New WA doctor-assisted suicide law
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| Tue, 02-24-2009 - 11:22am |
Health, medical professionals attend seminar
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/401168_death24.html
By JOHN IWASAKI
P-I REPORTER
SEATAC -- The interviews with registered nurses and social workers at Oregon hospices showed the dilemmas they face in serving terminal patients who wish to speed their deaths.
Patients wouldn't choose to end their lives through Oregon's Death With Dignity Act if their underlying needs were met, a worker told researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University.
That was before she met a patient whose situation forced her to "look at all of my beliefs and question them. And I changed."
Washington voters approved Initiative 1000 in November, which will allow physicians to legally prescribe lethal medication to competent, terminally ill patients given six months or less to live. The patient must be an adult Washington resident who voluntarily asks for the lethal drug and self-administers it.
Seattle bioethicist Jan Heller said medical treatments can increase the length or quality of life, but "we often cannot do both at the same time."
He also raised the issue of "intentional killing" through self-administered lethal drugs compared with "allowing" a patient to die.
"Some ethicists don't make a distinction between acts of commission and acts of omission," Heller said, urging his audience to do so "or you'll drive yourself crazy otherwise."
Now that it will become law, the Death With Dignity Act will allow families and medical professionals to more openly talk about end-of-life issues, said Seattle psychologist Judith Gordon and Therese Johnson, a Mercer Island therapist, who both attended the seminar.
"Everything can be on the table," Gordon said.






>"The patient must be an adult Washington resident who voluntarily asks for the lethal drug and self-administers it."<
That could be a hiccup if the person is too incapacitated to self-administer.
>""Some ethicists don't make a distinction between acts of commission and acts of omission,""<
Treating to prolong someone's life that's in agony
I am glad that the people from WA have a choice and that the patient himself or herself can decide and administer.
{hugs!}