May 8, 2004
NOT COMPETENT:
Doctor-assisted suicide case was mistake, doctor says (DON COLBURN, May 07, 2004, The Oregonian)
A Portland psychiatrist charged Thursday that a terminally ill Oregon man improperly became eligible for a doctor-assisted suicide in 2001, despite a history of depression.The patient, Michael P. Freeland, died of lung cancer in 2002. He had asked for and received a prescription for a lethal dose of barbiturates under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act. He ultimately chose not to take the drug.
The case was reported Thursday at a medical meeting in New York by Dr. Gregory Hamilton, a psychiatrist and former president of Physicians for Compassionate Care, an Oregon doctors group opposed to physician-assisted suicide.
"This was a botched case," Hamilton said by telephone from New York. "There aren't any effective safeguards for the mentally ill in Oregon when it comes to assisted suicide."
If you're going to allow assisted suicide you're going to be killing people who are just depressed. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2004 9:08 AM
On the plus side, I suppose that there would be less depressed people moping around to bring the rest of us down.
Posted by: Brandon at May 8, 2004 9:40 AMThe problem isn't depression, per se, as dying of lung cancer is a perfectly legitimate reason to be depressed. The problem is screening out those with a history of clinical depression.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 8, 2004 10:16 AMAnyone who needs to request assistance from a doctor to commit suicide isn't depressed enough to do the act on his own. These people are looking for someone to agree with them that their life is not worth living because they are not 100% sure that it isn't. Agreeing to help them kill themselves is just pushing them over that edge.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at May 8, 2004 10:18 AMDavid:
Depression, even over a terminal disease, though is not reason to be killed.
Posted by: oj at May 8, 2004 10:54 AMI'm strongly against assisted suicide. I'm strongly for allowing liberal use of pain meds for the near-death terminally ill who are in pain. I understand that this presents a line-drawing problem.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 8, 2004 10:58 AMYes, note that once he got over the immediate depression he didn't take the pills.
Posted by: oj at May 8, 2004 11:02 AMNote that the choice was ultimately his to make.
David's point is spot-on. Doctors routinely undertreat pain, because to treat it properly would leave patients with the ability to decide to end it on their own terms.
I know of people who went through agony in order to cache enough morphine to end it once and for all.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at May 9, 2004 8:40 AMJeff:
It shouldn''t have been. You, for instance, would have killed your wife at that point.
Pain treatment needs to improved, but that's not why.
This sounds like the Democrat's solution to control health insurance costs.
Posted by: J.H. at May 10, 2004 8:46 AMOJ:
"You, for instance, would have killed your wife at that point."
Go to hell.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at May 10, 2004 5:15 PM