2016 June 15^th

As a change from the focus on killing in anger, as in the Orlando massacre, I will turn to a very different kind of “killing.” Kathleen Parker’s column yesterday was titled, “Freedom to kill…” a title that forecasts Parker’s opinion about California’s assisted suicide law. She writes, “Here I should confess my own ambivalence….I’m just not sure I like the idea of the state and doctors lending a hand.” Then she writes, “When the continuum of life from conception to natural death is interrupted as a convenience to one’s individual concept of time what else do we also terminate?”

How does she feel about interruptions due to intractable pain? The closest Parker comes to discussing intractable pain is her comment that “…medical advance that extend life well beyond what some find acceptable resulting in unnecessary suffering,” but that isn’t the primary problem. It isn’t necessarily a problem of aging; intractable pain can be a problem at any age and it might not have any hope of redress other than massive doses of opiates. Many cancers can be involved here. If you receive enough opiates to control the pain you are rendered comatose. Pancreatic cancer is a notable offender and once this cancer has metastasized, there is very little hope of a cure.

There are already some remedies: There is the “Do not resuscitate” directive; that is self-explanatory and it will be followed by most medical facilities. There is hospice care available if the person has a life expectancy of six months or less. In hospice care attempts to cure stop and only palliative care continues. Notice that in both of these situations the medical community withdraws any attempt at cure. They stop trying because they don’t know of any cure, but they also stop any but palliative care; no extraordinary care is provided to further extend life.

There are many associations whose purpose is to provide physician assisted suicide. People who wish to end their lives have no trouble finding ways to do it.  There are about 21 thousand suicides by gunshot every year. Many of these are impulsive and without the ready availability of guns many of them would not happen… but many still would. Then we have attempted suicide by overdosing on over the counter painkillers. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is a favorite but there are many others. In the case of acetaminophen, a less than immediately fatal dose can damage the liver so that a lingering death is inevitable.

Assisted suicide is a complex issue; tying it to abortion as a generalized lack of respect for life is an enormous oversimplification.