Duty To Die

A reporter stated, In a recent editorial about the state of Washington, "Linda Fleming, a 66 yr. old, legally bankrupt cancer patient, living alone in Saquim, Washington, became the first person to kill herself under her state's new assisted suicide law." The measure that paved the way for Fleming's death allows suicidal adults to obtain lethal prescriptions, as long as they are competent and have been diagnosed with a terminal condition by two physicians. 

Wow!  Progressive and liberating, isn't it. Just like Oregon, which has a similar law, and has facilitated more than 400 suicides since 1997.

Washington, where 58 % of voters approved the assisted suicide measure last Fall, many critics remain concerned. They worry, such laws will change a doctor's role, from healer to executioner. Remember Hippocrates separated the physician as healer, from killer in the year 500 BC. Is modern medicine smarter? Many of those who worry about the legalization of assisted suicide, worry that assisted suicide will pull resources from palliative care and confirm, to the severely ill patient, that they are burdensome and worthless. This could bring about a mind-set that there's a duty to die. 

State legislators across the nation will be dealing with the duty to die. After all, it's an economic boon. It may even appear in some form in the Obama Healthcare Plan, in the subtle form of rationing.  

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