Terminal patients deserve a choice
AID IN dying is not assisted suicide. Death is imminent, within six months. It is not the physician who decides to request aid in dying. It is the patient. This is a request that a mentally capable adult patient makes to obtain medication to self-ingest to end the pain, suffering and fear that might accompany a terminal diagnosis.
Safeguards include physician offers of the other end-oflife options: comfort care, hospice care, pain control and palliative care. It is the patient’s autonomy to decide when and if the medication will be used. The patient can rescind the request at any time. For some, it is the availability of such medication that makes life more bearable. Individual physicians can choose not to participate in writing the prescription.
Human autonomy is in question. A play many years ago was titled, “Whose Life is it Anyway?” It was about a bedbound man who was totally incapacitated and wanted out of that imprisoned life. He wanted all the assisted devices removed. In the last years we have had to litigate our way into permitting us to die by signing living wills/advanced directives that delineate the many ways we do not want intervention.
Physicians have not always agreed that people have the right to make their own decisions, whether about permanent contraception or refusing medical intervention. Humans have resorted to finding ways to have autonomy despite the medical community.
Throughout history, suicide happens under many diverse situations. People resort to ending their lives however they can, without seeking medical intervention for their problems. Some suicides are preventable, and we do what we can to make help available. With aid in dying, I can say that death is inevitable. With certain medical conditions, it is certain and accompanied by unimaginable personal suffering. Physicians don’t always welcome patient autonomy over their professional “expertise.” With aid in dying, physicians must become midwives to a patient’s wishes. A physician must be able to recognize when his/her expertise is secondary to patient self-determination. DR. JUDITH KITZES DR. SANDRA PENN Albuquerque