A "Doctor & Heir Protection Bill"

By Margaret Dore

On April 2, 2012, the Attorney General issued draft ballot question title and draft yes/no statements for the assisted suicide initiative.  Below please find my objection based on the initiative's being a doctor and heir protection bill.  For a print copy, please click here.  

I.  INTRODUCTION
The proposed act in Petition 11-12 protects persons who cause or assist the death and/or suicide of another person.  This memo discusses why the draft title and one-sentence statements for the act are misleading and should be amended.


II.  THE ACT


A.  The Act Protects People who Cause or Assist a Patient’s Death and/or Suicide


Under current law, people who cause or assist another person’s death or suicide face serious legal consequences.  They can be convicted of a crime, including murder.[1]  They can be found civilly liable for assisting a suicide, committing malpractice and/or causing a wrongful death.[2]  They can also be deprived of an inheritance or life insurance proceeds payable due to the death.[3] 


With the proposed act, however, persons who cause or assist another person’s death and/or suicide are protected from these consequences.  The act also opens the door to new paths of elder abuse.


How the act works, some of its protections and how it will promote elder abuse are described below.

Teen Suicide: "Assisted Suicide Law Sends Contradictory Message"

From Vermont where the legislature is considering a bill similar to the Massachusetts assisted suicide initiative.

http://vtdigger.org/2012/02/01/page-assisted-suicide-law-sends-contradictory-message/

Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Guy Page, a parent and resident of Cambridge.

In the Jan. 19 mail I received a letter from Lamoille Union High School, where my daughter is enrolled. It begins with the following sentence: “Over the last few years Vermont has seen an increase in suicide among young people.” It went on to describe a school initiative to hopefully address this awful development. I hope they are successful. All of my children have friends, or friends of friends, who have taken their own lives.

My eldest son, Tim, was a constant suicide risk through his teens. Through the wise, compassionate help of state social workers, Tim escaped his teen years alive. I can tell you that he was personally shaken by the implications, to him, of the proposed assisted suicide law several years ago. When he heard about it, my brilliant, troubled son began to shake in anger and almost despair. “Those hypocrites,” he said. “They’ve been telling me all this time that suicide is never OK.” It didn’t matter when I said the law is meant to address another set of problems – his teenaged hypocrisy-o-meter had already pegged assisted suicide as another example of “do as I say, not as I do, it’s all right for adults, not OK for kids.”

Recently I researched teen suicide in Oregon, where assisted suicide became legal in 1998. According to the Oregon health department website, there were more teen suicides after the law passed than before — 1999: 29 suicides. 2000: 44 suicides. 2001: 31. 2002: 37. 2003: 46. 2004: 52. The last two years were the highest two-year period in their survey. Furthermore, 94 percent of teen suicide attempts leading to hospitalization were caused by ingesting drugs – the only form of assisted suicide permitted by Oregon state law. Kids learn from their elders. 

Does this “prove” a link between the Oregon physician-assisted suicide law and teen suicide? No. But the burden of proof is on those who say, “Don’t worry, it will all be OK, none of our teens will think that.” As a parent of an at-risk child, I think this law may unintentionally tell other troubled teens “when it gets too hard it’s okay to end it all.” As the letter from my daughter’s high school says, the real world is a very hard place for some teens right now, and I think this law will just make it harder.

There are plenty of other reasons to oppose this bill. Before my wife passed in February 2011, she was appalled and upset at end-of-life questions asked of her in the ICU that to her seemed motivated by hospital cost-control. It drove a (thankfully temporary) wedge of distrust between her and her caregivers. So Vermont Insurance Commissioner Steve Kimball’s newspaper comments connecting this end-of-life issue with the high cost of health care were chilling. By contrast, Orange County Sen. Mark MacDonald’s daughter was one of Diane’s nurses and provided skilled, affirming care that should be the goal of the state’s health policy. But for me the teen suicide connection is reason enough for the Senate to drop this bill before it does irreversible harm.

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Article printed from VTDigger: http://vtdigger.org/
URL to article: http://vtdigger.org/2012/02/01/page-assisted-suicide-law-sends-contradictory-message/
URLs in this post:

[1] : http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5635a2.htm

Massachusetts Voters, reject Petition 11-12

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/11/massachusetts-voters-reject-petition-1112/

If adopted this November, a ballot initiative in Massachusetts will legalize physician-assisted suicide for patients whose conditions are predicted to produce death within six months. Initiative Petition 11-12 claims to ensure that the patient's decision to commit suicide is voluntary. That claim, however, is misleading.

The initiative petition requires that two persons witness the patient's written request for a lethal prescription. One witness, however, can have a financial interest in the patient's death. That person can be the only witness present when the lethal drug is taken. Thus, an interested heir could pressure the patient, and no one would know because no objective witness is required when the drug is taken. Also, the petition would require the death certificate fraudulently to list the patient's underlying condition, rather than the lethal drug, as the cause of death.

Initiative Petition 11-12 uses terms like life-ending "medication" and death in a "humane and dignified manner." But there is nothing medicinal about poison and nothing dignified about the prospects for the abuse the initiative petition would allow. It is a bad law that the voters of Massachusetts should reject decisively.
 STEPHEN L. MIKOCHIK
Professor emeritus
Temple Law School

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.