 
|
|||||||||
              
|
New study looks at assisted suicides
Thursday, April 23, 1998 By Sharon Voas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The first national survey of doctors about assisted suicide found more than a third would help dying patients commit suicide if it were legal, and a quarter would give them lethal injections.
The survey, which appears in today's New England Journal of Medicine, found that six percent said they had complied with a patient's request for a lethal injection or help with a suicide.
Even so, one in 10 doctors said they would be willing, under some circumstances, to break the law and write a lethal prescription and seven percent would give a lethal injection.
"What you're finding from this study is that there's a fair amount of support for it in the medical profession," said Alan Meisel , author of the legal treatise "Right To Die" and director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Medical Ethics.
Meisel said the survey was consistent with other major surveys on the topic in a particular region or within a medical specialty.
The study was based on anonymous surveys of 1,902 doctors representing 10 types of medical specialists, such as hematologist-oncologists and cardiologists, whose patients are most likely to ask for help in hastening their deaths.
The study found that nearly one in four doctors had had patients ask them for help in committing suicide. About one in 10 said patients had asked for a lethal injection.
Sixteen percent of those who received such requests had complied. The doctors said most of the patients who asked for help in ending their lives were in severe pain or discomfort, depressed, afraid and felt a loss of dignity.
Three percent of all the doctors in the survey had written at least one prescription to hasten a patient's death. Five percent said they had administered a lethal injection at least once.
"This is really not happening very often," said Dr. Diane E. Meier of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, the lead researcher. "It's a rare event."
"Of course it's rare," Meisel said. "It's illegal. You'll get thrown in jail. If it were made legal, more doctors would do it."
Other surveys have found about 10 percent to 20 percent of doctors help patients die. If those who legally shut off ventilators and stop artificial feeding were included, the numbers would be much higher, Meisel said.
Dr. Victor Vogel, oncologist and director of the Comprehensive Breast Program at Magee-Womens Hospital, was not surprised that three percent of doctors reported they had assisted in a suicide.
"In 15 years, I have never had a colleague tell me Mrs. X asked for a lethal injection and I gave it to her," Vogel said. "What this is telling us is that physicians are not eager to participate in assisted suicide.
"What this survey is saying is that the majority of physicians feel the way to take care of this is by treating the patients' symptoms -- relieving their pain, not killing them."
Ninety-five percent of the patients who got lethal prescriptions were estimated to have less than six months to live. Ninety-six percent of those given a lethal injection had less than a week to live, and 60 percent had less than a day.
|
||||||||
