Showing posts with label Massachusetts Medical Association. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Massachusetts Medical Association. Show all posts

Friday, December 2, 2011

Ken Stevens, MD: "Eleven years later she is thrilled to be alive"

November 27, 2011

To Massachusetts Medical Society 


Dear House of Delegates Officers and Other Interested Parties:

I understand that the Massachusetts Medical Association will be voting on changing its policy against physician-assisted suicide. I have been a cancer doctor in Oregon for more than 40 years.  The combination of assisted-suicide legalization and prioritized medical care based on prognosis has created a danger for my patients on the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

The Plan limits medical care and treatment for patients with a likelihood of a 5% or less 5-year survival.  My patients in that category, who say, have a good chance of living another three years and who want to live, cannot receive surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy to obtain that goal.  The Plan guidelines state that the Plan will not cover “chemotherapy or surgical interventions with the primary intent to prolong life or alter disease progression.”  The Plan WILL cover the cost of the patient’s suicide.

Under our law, a patient is not supposed to be eligible for voluntary suicide until they are deemed to have six months or less to live.  In the well publicized cases of Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup, neither of them had such diagnoses, nor had they asked for suicide.  The Plan, nonetheless, offered them suicide.

In Oregon, the mere presence of legal assisted-suicide  steers patients to suicide even when there is not an issue of coverage.  One of my patients was adamant she would use the law.  I convinced her to be treated.  Eleven years later she is thrilled to be alive.  Please, don’t let assisted suicide come to Massachusetts.

        [Support for this letter regarding Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup can be found in these articles:  http://www.katu.com/news/26119539.html & http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1  My patient’s letter in the Boston Globe describing her being alive 11 years later can be read here:
http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-04/bostonglobe/30243525_1_suicide-doctor-ballot-initiative   ]

Kenneth R.Stevens, Jr., MD
Sherwood, OR 
Professor Emeritus and former Chair, Radiation Oncology Department, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon

Monday, November 28, 2011

Oregon Doctor's Letter to Massachusetts Medical Society

RE:     Massachusetts Medical Society House of Delegates
Report: 105, 1-11(A), Physician-Assisted Suicide Policy.


To members of the Massachusetts Medical Society,

I practice internal medicine in Oregon where assisted suicide is legal.  I write to urge you to maintain your policy against physician-assisted suicide and have attached a copy of this letter to this email.  Contrary to marketing rhetoric by suicide advocates, the safeguards do not protect patients.  Please consider my patient’s story below.

I was caring for a 76 year-old man who presented to my office with a sore on his arm, eventually diagnosed as metastatic malignant melanoma.  I referred him to both medical and radiation oncology for evaluation and therapy. I had known this patient and his wife for over a decade. He was an avid hiker, a popular hobby here in Oregon, and as his disease progressed, he was less able to do this, becoming depressed, which was documented in his chart.
My patient expressed a wish for doctor-assisted suicide to the medical oncologist, but rather than take the time to address depression or ask me, as his primary care physician, to talk with him, the specialist called me and asked me to be the "second opinion" for his suicide.  I told her that assisted suicide was not appropriate for this patient, but unfortunately, my concerns were ignored, and two weeks later my depressed patient was dead from an overdose prescribed by this doctor. His death certificate listed the cause of death as melanoma.