Pubdate: Sun, 11 Nov 2001
Source: Fayetteville Observer-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2001 Fayetteville Observer-Times
Contact:  http://www.fayettevillenc.com/foto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/150

DEATH AFTER INDIGNITY

Your Government Is Playing Doctor Again

To be born, said Victor Hugo, is to be condemned to death, "with an 
indefinite reprieve." With that cheery thought to lubricate the 
imagination, imagine for a moment that your own time is at hand.

Clear and unequivocal prognosis? Check.

Death not merely likely, but imminent? Check.

Second opinion affirms earlier prognosis? Check.

Financial affairs in order? Check.

Last will and testament on file in the right places? Check.

Health-care directive in force? Check.

Relatives notified, consoled, reassured? Check.

Painkillers prescribed? Check.

DEA certificate of approval in hand? Check.

Prescription filled? Che-- Wait a minute! How did the U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration get involved in this?

They're not involved. Not yet. But if Attorney General John Ashcroft finds 
a way around a temporary restraining order, Nov. 21 will be the date on 
which the federal government becomes an active participant in decisions by 
you and your doctor regarding your possession of painkillers that could 
hasten or cause death.

Ashcroft's hope is to undermine a state law that has withstood court tests 
and two trials in the court of public opinion: Oregon's Death With Dignity 
law. But if he succeeds, he will have done far more than that.

Many physicians, threatened with revocation of the license to write 
prescriptions, will be more guarded in their use of painkillers -- 
especially, although not exclusively, in cases involving patients who are 
terminally ill and in unremitting pain.

This would be bad enough if Ashcroft's initiative were in service to some 
high principle. The reality is that people are going to suffer terribly and 
unnecessarily because the administration has decided to pander to the 
so-called Religious Right, which thinks it sees something religious and 
conservative in having the almighty central government barge into the 
doctor's office and substitute its moral judgment for the medical judgment 
of doctor and patient.

There is no other way to enforce Ashcroft's edict, you know. The government 
cannot stand at a distance and determine which cases are being managed in 
accordance with its wishes and which are not. It must oversee every case 
involving federally approved painkillers, and order autopsies on every 
patient who has suffered and then died.

There is, of course, a coward's alternative: sow a bureaucratic minefield 
in the paths of all those who manage pain -- and then leave it to them to 
pick their way through, if they dare.

Which course do you suppose Ashcroft has in mind?
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MAP posted-by: Beth