Commentary : My Right to Die: A Cancer Patient Argues for Voluntary Euthanasia

In the growing controversy among doctors, the American Medical Assn. and proponents of euthanasia, the principal actor has been completely ignored.

What about the terminally ill? Aren’t we the ones most directly affected? Don’t we have a voice and a choice in our time or means of dying?

As a terminally ill cancer patient with a very short time left, I want to raise some questions for the multitude who can no longer speak for themselves and also for the rapidly expanding numbers of terminally ill who are kept alive to no avail.

I believe my personal story will highlight the dilemma that now faces the medical community.

One year ago, I was diagnosed as having “probably terminal cancer” (massive tumors in all sinus cavities). In the ensuing year, I have traveled down a road filled with evasion, equivocation and moral hypocrisy.

Most doctors don’t want to face the fact that one of their patients is going to die. Very few will discuss death.

The doctors who have ministered to me are all experts in oncology, eminent in their field--and for the most part totally incompetent in human relations. I never get a direct answer to a question on my condition. I can read a magnetic resonance imaging scan and see the evidence; yet the doctors mumble and equivocate, making fatuous remarks about recovery.

The idea of keeping a terminally ill patient alive on “life support” machines has brought this situation to pass.

Doctors often claim that they can’t “play God” and remove life support. Aren’t they “playing God” when the life support is ordered?

Whose wishes are being followed? Is it the patient’s? Or is it the doctor’s as he tries to justify his Hippocratic oath in a manner never intended?

If a patient chooses either active or passive euthanasia, it is a craven abdication for the doctors to hide behind moral or religious dogma and deny that person the right to a pain-free and dignified death. As the population ages and the numbers of terminally ill being artificially kept alive escalates, this will become a problem of huge proportions. The physical and financial resources now expended to keep thousands existing (but not living) are enormous. Could these resources not be better allocated?

As my days dwindle to a very precious few, I face the inevitable with absolutely no fear and few regrets. I’ve lived a full, productive and interesting life. My only concern is: Will some misguided doctor try to keep me alive against my wishes?

Being alive is not merely existing on a machine or with massive drug doses. A person must have the ability to think, function and participate, even in a small way, in the everyday flow of human events.

It is time for the AMA and all doctors to get their priorities in order. Their job is to heal our pain and suffering, not to decide when or how we will die.