Doctor-Aided Suicide as an Option for Terminally Ill Patients

Dr. David Reese expresses his ambivalence toward physician-assisted suicide (“When the Mission Is Suicide,” Aug. 27); I cannot help but wonder if Dr. Reese has ever intimately experienced the death of a loved one (not a patient) from cancer or any other terminal, wasting, painful disease. If he had, I can guarantee his ambivalence would vanish. Witnessing the daily suffering and deterioration of someone dear is enough to convince anyone of the need for a merciful, humane way of sparing such patients the agony of a protracted, inevitable death.

I watched my father, a courageous and stoic man, succumb to the ravages of metastatic prostate cancer over a period of several months. A merciful physician could have spared him and his family the nightmare of his needlessly drawn-out death. Why must a 2,000-year-old oath--or worse yet, someone else’s religious convictions--force good people like my dad to endure pointless and profound suffering? Physicians must offer the option of a self-controlled and pain-free death to their terminally ill patients who ask for it, and for whom no hope of recovery remains. Failure to do so is cruel, and it is wrong.

JERI BRAVIROFF Diamond Bar

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Commendations for printing Dr. David Reese’s excellent article. Perhaps the media and our public are now able to discuss this issue openly and arrive at a fair and just solution. I think it is more relevant to the present than all the attention given stem cell research. Physician-assisted dying need not be compulsory, as its opponents seem to proclaim, but it should be an option for those who want it. Oregon’s law has been working successfully for several years, but there are several legislators in Washington who are trying to kill it, even now.

J.L. KAUFMAN

Los Angeles