Tucson, Arizona Monday, 24 February 2003
By Howard Fischer
CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES
PHOENIX - Linda Lopez remembers as a 12-year-old girl watching her grandfather, suffering from cancer, "waste away."
"I saw this man who was
6-foot-4, well over 200 pounds, shrink down to about 90 pounds when he finally
died," Lopez said. "It was a living hell for him."
Then she watched her father die.
"He asked me to bring a gun for him," she recalled. He had several strokes, was incontinent, blind and paralyzed.
"He was just miserable and didn't want to live anymore," she said. "Nothing much was working except for his brain."
Now, as a state representative, the Tucson Democrat thinks she can do something to prevent others from going through the same experience. She has drafted legislation designed to let terminally ill people get a lethal dose of medications from their doctors.
Her proposal, HB 2454, will be heard Thursday morning by the House Health Committee. Lopez said that while she cannot get the measure approved this session - there won't be a vote this week - testimony presented will set the stage for next session.
Modeled on Oregon law
She said the legislation has precedent: It is modeled after a law approved in 1994 and again in 1997 by voters in Oregon. Through 2001, the most recent figures available, 91 people had taken their own lives under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act.
But Carolyn Gerster, a Scottsdale physician and chairwoman of Arizona Right to Life, said the Oregon law is a bad model to follow.
And one of Lopez's colleagues, Rep. Robert Cannell, D-Yuma, said it is wrong under any circumstances for a doctor to be an instrument of a patient's purposeful demise.
The legislation specifies that a patient can request a fatal dose of medication in front of two witnesses. Two doctors would have to certify that the person is within six months of death.
A second request would have to come at least 15 days later. There also is a provision requiring the patient be referred for counseling if there is a belief that the person is suffering from a disorder or depression causing impaired judgment.
The doctor would have to ask the patient to notify next of kin, but the patient's refusal would not be grounds to deny the lethal medication.
The measure is getting the strong support of Arizonans for Death With Dignity.
Aged population growing
"It's an important issue because of the aging of America," said Earl Wettstein, state chairman of Arizonans for Death With Dignity. "There is a percentage of people whose end-of-life needs are not being met by the present system."
Wettstein said there is no reason for someone to go through months of pain and suffering when the ultimate outcome will be death.
Cannell said there's no reason for anyone to suffer. He said there are doctors trained in the aggressive use of pain medications.
Lopez said that may be true. But she said that dying people are entitled to make a conscious choice to end their lives.
Cannell conceded that
doctors often provide ever-
increasing dosages of pain medications, even when the physician and family members
know that it might cause the patient's death.
He said, however, that there is a world of difference between aggressive pain management that hastens death and purposely giving patients a single lethal dose of drugs.
"It goes against all of my teaching and all of my training as a physician that I would consciously write a prescription that meant the patient was going to die," he said.
Gerster said she fears that the law would be misused.
The Oregon legislation was upheld by a federal trial judge. But U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is appealing that decision.