This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/tntopinion.
- All
- Editorial cartoons (285)
- Editorial outtakes (325)
- Election (121)
- How we work (191)
- Taking notice (1871)
- What's coming (989)
- Who's visiting (124)
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| << < | > >> | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | |||||
- August 2009 (86)
- July 2009 (91)
- June 2009 (94)
- May 2009 (80)
- April 2009 (91)
- March 2009 (99)
- February 2009 (90)
- January 2009 (125)
- December 2008 (111)
- November 2008 (89)
- October 2008 (111)
- September 2008 (87)
- More...
XML Feeds- pcoddin
- artman77
- Guest Users: 407
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:
Under I-1000, if a physician prescribes a lethal overdose, when that physician completes the death certificate, he or she is required — actually required — to list the underlying disease (say lung cancer) as the cause of death, even when the doctor knows full well that the patient died due to the suicidal overdose he or she prescribed. To my knowledge, there’s no other situation in medicine in which the death certificate is deliberately falsified — and in which this falsification is mandated by law.
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.
