by
Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | March 20, 2011
From the March 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Kevorkian might be wrong that the reluctance of physicians groups to support the act derives from their holding to the teachings of a long-dead, pre-scientific figure shrouded in myth. But sometimes the medical society “dicta” seem like they’re not as wed to patient autonomy as they could be.
For instance, the AMA advises that requests “for physician-assisted suicide should be a signal to the physician that the patient's needs are unmet and further evaluation to identify the elements contributing to the patient's suffering is necessary.”
Finding ways to relieve the patient’s misery is noble and good. But is asking for physician-assisted suicide really a signal for the physician to do that or simply a straightforward request for a barbiturates script? And as Oregon’s figures show, suffering does not, in fact, top the list of reasons for going through with the procedure – loss of autonomy does (91 percent), followed by the inability to engage in normal life activities (88 percent) and loss of dignity (84 percent). (Fear of pain is way down at 21 percent.) And the Oregon Hospice Association’s Jaques says these numbers make sense when you look at the sort of people who choose to take a lethal dose.
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“Again, if you look at the data – the demographics who use the Death with Dignity Act – it tends to be well-educated, older, more men than women, and men that have cancer. The profile when you look at the individual who uses the Death with Dignity, they are the quintessential, independent Oregonians who have been in control over their own lives, who have been in the driver’s seat,” she says.
And recall that many more patients get a prescription than use it – again suggesting that the real issue is control. Some patients, it would seem, like to have a bottle around, just in case, so they can approach the end on their own terms. Something like this was once got at by the comedian Bill Maher, when he gave his reason for supporting physician-assisted suicide. As he once put it in a routine, “it’s man’s way of saying to God, you can’t fire me. I quit.”
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