A while back, I received a phone call asking me to talk to a man in another state who was desperately seeking physician-assisted suicide. He was in the later stages of a degenerative disease and wanted to die before his condition “got too bad”.

I talked to this man I will call “John” for quite a while about his life, his frustrations, his strengths, some resources, etc. He said he had told his caregivers at the nursing home that he would like to talk to someone about his concerns months ago but nothing happened. With his permission, I spoke to his caregivers and I asked John to keep in touch.

About a month later, John contacted me and said that he had changed his mind about assisted suicide and was enjoying being with friends and going out on trips with other residents.

He said the biggest help was talking with someone like me who listened and who cared.  Best of all, he said “I do deserve a better life!”

I thought about John when I read an April 06, 2017 commentary from Medscape, a password protected news site for medical professionals, titled “Physician-Assisted Dying: Is a Patient’s Despair Reversible?” 

The commentary was a discussion between Arthur Caplan, PhD, a prominent ethicist  who was against legalizing assisted suicide until the Brittany Maynard case, and Maurie Markman, MD, an oncologist and professor who also supports assisted suicide, that I found disturbing.

For example, Dr. Markman says that:

 “My concern is that the reason someone may ask for death, which is their right, is because of despair. Despair may be potentially temporary or it may be permanent, but death itself is permanent. My concern would be that some part of an individual patient’s despair may be reversible; I would want to be certain that it is not reversible before deciding that this (physician-assisted suicide) makes sense for that person, from my perspective.”
(Emphasis added)

But amazingly, neither Dr. Markman or Dr. Caplan even mentions or recommends  mental health evaluations for people considering assisted suicide-something which no assisted suicide law now requires because such suicides are considered “rational”.

Instead, there is this exchange:

Dr Caplan: I remember when Jack Kevorkian was bringing people to Michigan and helping them die in the back of Volkswagen vans and so on. One problem I had was that he did not know these people.

Dr Markman: That’s right.

Dr Caplan: They would show up, and 24 hours later, they would be gone to the hereafter; some of them were terminally ill, and some were not, as a matter of fact. Given the constraints that physicians face in terms of time and other activities they have to engage in—paperwork and so on—can they get to know patients well enough to have reliable discussions about the authenticity of their wishes to die?

Dr Markman: That is a concern. Physicians don’t have enough time to do a lot of things. The kind of conversation we are talking about would involve a lot of time and effort. I would suggest that physicians would want to be able to spend that time with their patients, but it does not mean they have that time. Quite frankly, it may be relatively immediate time. A patient comes in at a particular point and says, I’m thinking of doing this and I’m thinking of doing it now, and the doctor has a full schedule. The physician would want to take that time, would want to bring in the family, but it is difficult with time constraints. (Emphasis added)

There is another discussion of financial burdens impacting assisted suicide, with Dr. Caplan saying:

“Dr. Caplan: Here is a source of growing despair: These treatments (for cancer) are causing me to go broke. I cannot afford a $100,000 biologic or immunotherapy, or I simply do not want to linger on and on while my grandson’s tuition is spent, or whatever. We have come to think about this as the problem of financial toxicity: more tools, but more associated cost. How does physician-assisted dying fit into this emerging area of financial burden?

Dr. Markman: … The potential for bankruptcy is becoming a major issue among patients with cancer. We know that during the Great Depression, people went bankrupt and committed suicide. Why could it not happen now, when we are talking about therapies that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and patients have copays of 20%? Financial toxicity is real.” (Emphasis added)

CONCLUSION

Where is the compassion for these suicidal people grappling with issues that lead them to consider physician-assisted suicide?

This dispassionate discussion of some qualms that these supposed experts seem to have about physician-assisted suicide still leaves assisted suicide laws intact and does nothing to promote non-discriminatory suicide prevention and treatment or even conscience rights for those of us who oppose physician-assisted suicide.