argument here – that it’s all about unrelieved pain – is a lie. It’s impossible to know if the editorial staff is deliberately misleading its readers or writing out of ignorance. But neither is really excusable.
In this table from the 2006 Oregon Report, characteristics of people known to have ended their lives under the law are given. Under “end of life” concerns, the issue of “pain” is number 6 on the list. And it’s not clear whether or not the people involved were really feeling that their pain was inadeqately controlled, or they were afraid it wouldn’t be controlled – both are conveniently lumped into one category so we can’t really know. You’d think that would be important information to have, wouldn’t you?
What’s higher on the list?
Losing autonomy, less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable, loss of dignity, losing control of bodily functions, and burden on family, friends/caregivers.
The editorial doesn’t stop there. Here’s some nicely familiar pontification:
Oregon’s law does not condone euthanasia, as many often believe. The state put numerous safeguards in place so that the law would not be abused. In order to take advantage of the right to die with dignity, patients must be older than 18, be diagnosed by at least two doctors with an illness that will lead to death in six months and be able to make a competent medical decision on their own. The prescribed drugs must be administered by the patient.
It is clear that Oregon’s extensive safeguards are working.
Safeguards. Working.
Guess the editorial staff didn’t get the news about the Oregon governor’s report on the Nursing Review Board there, which found that the Board was more concerned with protecting the licenses of nurses than the lives and safety of patients. One of the cases the Board treated with a light hand was one in which two nurses allegedly “assisted” or outright murdered a patient under their care. Hard to know how much safeguards mean in Oregon.
And it’s hard to know how much safeguards are worth in California, for that matter. Just check our older entries on the deaths of Ruben Navarro and Linda Sue Brown. In the case of Ruben Navarro, a transplant surgeon is facing criminal charges connected with his death, but the medical review boards ruled that the nurses and physicians who allowed and/or aided the doctor in illegal conduct did nothing wrong. As for Linda Sue Brown – it’s another nightmare scenario of medical neglect and misconduct – but, according to professional review boards, no one did anything wrong.
“Safeguards” only mean something when there is accountability. There is no credible evidence of accountability in regard to the professional behavior of medical professionals in either Oregon or California. Be nice to see some before we start promoting “oversight” that doesn’t exist. –Stephen Drake
And does anyone notice that there’s a point past which morphine will trigger paradoxical pain reactions and increase the pain, thus increasing the morphine will make the pain worse, decreasing it will make it better, for a lot of people where supposedly “morphine doesn’t work”?
The problem is too few people know about pain management and lots of doctors seem either scared or can’t-be-bothered to actually learn how it works, so they do it wrong and cause totally reversible pain for people. (I have a friend who went through a paradoxical reaction like this and needed her dose lowered, at which point her pain went back to its normal level, and that’s common.)
Not to mention the many non-opiate things that can treat severe pain (in addition to opiates or instead of them depending on the person).
There is a discussion on “assisted suicide” in progress on the Internet Infidels site http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=226918 which makes reference to this post. There are two very outspoken proponents of physician assisted suicide posting there. One is a nurse who is a staunch supporter of the medical model of disability and totally dismissive of the social model, the other is just an arrogant jerk. I am arguing on the side of the good guys, but the discussion needs input from someone with firsthand experience from the disability perspective. Maybe someone could pop over?
spacecat,
thanks for the heads up. I’ll try to jump in the forum later today. Due to the current family situation, I’m never totally sure of my plans hour to hour, although that may be changing in ways that we are all celebrating.
I’m familiar with the “dogpile” phenomenon when taking the minority view. Frankly, my only goal in a forum like that is to expose the weaknesses and inconsistencies in the thinking of the posters you refer to. If they’re like other “true believers,” they won’t give ground. So what you write is really for the lurkers on the forum. –Stephen