Death with Dignity - 10 Years Later

So my family is firmly against the Death with Dignity act that Oregon passed 10 years ago. I clearly was against it growing up as well. The Reader's Digest did a long story about Dr. Jack Kevorkian which included pictures of his artwork. Granted, it really made you wonder what was going on inside that man's head.

However as I've grown older and done more research I find I'm completely for the practice and extremely dislike that its critics refer to it as Assisted Suicide. Here's why:

The AMA (American Medical Association) clearly defines the humane way of letting a patient die. Currently that standard is to starve the patient to death. I personally have not ever witnessed someone starving to death but I do believe my friends in the medical field when they say it is not an enjoyable experience. A terminally ill patient's organs simply begin to turn into jelly inside of them. What's more, being in a hospital you are mere feet away from water and food but you do not have access it.

I believe after watching the Terri Schiavo case in Florida that most conservatives want it both ways. If their had been a Death with Dignity law passed in that state, her passing would have been much, much easier. The reason that case turned out the way it did was because of uninformed people's opinions on the matter without doing the research. If most people in this country knew of the AMA's standard, I dare say more states would begin to adopt Oregon's law as their own.

I will not deny that at first glance, this is an apparently a move away from our standards in this country. And most people are shocked and mortified at the thought of a doctor taking their patient's life.

There is also the aspect of truly suicidal patients and their unique predicament is not currently addressed by Oregon law to my knowledge. That issue absolutely needs to be addressed by the legislature, and quickly.

To systematically approve death by starvation as the "most humane" way to let someone die is utterly asinine. If you believe that, perhaps you should try it and then get back to me on how it went. I'll be waiting for you. In Oregon of course. If I wind up terminally ill and living elsewhere I'd move back in a heartbeat!

At times I'm convinced that I am a fatalist who is simply in denial about it. Death isn't scary to me. As long as I'm not burned at the stake or sealed in a barrel and thrown in the ocean, I think I'm ok. My preference would be to in a plane that is shot down somewhere over Africa because some government thinks I should let its citizens starve to death. And again, we're back to starvation...