DOCTORS DISCUSS HELPING END A LIFE
Since Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was passed in the mid-1990s, doctors have had to reconcile their Hippocratic oath with prescribing medication to end a life. Here are the experiences of some doctors in the state, Laura Kane writes.
In 1994, Dr. Eric Walsh wrote an article in a local newsletter explaining why he voted against legalizing medical aid in dying. Walsh, a medical director of a small hospice, wrote it would be impossible for a doctor to know a patient well enough to make such a crucial decision.
By the time the law came into effect in 1997, Walsh realized he had written about one of the central fallacies of being a doctor — that you can know a patient better than they know themselves.
“It’s the patient who has the disease, not you,” he said. “I just have to be there to listen to them, decide they’re not mentally ill, decide they have six months to live, and let them control the timing and manner of their death.”
Walsh said the first request he received was a profound emotional experience. The patient, a well-educated man with a strong marriage, had terminal cancer and was in so much pain he had to lie on the floor of the doctor’s office. Walsh wrote the prescription, but the patient never used it.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I felt,” Walsh recalled. “It’s like an insurance policy against suffering.”
The palliative-care doctor has written 20 such prescriptions in 18 years. One of his patients was Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old newlywed with a terminal brain tumour who moved from California to Oregon for aid in dying in 2014. She became the public face of the assisted-death movement in the U.S., prompting her home state to recently adopt legislation.
Walsh’s voice changes as he speaks about Maynard, making clear the emotional bond forged between doctor and patient in these cases.
“She was an amazing human being,” he said. “She was brilliant. She spoke in paragraphs that sounded as though she had written them out and edited them ... She was very clear-eyed and thoughtful and intent.”
Asked how he felt when she used the medication, he replied simply: “really sad.”