Suicide Bill’s Deep Flaws

The House of Representatives plans to vote today on the most wrenching issue before it: a bill by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) that is intended to effectively nullify a law in Oregon that allows terminally ill patients to request drugs to end their lives. However, the bill would reach far beyond the Oregon law. Medical societies say it will lead many doctors to under-medicate terminal patients to avoid scrutiny from federal drug agents. For this reason the bill is unacceptable.

Hyde wrote the bill out of rightful concern that the Oregon law, which voters passed in 1994, could lead government down a slippery slope toward sanctioning the state or federal legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Hyde’s bill, however, is by no means the best way to supervise and discipline doctors who stray from their proper role as healers.

The bill has gained broad support in the House largely because of misleading arguments being made by its proponents. Hyde titles his bill “The Pain Relief Promotion Act” and the author of its Senate counterpart, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma), insists that “there’s no going after doctors in this.”

In fact, Hyde’s legislation imposes civil penalties and a 20-year mandatory prison sentence on doctors who knowingly hasten a terminally ill patient’s death. The California Medical Assn., along with physician groups representing a dozen other states, persuasively argue that the harsh sanctions would lead doctors to under-medicate patients to avoid prosecution--thus inhibiting the effective pain management the bill purports to promote.

Some Hyde staffers have said they would consider reducing the bill’s penalties if that would persuade President Clinton to sign it. But even if the sanctions were reduced, the bill remains marred by its requirement that the Drug Enforcement Administration define legitimate medical uses of pain medications, then regulate and enforce those subjective determinations. The DEA, basically a policing agency, by its own admission has neither the expertise nor the resources to play doctor.

The best way to prevent medical abuses that drift toward euthanasia is through vigilance by state medical authorities and legislators, not by passing a federal bill with a misleading title and unenforceable aims.