Page 26 - Delaware Medical Journal - July-August 2018

for their patients is to help them

Therefore, I believe MSD may need to change their position to neutral.
13 Thankyoufordoingthissurvey. Several points — suicide is not now illegal. Pain can be controlled if patients get appropriate care. If HB 160 passes, there is no reason not to extend assisted death to older teens, patients with more than six months life expectancy, etc. Doctors should never be killers.
14 Thisshouldbeafunctionof
the state health department and should NOT be allowed for other physicians unless they give FULL immunity to any legal action in the law.
15 Iamopposedtophysician-assisted suicide.
16 Irecommendwatchingthemovie entitled How to Die in Oregon before deciding on the issue of physician-assisted suicide.
17 IhavedonealotofworkinSNFs and NHs. I believe the present system of palliative care and hospice is more than adequate.
18 Lookatwhatishappeninginthe Netherlands. Older people are being pressured to “save resources” and many doctors admit anonymously to ending patients’ lives that the doctor feels are not worth living, without the patients’ knowledge or consent. A very slippery slope.
19 Thereareseveralrecentand humanitarian position statements on this subject. The ink is not yet dry on the most recent of these. This survey appears to be a back-door effort to disturbing.
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Pro-choice progressive
I am a 90-year-old retired surgeon in relatively good health, and I intend to “check out” at a time of my choosing.
Physiciansshouldnotbeinthe business of killing people, but they should help reduce suffering.
As an orthopedic surgeon who had to watch four cancer/chronic disease painful deaths, three in Delaware, I am biased. I felt so helpless as large medical bills accumulated and my grandparents suffered.
Most primary care providers are reluctant to provide care to accelerate the dying process because of legal issues and lack of reimbursement
for terminal care, which can be time-consuming and stressful. They defaulttonursehospiceproviders, who primarily use narcotics for accelerating the dying process. There are some patients who would like to have control of the terminal process, and would prefer to not use a gun or motor vehicle to achieve this end.
As a concerned citizen, I have no problem with a law that allows a provider to legally provide a lethal prescription to an appropriate patient with a terminal illness. Although no provider would want to participate
in such a process, there have been patients I have cared for in the past who would have wanted to have
this option, and whom I would have thought that it was compassionate to provide them with this tool.
I fully support your energetic efforts on the part of Delaware physicians to oppose this dangerous legislation.
It is neither a physician’s right nor duty to end a patient’s life, no matter if death is imminent.

28 HB 160 requires two physicians to sign off. Patients will be forced to written, this will destroy long-term patient-physician relationships.
29 Ipredictonlyaminorityofphysicians will reply in support of HB 160. But you’d get the same minority regarding medical marijuana or abortion.
Let the minority have a voice too. Majority does not NEED to perform abortions, or prescribe marijuana, or help the dying as allowed in HB 160. Let those who wish to be able to help.
30 Deathwithdignityshouldbeone
of our goals. Starving to death is
not a humane option and neither is lingering in a comatose or semi- comatose fashion, requiring others to tend to very personal needs.
31 AsanOB/GYN,Ifacetheethics
of life and death almost daily, more often (but not exclusively) near the beginning of life. In the same way that I support a woman’s right to choose in reproductive rights, I feel it is ethically consistent to support a patient’s right to choose among whatever legal options exist at the end of life. The sentence in the MSD position that trust in the medical profession will erode
is, in my opinion, not really true. My patients trust me when pregnancy viability is uncertain not to advocate one course of action or another just because I perform abortions, and they are not offended when screening for fetal anomalies is offered (common practice for every OB, not just those who do terminations),1 even if they already know they would not terminate an abnormal pregnancy under any circumstances. The sentence about altering the fundamental role of a physician in society rings a little
false to me too — the terminally ill already look to hospice professionals to alleviate suffering during the dying process. Many other parts of the
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Del Med J | July/August 2018 | Vol. 90 | No. 6