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Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 06:31:28 pm
The people who want to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Washington seem almost obsessive about expunging the words "assisted suicide" from the English language. I noted earlier that Initiative 1000 would forbid state agencies from using the term. In fact, "assisted suicide" would cease to exist "under the law." The proper term: "obtaining and self-administering life-ending medication." I-1000's sponsors turned in their signatures today, enough to put it on the November ballot. The Washington Medical Association, an opponent, was ready to pounce. Its president, Dr. Brian Wicks, immediately issued a statement condemning physician-assisted suicide as "fundamentally incompatible with the role of physicians as healers." One of his gripes had less to do with ethics than with nomenclature:
An analogy might be a cancer patient who has a fatal reaction to chemotherapy. Is it the cancer that killed him or the chemo? The chemo would be listed as the immediate cause of death – and it wasn't even intended to kill him, unlike the drugs used for assisted suicide. Americans have a habit of trying to soften the reality of death with euphemisms. We don't like to talk about it; we don't like to think about it. "Coffin" smacked too much of the grave, so we substituted "casket." "Tombstone" was more than we could handle, so it's "monument." But things are what they are. Pretending that a physician-assisted suicide isn't a "physician-assisted suicide" won't make it any less of a suicide assisted by a physician.
Categories: Taking notice
• 2 comments
COMMENTS:
This post misses the point.
Suicide is an emotionally charged and negative term, appropriate to terrorist bombers and despondent teenagers, but hardly descriptive of cancer patients who very much want to live. People used to call developmentally disabled people "retarded" and called people of color other colorful words – just because it’s deemed factually accurate doesn’t make it right.
To the Editor: I hope Patrick O'Callahan feels ashamed. As a journalist he knows better than most of us how important it is to use words appropriately. "Suicide" is not an appropriate term to describe the thoughtful choice of a terminally ill person. Two national organizations that work with and for terminally ill people have stated this as their policy. "Suicide" is an emotional buzz word used by the opponents of Initiative 1000. They know it, and we, who support every person's right to a gentle death, know it.
Patrick O'Callahan's person beliefs are fine for him. Our governor says she is unable to support assisted dying because of her religious faith, but she respects the rights of others to believe differently. Couldn't Mr. O'Callahan do likewise? If he is going to twist the facts and insist on the language of fear, I hope he will try to come up with better evidence than a legalistic argument by a member of the WMA, which represents a small percentage of Washington State doctors, and, of those, there are many who support choice at the end of life. Mary M. Watson, 13408 186th Ave. KPN, Gig Harbor 98329. Phone: 253-884-4690 Comments are not allowed from anonymous visitors. Please login or register to comment. |
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