Physician-Assisted Suicide Bill

Re “Suicide Is Not a Treatment for Anything,” April 4.

George Runner uses the term “assisted suicide.” I think the word “suicide” means something violent and desperate, done in isolation and fear. I see legalized physician assistance in dying as a humane and compassionate option in the dying process, when suffering has become intolerable. Only the patient can know when the pain is too much to bear.

Mentally competent, terminally ill adults have the inalienable right to control their manner of dying. No one has the right to decree that a person should suffer at the end of life--not doctors, or clergy, or family members or government. Neither will HMOs be given the right to make this decision.

Sadly and tragically, there are many laws that prevent one from taking control of one’s own destiny. We need to have a nationwide debate and dialogue on this most difficult subject. I view having options available to me as a comfort, not something to be feared.

JEAN FLEMING

Member, Death

With Dignity Alliance

Studio City

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I have disagreed with Runner’s positions on many issues, but he was right on the mark in “Suicide Is Not a Treatment for Anything.”

As a woman with a disability and as a public policy analyst with more than 20 years experience, much of it dealing with health care, the idea of legalizing physician-assisted suicide terrifies me. I see danger not only in possible abuses but also in the insidious effects that legalization would almost certainly have on health-care decision making.

Despite its appeal to “choice,” Assembly Bill 1592 isn’t really about personal autonomy. Under current law, people already have that autonomy; they can and do find ways to kill themselves if that is truly their wish. This bill really is about making death seem to be a clean, easy and medically accepted alternative--whether or not that is, in fact, the case.

Dion Aroner may have the best of intentions, but this bill would hurt far more people than it would help.

LAURA REMSON MITCHELL

Winnetka