Posted on: Sunday, February 6, 2005

House panel votes to kill assisted suicide bill

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Doctors, nurses, hospice workers and ordinary citizens spoke passionately on both sides of physician-suicide legislation at a House Health Committee hearing yesterday. After more than nine hours of testimony, lawmakers voted against moving the bill forward, effectively eliminating the Death with Dignity bill for this session of the Legislature.

House Bill 1454 would have allowed competent, terminally ill patients to obtain a lethal dose of medication to end their lives. A doctor would prescribe the dose.

A parade of emotional speakers attacked the bill as "evil," or praised it as "compassionate legislation."

In voting down the measure, committee chairman Dennis Arakaki said he voted no because there was no consensus. Rep. Alex Sonson said the bill didn't have enough safeguards. And Rep. Josh Green, a doctor, said he couldn't support such a bill because it wasn't perfect.

"Someone mentioned that we should have the courage to pass this bill," said Rep. Lynn Finnegan. "I think that everyone who came here had the courage to express their opinions. I am against this. I am not hiding anything. And I will continue to be against this."

Those opposed described physician-assisted suicide as a slippery slope that would lead to euthanasia and pressure terminally ill patients to choose suicide over the prospect of being a burden on their families.

Proponents reminded the committee that polls have shown that 75 percent of Hawai'i's registered voters favor death with dignity legislation, and that safeguards in the proposed legislation are designed to prevent abuses.

Some who spoke wept as they related their personal stories.

Kat Brady, who referred to House Bill 1454 as compassionate legislation, told of watching her mother die in excruciating pain from colon cancer and withering to 45 pounds before she finally died because there was no legal alternative to prolonged death.

"I would have done anything — anything — to end her suffering," Brady told lawmakers. "This bill would give the patients a way to end their suffering on their own terms."

Brady asked the panel "not to sentence others to die in a similar way."

Michael Tada spoke on the opposing side. He suffers from cerebral palsy and had such difficulty speaking that he required his independent living specialist, Terry Jasper, to interpret for him.

"Physician-assisted suicide would open a door that would make suicide seem reasonable," said Tada, 38, who said that if such legislation had been around when he was a teenager he would no longer be alive. He said he now understands that "life is precious."

Both sides spoke of Oregon's seven-year-old physician-assisted suicide law — the only one in the nation. Those in one camp said they see Oregon's law as an abject failure, but others said it's a model of success.

"Opponents of physician-assisted suicide will warn you that it will affect the most vulnerable," said Oregon physician William Petty. "They are right. For to me the vulnerable have faces. They are patients I remember."

Petty recalled patients manipulated by their families, such as the woman who was talked out of pursuing cancer treatment by her son.

But Robert Rees, who has been diagnosed with malignant melanoma, said, "with seven years of experience in Oregon, it is time for Hawai'i to proclaim its confidence and faith in freedom for the human spirit."

Dr. Leonard Howard, past president of the Hawai'i Medical Association, echoed the sentiments of many who opposed the bill because recent advances in pain control, palliative care and hospice care have rendered it unnecessary.

"HB 1454 offers only one idea," he said. "Death."

Dr. Robert Nathanson, co-founder of Hospice Hawai'i and president of Hawai'i Physicians for Assisted Dying, disagreed.

"The Hawai'i Death with Dignity bill is modeled after Oregon's Death with Dignity Act," said Nathanson, who added that for most patients simply knowing they have an option is enough to alleviate much of their suffering and anxiety.

Only 206 of the 210,000 people who died in Oregon in the past seven years had ended their lives by self-administering a lethal dose of medication, he said.

"Many referred to it as 'an insurance policy' against an undignified death," he said.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.