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Press Release:
From: Not Dead Yet, 7521 Madison St. Forest Park, IL 60130
Contact: Diane Coleman, (708)209-1500
On Tuesday, July 14, at 2:00 p.m., Not Dead Yet Founder and President
will
testify before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary
Committee
in support of a bill that would preclude Oregon physicians from
prescribing
lethal overdoses under the Oregon assisted suicide law. This bill would
overturn a recent Department of Justice ruling on the issue. The Not
Dead
Yet
testimony will focus on discrimination based on disability and race in
the
health care system.
Testimony of Diane Coleman
Summary
Not Dead Yet is a national disability rights group which opposes
the
legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, because any potential
benefit
to a few is far outweighed by the lethal danger to this nation's largest
minority group, people with disabilities. We support the Lethal Drug
Abuse
Prevention Act proposed by Congressman Hyde because it will help to save
our
lives.
Before I directly address the two primary arguments raised
against
the bill, I want to talk about discrimination in the health care system.
In 1989, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a 153-page
report
entitled "Medical Discrimination Against Children With Disabilities."
Among the information considered by the Commission was an
experiment
conducted from 1977 to 1982 at the Children's Hospital of Oklahoma.
Doctors
there developed a "quality of life" formula for babies with spina bifida
which
took into account the socioeconomic status of the baby's family to
determine
what to advise them about a simple but life-and-death procedure.
Better-off
families were provided a realistic and optimistic picture of their
child's
potential, while poor families were provided a pessimistic picture. Four
out
of five poor families accepted the doctors' advice and 24 babies lost
their
lives.
The US Civil Rights Commission concluded: "To accept a projected
negative quality of life . . . based on the difficulties society will
cause . . ., rather than tackling the difficulties themselves, is
unacceptable. The Commission rejects the view that an acceptable answer
to discrimination and prejudice is to assure the 'right to die' to those
against whom the discrimination and prejudice exists."
Today, adding to the medical discrimination that existed then,
Medicare and Medicaid are facing major budget crises. Medicare already
does not pay for prescription medications. On July 6th, the media
reported
that the nation's top HMOs are pulling out of state Medicaid programs
which serve poor, elderly and disabled people.
Meanwhile, the AMA and many individual hospitals are developing
futility guidelines, which allow doctors to withhold treatment against
the
expressed wishes of a patient or their family. Several research studies
demonstrate that physicians consistently and dramatically underestimate
the quality of life of people with severe disabilities compared to our
own
assessments. What can we realistically expect to happen when physicians'
subjective biases and financial self-interests both discourage a high
quality of care, and a supposedly objective guideline exists for making
those "hard decisions?"
For the majority of people with disabilities, whose only
information about living with disability comes from health care
providers,
today's trends do not bode well. I am especially concerned about newly
injured people. 8,000 new people are spinal cord injured each year, and
99,000 are hospitalized with moderate to severe head injuries. In
critical periods after injury, people could easily be swayed to make a
so-called "choice" for death. So many of my colleagues with disabilities
who now enjoy their lives have told me that they doubt they would have
survived the first stages of their injuries in today's climate.
Of course, disability is not the only basis of health care
discrimination. On June 17, 1998, the Journal of the American Medical
Association reported that people of color are significantly less likely
to
receive pain medication than whites. This study involved over 13,000
cancer patients, and confirmed the racial differences found in previous
studies.
Now let's look at the added possibilities for deadly
discrimination if our society allows laws like Oregon's to be
implemented.
Some argue, "Yes, we have laws governing how society will
normally
respond to prevent suicide, but we can carve out an exception to those
laws for certain people. After all, these people may need help to do
it."
Sometimes analogies are helpful. According to the Detroit Free
Press, four out of five completed suicides are by men, but women try to
commit suicide three times as often as men. Should we consider
legalizing
assisted suicide for women?
Or, since people of color are significantly less likely to
receive
pain medication, should society offer people of color, or poor people, an
easier way out?
The Oregon law, on its face, does not discriminate based on race.
Everyone who receives assisted suicide must first be informed of their
palliative care options. Of course, it does not require that treatment
alternatives actually be provided. Isn't there a significant risk of a
disparate impact of the Oregon law on people of color?
Let's look at yet another possibility. In New Hampshire, the
Hemlock Society has lobbied and gained the introduction of a bill to
legalize assisted suicide, which applies to people with terminal or
non-terminal but incurable conditions that shorten their overall life
span. I would be eligible if it passes. Wouldn't that be a clear
violation of my rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act, to be
treated differently than a non-disabled woman? It is also well
established
that the Americans with Disabilities Act covers persons with cancer and
persons with HIV. In fact, people with other terminal illnesses also
qualify as people with disabilities.
I wish that this civil rights violation were as obvious to
everyone as it would be if assisted suicide were legalized based on
gender
or race. Policy- makers have completely ignored the ADA violations
inherent in assisted suicide laws.
There is also significant evidence that neither the civil nor
criminal justice systems will draw the line and protect our lives.
By his own admission, Jack Kevorkian has presided in the deaths
of
over 100 individuals, and the Detroit Free Press reports that the
overwhelming majority of these were not terminally ill. Why is he still
on the streets, still killing people with non-terminal disabilities, and
now even harvesting their organs? Because the Oakland County prosecutor
was elected on a campaign promise that he would not prosecute Jack
Kevorkian. Because the public believes disability is a fate worse than
death.
We disabled people begin to feel like we are in the South in the
1950's, where a killer could get away with murder based on the minority
status of their victim. Why would it be different in Oregon than in
Michigan?
How many are watching the movement to legalize involuntary
euthanasia? Last December 3rd, the Hemlock Society issued a widely
ignored
press release in which its Executive Director, Faye Girsh, asked that
family members and other "agents" be able to procure court orders to kill
"a demented parent, a suffering severely disable (sic) spouse, or a
child."
In 1997, a leading bioethics journal, The Hastings Center Report,
published a cover article entitled "Is There a Duty To Die?" The article
leads off with favorable comments on former Colorado Governor Richard
Lamm's claim that the elderly have a duty to die.
Two primary arguments are being made in opposition to Congressman
Hyde's bill: State's rights, and the bill's alleged chilling effect on
doctors.
With all due respect to the will of the Oregon voters, since when
does our country put discrimination up to majority vote? When states
rights conflict with anti-discrimination laws, then federal law must
prevail. The Oregon assisted suicide law would create the ultimate form
of discrimination, legalizing lethal overdoses based on the health status
of the victim. The second argument against Congressman Hyde's bill is
that it will have a chilling effect on physicians in prescribing pain
relief. To the best of my information, there have been only a few
convictions in the United States for wrongful dispensing of narcotics,
and
even pro-assisted suicide advocates admit that the convicted doctors in
those were probably engaged in illegal drug trafficking. Why should the
unsubstantiated fears of physicians receive so much weight? Why
shouldn't
they be more afraid of medical malpractice claims for denying pain
relief?
And why should their unsubstantiated fears be elevated above the very
well
founded fears of people with disabilities?
How many more of our minority group must die wrongfully, how many
more murders of people with disabilities will go unpunished, because the
euthanasia movement is mistakenly seen as a progressive social cause?
Not Dead Yet calls upon all members of this Congress to support
the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act, to affirm the principles of
non-discrimination which this nation has struggled so long to establish,
to turn back the steamroller of the euthanasia movement before it is too
late.
We thank Congressman Hyde and the Constitution Subcommittee for
the opportunity to speak to you today.
--------- End forwarded message ----------
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