Emotions Run High Over Doctor-Aided Death Issue : Prop. 161: Proponents say patients could ‘die with dignity.’ Opponents say there are not enough safeguards.

Not yet 30, Jonathan Gross has been in the hospital so often that he’s lost count.

In the six years since he has had AIDS, he has always bounced back. But now, admitted once again to a Sherman Oaks hospital for a series of tests, he described himself as tired of the struggle and ready to end his life, to salvage what dignity he can.

Gross supports Proposition 161, which would enable him to ask his doctor for a fatal injection to “allow me to drift off and that would be it.”

But other patients who have faced impending death have serious doubts about the emotion-charged initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot, which would make California the first state to legalize doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill.

Greg Anderson of Anaheim remembers being told that lung cancer had spread through his neck and chest. After a second operation, his surgeon closed him up and told Anderson he had just a month to live.

“The tiger is out of the cage,” he quoted the surgeon as telling him. “Your cancer has come roaring back.”

That was eight years ago, and now Anderson is an outspoken opponent of Proposition 161, arguing that doctors do not know which patients are terminal.

Gross and Anderson illuminate one of the central debates over the landmark measure, which if passed would be the world’s first law authorizing doctors to assist in patients’ deaths.

For patients who have faced life-threatening illness, Proposition 161 is more than a political issue or an abstract ethical debate. For them it is a personal confrontation with their own fate.

Opponents such as Anderson--who founded the Orange County-based Cancer Conquerors Foundation--worry about misdiagnosis, about doctor error and patient despair combining to end a life prematurely.

But there are also patients like Gross, in pain and watching his body gradually waste away, who say that those who want the option ought to have it.

And families of the terminally ill have a stake in the debate.

Patty Fallon, an Oregon ski instructor, described helping her 26-year-old daughter commit suicide in 1986 in a house they rented in San Diego. Once a nurse practitioner, Fallon, 54, said she turned away from her profession after her daughter’s death.

Now, assisting suicide is a crime in California, but Fallon said she was willing to risk prosecution because her daughter, Jody Grape, was racked with pain from thyroid cancer that had spread to almost every bone before it was diagnosed.

Fallon quoted her daughter on the day she planned to die: “This is the happiest day for me. I don’t have to wake up again and I can get rid of this body that’s all used up.”

No one should have to break the law to commit a compassionate act, Fallon said at a recent Long Beach conference sponsored by the Hemlock Society, a group that backs physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. It was there that Fallon first publicly described administering a fatal dose of morphine to her daughter.

“This was my promise to Jody,” Fallon said. “No family should have to be in such isolation.”

Edith Olah, 48, of Sierra Madre and her family are on the other side of the Proposition 161 debate.

Three years ago, Olah, a mother of three, was suffering from a severe headache and sore throat. Within a week she was hospitalized for acute leukemia and in such poor shape that her doctors doubted that she would survive the chemotherapy intended to save her life.

In an interview, Olah recalled the despair she felt during her treatment. “Nobody could touch me,” she said. “That was the worst thing. You couldn’t be touched . . . I didn’t talk about suicide, but I was so depressed.”

Now in remission, Olah read aloud an essay her 11-year-old daughter, Stephanie, has written opposing Proposition 161.

Her mother could have “asked to be put to death,” Stephanie wrote. “I was only 8 at the time and I could have lived a motherless life. But three years later she’s still living.”

Proposition 161 would allow mentally competent adults to sign directives permitting physician aid in dying in the event of terminal illness. The document would have to be witnessed by two individuals who are not related to the patient and it could be revoked at any time.

If the patient’s doctor and another physician agree that the person has no more than six months to live, the patient could ask for a fatal injection or for help in committing suicide. But the request would have to be made more than once, and no doctor or other health professional would be forced to participate in the death.

Opponents say that there is a lack of meaningful safeguards in the initiative. Supporters contend that it would allow patients to end their lives with a minimum of governmental involvement--to give the terminally ill the right to “die with dignity at the time and place of our own choosing.”

Had such a law been in place in California, Bob Harper and his wife, Ginger, would not have flown to Michigan in August, 1990. Two weeks before, Ginger Harper, 69, was told that her breast cancer had spread to her liver and that there was nothing that could be done. She wanted to end her life rather than suffer, said Bob Harper, 74, a retired state engineer who lives in Placer County.

“She woke up one day in extreme pain and said: ‘This is it.’ ”

Both members of the Hemlock Society, the Harpers flew to Michigan because they had read that, unlike California, the state has no law against assisted suicide.

Bob Harper and his stepdaughter, Shanda McGrew, watched as Ginger took an overdose of sleeping pills and then slipped a plastic bag over her head to ensure that she would die. She was uncomfortable and removed the bag, Bob Harper said in an interview, but once she fell asleep he replaced the bag and his wife died.

Harper and his stepdaughter were arrested. Last year, Harper was tried for second-degree murder and acquitted. Charges against McGrew were dropped.

“If we’d had Proposition 161, none of this would have happened,” Harper said. “She could have died peacefully at home.”

Dr. Henry R. Greene, a Pasadena cancer specialist, has been an outspoken opponent of Proposition 161 because many of his patients have outlived his expectations and made meaningful use of their time.

One of Greene’s patients is Howard Santer, a retired Pasadena businessman, who believes in euthanasia and supports Proposition 161.

Returning from an ocean cruise with a persistent cough, Santer was told last December that he has lung cancer. “We were looking in terms of months and not a great number of those,” Santer said.

So Santer decided to pack as much living as he could into the time remaining. He was well enough to take a cruise to Panama in February and several other trips as well. It is only recently the cancer has slowed him down.

Now, he said, it takes all his energy to walk from the kitchen to the living room.

Greene has promised to give him whatever medication he needs to be comfortable, Santer said, and that has kept him from dwelling on his future. As he showed off snapshots from recent trips and family visits, Santer said: “Although I strongly believe in euthanasia and I may have fallen susceptible to it . . . I’ve had three years packed into a year.”

Rudy Trifon, 55, also has lung cancer, which was diagnosed in January. The tumor proved to be inoperable, but radiation and chemotherapy have apparently arrested the cancer. And slowly, he has been getting back on his feet.

“I am not terminally ill,” he said. “I would not qualify if 161 passes.” But in a hospital ward for cancer and AIDS patients, he saw “people curled up in a fetal position. I could hear moans and groans and to me it looks like pain. . . . It’s not a way to spend your last days.”

Although never politically active, he has become an outspoken advocate for the ballot measure--debating the issue on television and at forums.

“I just plain don’t want to die in pain, suffocating to death,” Trifon said. “I don’t think my religion, my society, my government requires that I die an undignified, painful death.”

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