ARTICLES

Hippocrates Was Wrong

UCSF CONFERENCE PROMOTES DOCTOR ASSISTED SUICIDE

by George Neumayr

Should doctors help the sick and elderly kill themselves? Yes, argued doctors and medical thinkers at a San Francisco euthanasia conference on November 13.

Euphemistically titled, "A California Conference on Physician-Assisted Dying," the day-long event at the San Francisco campus of the University of California attracted an estimated 300 people. "There's a lot of compassion in this room," declared emcee Betty Rollin, an occasional NBC correspondent. Rollin promised a day of open dialogue-one which would cover all sides of the debate, but show euthanasia as an "important option." A short while later, UCSF employee Robert Johnson, a parishioner at St. Rita's in Marin, got arrested by UCSF-stationed police for trespassing in front of the conference. Johnson had been passing out copies of the Vatican's statement on euthanasia. Isn't this an "educational institution"? wondered Johnson to the Faith.

Johnson's protest was a lonely one. As police ushered him to the station, he passed a large throng of young people protesting monkey research.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the conference's first speaker, addressed the crowd via video, praising euthanasia as a release for those who "linger in great pain."

Dr. Timothy Quill objected to the use of the term suicide. "Suicide is the wrong word," though "technically it is right." "It is the wrong word because people don't see it as destroying themselves." They see euthanasia as empowerment, saving them from "personal disintegration."Often patients, said Quill, don't want euthanasia, but just the possibility of euthanasia. The possibility of hastening death is far more important to them than the reality," since doctors can "usually take care of the pain."

Quill admitted that de facto euthanasia in California and elsewhere is already a reality. It just "goes underground." The attitude is: "Just don't document this." "This practice is pervasive in the AIDS community."

Quill's admission was a common theme at the event. Terminal sedation -- otherwise known as "slow euthanasia" is an increasingly popular practice, said David Orentlicher, a professor of law at Indiana University School of Law. "It is being used." "We do, in fact, practice terminal sedation. We just don't call it that," said a nurse in the audience. The nurse received a cheer when she noted that nurses, not doctors, get stuck with the dirty work of having to drug patients to death.

New York psychiatrist Samuel Klagsburn emphasized that euthanasia consoles people for whom "living has lost its meaning." He got doctors in attendance giggling with a story about his "rich relative" who "lived for shopping". Terribly ill, she said to him, "If I can't do this [shopping], there is no point in living." But once she knew that euthanasia was an option, said Klagsburn, she suddenly improved. "Giving control over your life is a gift we at times give our patient," he concluded.

Andrew Batavia, a lawyer and teacher who spoke from a wheelchair, assured the disabled community that euthanasia is essentially harmless. He is a "strong supporter of physician-assisted suicide," because "the individual has all the power." The resemblance between euthanasia in America and euthanasia in Hitler's Germany is only "superficial." The slippery slope no longer scares Batavia: "We have been camped at the precipice for some time, and have grown quite accustomed to the view." Batavia later received an award from the San Mateo Death With Dignity National Center.

Pollsters and media svengali at the conference unveiled a survey purporting that 71% of Californians want suicide legislation. Kathy Bonk, a Washington D.C. media professional, said pro-euthanasia proponents need not worry about resistance for long. It will disappear just as it has on the issue of "contraceptives." "This moment of controversy will pass." Plus, the media loves the euthanasia story: "It is seen as building audiences." She added parenthetically that her mother considers Dr.Kevorkian "a saint."

At midday, the conference broke for lunch. Donald Miller, an Anglican preacher, said a prayer. San Francisco Catholic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi arrived to congratulate the group for its "excellence." Euthanasia means compassion, she said. "We have all been by the bedside of people with AIDS and cancer."

Outgoing Oregon congresswoman Elizabeth Furse also spoke at the lunch, lashing out at "anti-choice" Republicans and praising Oregon voters for legalizing euthanasia. "They are not about to have their voting right overturned by Henry Hyde." Furse's triumphalist tone met surprising opposition from a Lutheran pastor in the crowd. Does opposing euthanasia automatically mean that you are "unprincipled"? he asked. "Fair point," she conceded..

After lunch, Donald Miller, who combines Anglican preaching with work as a part-time webmaster, drew a friendly response with a lecture on the dangers of "absolutism." Let's eschew "absolutes," he said. Let's exercise "moral reticence." Let's not impose "standards outside ourselves."

Miller's tolerant stand did not extend to the Roman Catholic Church. Biblical inerrancy and papal infallibility obviously "conflict" with the "American ethos," he said. He dismissed the Church as a font of "dogmatism" and chalked its teaching on papal infallibility up to 19th-century Italian politics "I'm appalled at the mean-spirited attacks that can be launched in the name of Christ."

Miller recalled attending a pro-abortion Planned Parenthood event and wondering why it had ceded ground to the religious right. "It never occurred to them to offer a benediction or prayer...Did we wish to give the impression that all the religious people are on the other side?" "We need regularly to express our conscience," concluded Miller. Euthanasia is a "civilized option."

Only one speaker hit a dissenting note. With Hamlet-like sincerity, Dr. Hernle W.D. Young asked, "Do we really want to move from letting die to actively killing?"

The question did not hang for long. Betty Rollin quickly resumed the pro-euthanasia drum beat, amusing participants with an account of how she helped kill her enfeebled mother. "We were not experienced killers...We thought we would put her in a car, but we didn't have a car. We are New Yorkers. We thought we might rent a car."

Rolin professed astonishment at the pro-life opposition. "They just don't get it...It is a failure of imagination. This is America. Let their be choice."

The following day the San Francisco archdiocesan Respect Life commission held a euthanasia/abortion conference of its own at the University of San Francisco. Speakers decried America's "if it hurts, kill it" ethos and urged that the sick and elderly receive love and pain management, not doctor-assisted poisoning.

"When was the last time you thought killing somebody was a good solution?" asked Fr. Richard Hogan of Priests for Life. "This [euthanasia] killing is even more unnatural than abortion." In abortion, a woman kills a child she has never "laid" eyes on, but euthanasia involves killing somebody who loved you: "Can you imagine what it is going to be like when we kill our parents and our grandparents?" The "trauma of abortion will look like a walk in the park."

Kathi Hamlon of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force cast the euthanasia debate as a "battle over patients rights." Euthanasia is the "ultimate abandonment of patient's." "Patient's lives are dismissed as having little or no value...Dignity is not a thing that is given to somebody; it is what a person has intrinsically."

"Do you want to see what the other side considers a dignified death?" Hamlon asked. To gasps from the audience, she then showed a near-body size suicide bag devised by the Hemlock Society.

Several speakers frankly admitted that many Catholic officials have dropped the ball on this issue. "Where are the priests?" wondered Fr. Michael Barber at the mass for the conference.

USF philosophy professor Ray Dennehy asked rhetorically, "Can you imagine the Jesuits protesting an abortion clinic?...But they will protest the U.S. Army School of the Americas," because that is "politically correct." "The pulpit is worthless" in many parishes on pro-life issues, he said. The pastors' "silence is deafening. It is surreal."

Wesley Smith, a non-Catholic and the major concluding speaker, condemned an Alexanian Brothers hospital where doctors have the "right to withhold treatment from patients against their will if they deem it of 'no benefit.'" "This is a Catholic hospital.... Secular hospitals look at this and think: 'If a Catholic hospital approves of it, this must be good for a secular institution.'"

Smith pointed out that "dehydrating to death" is now a popular form of euthanasia. "If we did that to a horse, we would go to jail." This "death squad medicine" is "happening all the time."

"We are all on the Titanic...And the iceberg is dead ahead. And there are no lifeboats." Society's only hope, Smith said, is pro-life persuasion across "dinner tables."

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