ONCE THE DOCTOR'S role changes to that of a life-destroyer, Washington State's Physicians Against 119 say, patients will no longer be able to trust doctors to act in their best interest. Euthanasia may start out as a benevolent impulse, but it soon becomes a calculating and inhuman procedure.
Initiative 119 would have provided few safeguards against doctors killing patients who were depressed, mentally ill or completely incapable of deciding whether to allow their doctor to kill them. Although it states that only the mentally competent will be allowed to choose euthanasia, no procedure for determination of mental competency is set by the initiative. Nor could doctors involved in euthanasia cases be sued by family members for wrongful death.
Finally, as The Los Angeles Times noted recently, Washington's law would have allowed any two physicians to determine whether euthanasia is warranted, conjuring up the bizarre spectre of unemployed dermatologists setting up killing centers for cancer patients. Because of such a lack of safeguards, euthanasia will soon be extended to groups proponents claim the law protects.
PROPONENTS of Initiative 119 have dismissed these and other arguments against legalizing euthanasia as unrealistic "slippery slope" arguments. Hemlock Society spokespeople have said over and over again that their law attempts to increase the options for the individual, not to make it possible for doctors to murder their patients with impunity.
They are either lying or terrifically ignorant of the only Western country in which euthanasia is widely practiced. Holland has had semi-legal euthanasia for about 20 years and has more safeguards than the Washington law would have had. The picture for patients in Holland grows uglier by the day.
A recent Dutch Government Study says that of 2300 cases of euthanasia in 1990 doctors performed 1200 without the consent of the patients. But other studies suggest that the government study vastly underestimates the number of deaths. Those in favor of euthanasia say the number of euthanasia cases may be more like 4000. One study, done by a researcher at the University of Virginia, estimates the number at between 5000 and 20,000.
Most ominously, Kass notes that another study, done by a Dutch proponent of euthanasia, discovered that last year 8750 patients died from withdrawal of treatment without the knowledge or consent of their families. And that there were 8100 additional cases in which patients died from an overdose of morphine, 61 percent of which occurred, strangely enough, without the patient's knowledge or consent.
Clearly, something is wrong with allowing doctors to perform "aid-in-dying." At least in the Dutch case, the quasi-legalization of euthanasia has led to a slippery slope. There are few reasons to believe that American doctors would be less tempted to play God with their patients than the Dutch.
We can only hope that when voters or legislators in California or Oregon or Florida must decide whether to legalize the medicalized murder of euthanasia they will follow the lead of the voters in Washington. If they do otherwise, there is little hope that the killing will stop with those who wish to end their lives peacefully.