Posted on: Monday, March 15, 2004

EDITORIAL
Suicide bill: Weary of the post-mortems

As a death-with-dignity bill was shelved again this year, some Hawai'i lawmakers offered the excuse that physician-assisted suicide is an uncomfortable issue to take up in an election year.

Heck, it's an uncomfortable issue to take up in any year. But it has to be resolved for the sake of those terminally ill and aging Islanders who want to know whether they'll ever have the power to end unbearable suffering.

If not in Hawai'i, they may want to make other arrangements — like move to Oregon.

Oregon's assisted-suicide law allows terminally ill patients with less than six months to live to request a lethal dose of drugs after two doctors confirm the diagnosis and judge the patient mentally competent to make the request.

Since the law was enacted in 1998, at least 133 terminally ill people have used it to end their lives.

A report released last week found that 42 terminally ill patients killed themselves last year under Oregon's assisted-suicide law, a 10 percent increase from 2002.

With an average of 31,000 Oregon deaths each year, that's not a lot of suicides. And Hawai'i, with 9,170 deaths in 2003, would likely have far fewer.

As it is, a subtle form of assisted suicide is already practiced in hospitals when doctors and nurses halt life-sustaining treatments to let a terminally ill patient die. Moreover, as part of palliative care, narcotics administered to relieve pain can occasionally result in sufficient respiratory depression to kill a patient.

But for many terminally ill patients, that happens too late in the game. They want the ability to end their lives before they lose control of body and mind. It's not about martyrdom, but about dignity.

For that and other reasons, a death-with-dignity law is worth pursuing. In the meantime, we must improve palliative care and pain management so that the demand for physician-assisted suicide will be low.

Ultimately, the question of what kind of life is worth living can only be answered by the person living that life.