Updated and enlarged December 10, 2009 (first published in O Timothy magazine, Volume 8, Issue 1, 1991) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
In the last three decades we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of headlines focusing on the “right-to-die” or euthanasia issue. Consider just a few of these:
* In 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that all life-sustaining medical treatment can be withheld from terminally ill patients, whether incompetent or competent. In that ruling the court included feeding tubes as “medical treatment.”
* In 1985, a Virginia woman who killed her cancer-ridden husband with an ice pick was sentenced merely to two years’ probation and psychiatric treatment.
* The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in 1986 to allow a woman to stop the feeding of her comatose husband.
* In 1987, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an alert, mentally competent but dying woman, suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal nerve disorder, should have been allowed to order her respirator disconnected. The woman had died a few days before her case reached the Court. The same court ruled to allow a man to remove the feeding tube from his 32-year-old wife.
* A U.S. District Court in Rhode Island ruled in 1988 that the feeding tube could be removed from a 49-year-old woman. The woman was in a coma as a result of a brain hemorrhage, and since she could not swallow, she received nourishment and liquids through a feeding tube. Her family had sued in court to compel the hospital to terminate her food and water. The medical workers who were caring for the woman were unanimous in opposing the action, but the court ordered them to remove the tubes so the woman would starve to death.
* A man severely crippled by a 1985 motorcycle accident went to court in an attempt to gain the “right” to kill himself. In 1989, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he could kill himself by shutting off the breathing apparatus that kept him alive.
* The parents of Nancy Cruzen, a young woman who suffered severe brain damage in a 1983 car crash, spent three and a half years in court in an attempt to remove the feeding tube which was keeping her alive. Though severely disabled, Nancy was not comatose nor did she require any life-support equipment. She even smiled at funny stories and cried when visitors would leave. In spite of this, on December 14, 1990, County Circuit Court Judge Charles E. Teel, Jr., ordered Nancy’s caregivers to withhold all food and water. Twelve days later, the 33-year-old woman died of dehydration.
* On June 4, 1990, Jack Kevorkian claimed his first victim when he assisted in the administration of a lethal dosage of drugs to 54-year-old Janet Adkins. She was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and her own doctor said she had at least ten years of productive life ahead of her. She had never met or talked with Kevorkian until she arrived in Michigan two days before her death. All arrangements were made by her husband, Ron, (64) who subsequently became president of the Oregon Hemlock Society. In the year before her death, Janet Adkins and her family were counseled by a family therapist who was coordinator of the Oregon Hemlock Society. According to an aunt, “She did not want to be a burden to her husband and family” and a friend explained, “She felt it [her death] was a gift to her family, sparing them the burden of taking care of her” (“The Real Jack Kevorkian, International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, http://www.iaetf.org/fctkev.htm). Kevorkian, who went on to participate in a reported 137 assisted suicides, does not have a license to practice medicine. His Michigan license was suspended in 1991 and his California license was suspended in 1993. According to the California Attorney General’s office, Kevorkian is “fundamentally unfit to practice medicine” (California Medical Board, Complainants Brief, 12/28/93, p. 19). Kevorkian proposed a “auction market for available organs” taken from “subjects” who are “hopelessly crippled by arthritis or malformations.” Part of the money from the dead disabled person’s auctioned organs could go to relatives whose financial burdens would be eased and “their standard of living enhanced.”
* A poll of adults conducted by CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll published January 1991 found that 58% believe doctors ought to be allowed to help terminally ill patients die if the patient asks for assistance.
* On October 23, 1991, 58-year-old Marjorie Wantz became Jack Kevorkian’s second victim, dying of a lethal dose of drugs administered by Kevorkian’s “death machine.” Marjorie had no life-threatening condition. The autopsy found that she had no illness or disease. She had complained of pelvic pain, but though a number of physicians had advised her that the pain was manageable she did not follow through with their recommendations. “She had reportedly been taking extremely large doses of Halcion (a medication known to impair judgment) in the months preceding her death. She had been hospitalized for psychiatric care on a number of occasions.” Kevorkian did not even give the woman a medical examination. On the same day, Kevorkian assisted in the suicide of Sherry Miller, age 43. She had multiple sclerosis and could have lived for many years but said she felt she was “becoming a burden on people.” She had been suffering from depressio n which had been noted five years earlier. She did not want to take the medication that had been prescribed for depression. She testified that she no longer had any quality of life. Her death was to have been from a lethal dose of drugs but, after repeated attempts and punctures to her arm, Kevorkian couldn’t insert a needle into her veins. He left her waiting for four hours at the death site while he “went to town” to get supplies so he could rig her death by carbon monoxide poisoning (“The Real Jack Kevorkian, International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, http://www.iaetf.org/fctkev.htm).
* In November 1994, the voters of the state of Oregon passed a referendum allowing doctor-assisted suicide. The law would allow patients to request life-ending medication if a doctor determines that they have less than six months to live. The Supreme Court let the law stand.
* A forum on end-of-life issues held in New York City in November 1996 noted that the preferred means of euthanasia today is starvation. The participants observed that it is legal for patients to refuse treatment, including nutrition, and doctors may legally offer painkillers and other comfort as these patients die. Therefore, “every single piece of the recipe is legal.”
* In October 1996, Australia’s Northern Territory allowed the world’s first legally assisted suicide. Bob Dent, 66, who was suffering from cancer, was allowed to take deadly drugs under a euthanasia law passed on May 25, 1996. (Thousands of assisted suicides are performed every year in The Netherlands, but technically they are not legal. They are allowed under loopholes in the law. Doctors who follow “strict guidelines” are guaranteed immunity.)
* In a Canadian national study reported in September 1996, almost half of all doctors surveyed said the law should be changed to allow physician-assisted suicide. In the survey, 47% of doctors supported euthanasia, while 39% were opposed, and 11% were uncertain.
* In March 1996, a 62-year-old New York man was sentenced to just six months in jail (he was expected to serve only four) for killing his wife with a mixture of honey and an antidepressant. He claimed it was assisted suicide, and a note left by the wife said she drank the potion “freely and without reservations”; but prosecutors also discovered that he had kept a diary indicating he was tired of caring for his sick wife, who had multiple sclerosis, and was eager for her death.
* In February 1996 the Episcopal diocese of Newark, New Jersey, declared that suicide and assisted suicide may be morally acceptable under some circumstances, i.e., when “pain is persistent and/or progressive; when all other reasonable means of amelioration of pain and suffering have been exhausted; and when the decision to hasten death is a truly informed and voluntary choice free from external coercion.”
* According to a study released in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996, one in five intensive-care nurses have hastened the death of terminally ill patients. The study was based on responses by more than 850 nurses to an eight-page questionnaire administered by Dr. David Asch of the University of Pennsylvania.
* In early 1999, the Oregon Health Division presented its analysis of the state’s first year under the Oregon Death with Dignity law. According to the OHD’s study, 23 patients received legal lethal drug prescriptions between 1/1/98 and 12/31/98. Of those patients, 15 actually took the deadly drugs and died, 6 died from their illnesses without taking the lethal prescription, and 2 were still living as of 1/1/99. Of the 15 patients who died from the lethal drugs, 7 were women, 8 were men, all 15 were white, 13 had cancer, 1 had congestive heart failure, and 1 had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The median age was 69. Four were referred for a psychiatric or psychological consultation. The International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force warned that this information is “skewed and incomplete.” The reason is that the law contains no penalties for doctors who do not comply with its requirements and there is no way to determine if the reporting is accurate. “The data for this study came exclusively from the death-prescribing doctors, with n o corroboration from other sources. In fact, the OHD, citing privacy concerns, never even interviewed the patients’ families, friends, or caregivers regarding the circumstances and/or pressures surrounding the deaths. Nor did the OHD contact the patients’ other doctors who, for some reason, opted not to write the deadly prescription. In other words, the state is just assuming that doctors engaged in ending the lives of patients are of good will, have been totally compliant with the provisions of the PAS law, and are completely truthful and forthright in their reports to the state. But why would a doctor even bother to report a less-than-perfect death, one which might cause legal and professional problems for that doctor with the OHD, the state medical licensing board, or even the police?”
* A report published in February 1999 showed that Dutch physicians routinely ignore established euthanasia guidelines created to protect patients against abuse. “The reality is that a clear majority of cases of euthanasia, both with and without request, go unreported and unchecked. Dutch claims of effective regulation ring hollow,” explained researchers Dr. Henk Jochemsen, of Holland’s Lindeboom Institute for Medical Ethics, and Dr. John Keown, from England’s Cambridge University. Reviewing a 1996 survey of 405 Dutch doctors regarding end-of-life decisions, the researchers found that, in 1995, almost two-thirds (59%) of euthanasia cases went unreported, a clear violation of the requirement-codified into law in 1994-that all euthanasia and assisted-suicide deaths be reported to authorities. Furthermore, 20% of reported euthanasia deaths were involuntary, meaning that doctors ended patients’ lives without the patients’ explicit request or con sent. In 15% of these cases (where the patients were competent), the physician did not discuss euthanasia with the patient because “the doctor thought that the termination of the patient’s life was clearly in the patient’s best interests.” In 17% of the involuntary euthanasia cases, alternative care or treatment was available, meaning that euthanasia was not the “last resort” as required by the guidelines (Keown & Jochemsen, “Voluntary Euthanasia under Control? Further Empirical Evidence from the Netherlands,” Journal of Medical Ethics, February 1999).
* In March 1999, a Michigan jury found Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of murder for the September 1998 death of 52-year-old Thomas Youk. The man was suffering with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Kevorkian, who video-taped the death, killed Youk by injecting him with a lethal series of drugs. The video was subsequently broadcast on the 60 Minutes television show. During the broadcast, Kevorkian challenged Michigan prosecutors to charge him, and they did, not merely for assisted suicide but for first-degree murder. At the trial it was pointed out that just before Kevorkian injected Youk with a drug that rendered him unconscious, Youk attempted to speak but was ignored by Kevorkian. Prosecutor John Skrzynski noted: “We don’t know what he said, and it’s too late now because he’s gone now, he’s asleep and he’s never getting up again. What did he say? Did he say ‘wait’? Did Dr. Kevorkian have a duty to stop and find out what he was saying?” In a media interview in November 1998, Kevorkian was asked if Youk had anything to say at the end. He just laughed and said, “I don’t know. I never understood a thing he said” (Lessenberry, “I want a showdown,” Oakland Press, Nov. 20, 1998). When the jury announced its guilty decision, Kevorkian attempted to look unruffled in the courtroom, but after he got in the car away from the camera “he exploded, screaming with anger, rage and frustration at the irrationality and cruelty and backwardness of society.” In April 1999, Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. The 79-year-old “Dr. Death” was released conditionally in June 2007.
* In January 2005, the United States Supreme Court let stand a ruling by Pinellas [Florida] Circuit Court Judge George Greer allowing Michael Schiavo to cut off his wife Terri’s feeding tube. Terri, 41, had been dependent on the tube since suffering a heart stoppage 15 years earlier. Terri’s parents fought to stop their son-in-law from disconnecting the tube. Though Terri had brain damage, she was not dying, could breath on her own, and exhibited many signs of being aware of her environment. This was testified by her nurses and by medical experts. The courts, both state and federal, allowed Schiavo to starve his wife to death. Her feeding tube was removed on March 18, 2005, and she died on March 31.
These are only some of the cases that have gained public attention in the last few years. What should the Bible-believer think of this? Euthanasia is a complex issue and it is impossible to give one simple, blanket answer to the matter, yet there are some Bible truths that apply clearly, and in this hour of moral relativism it is crucial that we point them out.
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.