Pubdate: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 Date: 08/17/1998 Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) Author: Mahendr S. Kochar Website: http://www.jsonline.com/ Congress is considering a bill, the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 1998, which would keep the terminally ill from receiving adequate doses of painkillers. While this bill is meant to prevent physician-assisted suicide, it would have an adverse effect on end-of-life care. It requires that in instances in which a patient using physician-prescribed narcotics dies, the incident be investigated. The Drug Enforcement Administration will have to question the patient's grieving family to divulge information to an investigator about the most private of family matters -- the circumstances of a loved one's death. While the bill is being proposed ostensibly to prohibit dispensing of narcotic drugs for the purpose of hastening death, a laudable goal, the legislation will seriously impair a physician's ability to prescribe narcotics in doses necessary to overcome a terminally ill patient's pain. The burden would be on the physician to prove to the DEA that the drug was needed to relieve pain, not hasten death. Even if a physician were ultimately exonerated, the damage would be done. A physician would be left with no choice but to question how effectively he or she could treat other patients in the future. These patients represent the sickest of the sick and deserve to get the best care possible. If this bill were passed, it would stop the profession's progress in its tracks. The American College of Physicians -- American Society of Internal Medicine opposes this legislation, which will have an adverse effect on end-of-life care. Mahendr S. Kochar Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology Medical College of Wisconsin