Assisted Suicide

Maryland should make assisted suicide a felony or risk the arrival of a home-grown version of so-called death doctor Jack Kevorkian, several groups told a state Senate committee yesterday.Some doctors, local Catholic leaders and the state attorney general's office warned of potentially dire consequences unless Maryland makes it an explicit crime to help terminally ill people kill themselves.If state law remains unclear on the issue, they said, some doctors may encourage patients to commit suicide, especially if they are poor, handicapped, elderly or uninsured.

The acquittal of Dr. Jack Kevorkian of charges he helped a man kill himself does not provide a clear picture of the future -- either for Dr. Kevorkian himself or for the assisted-suicide movement."

WASHINGTON -- Concerned that some terminally ill Americans may be suffering needlessly, a federal advisory board called yesterday for medical reforms to improve those patients' care and relieve their chronic pain.In its report, the panel said the medical community is poorly trained to provide pain relief, to let the terminally ill manage the dying process and to comfort patients in their final days."We still have a real problem in this country with untreated pain," the chairwoman of the panel, Dr. Christine Cassel of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, said at a news conference.

BOSTON -- If you are looking for a medical term to describe their condition, you might call them the ''worried well.'' Since recent court decisions lifted the ban on doctor-assisted suicide in 12 states, both those who favor and those who oppose these rulings are worrying about what happens next.It's only 20 years since Karen Ann Quinlan's case came to court attached to a life-support machine. It's only six years since the Supreme Court finally ruled that there was a right to die, or more properly, a right to refuse life-prolonging treatment.

BOSTON -- I'm not exactly sure how to address this letter.Should I address it to the "obiatrist" who once wanted to harvest the organs of death row inmates?Or to the defendant who came to court in full Thomas Jefferson regalia spouting 18th century sound bites of freedom?Or to the doctor in the videotapes speaking gently to patients in pain?Or to the man shouting in hallways about a "political lynching"?But let's keep it simple. Here we go: Dear Dr. Jack, Congratulations . . . and please retire.

When Dr. Jack Kevorkian first made national headlines in 1990 by assisting in the death of an Oregon woman who had Alzheimer's disease, there was an intriguing split in public reaction.Ethicists and physicians condemned his participation in a deliberate death. Meanwhile, radio talk shows were inundated with callers voicing support. "Dr. Death" struck a sensitive nerve.Too many Americans have seen family members and friends subjected to the new way of death -- a medical battleground where the process of dying has turned into a war between technology and mortality, a war in which the best interests of the patient sometimes get lost.

Dr. Death has slipped by again. Because Michigan law does not specifically rule out assisting in a suicide, murder charges against Dr. Jack Kevorkian were dismissed in the cases of two of the four seriously ill women who have used devices invented or acquired by Dr. Kevorkian to commit suicide.To some, Dr. Kevorkian is an angel of mercy, providing help no one else dares to offer. To others, he is the zealot who puts a face on the fears of those who see in assisted euthanasia the first step down a very slippery slope.

In March 1989, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article in which 12 doctors called for "a second look" at physicians' responsibility toward hopelessly ill patients. The authors made news by stating, "It is not immoral for a physician to assist in the rational suicide of a terminally ill patient."Since then, there have been a lot more headlines about physician-assisted suicide. Earlier this year, Dr. Timothy Quill, a physician in Rochester, N.Y., wrote about his experience in helping a terminally ill leukemia patient to commit suicide by prescribing enough barbiturates to end her life peacefully.

DETROIT -- Four times prosecutors have tried to prove that Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the man who says he has presided over more than 130 suicides, committed a crime when he helped seriously ill people die.Four times they have failed. Three juries acquitted Kevorkian. One case ended in a mistrial.Tomorrow, prosecutors will try again. It is a trial that people on both sides of the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide see as a potentially defining showdown over whether such acts should be considered criminal or whether they are the entitlement of the terminally ill.And this time, several key things are different.

DETROIT -- It wasn't supposed to go this way. Dr. Jack Kevorkian's attorney was negotiating for him to give Barbara Walters -- or Katie Couric or Tom Brokaw -- an exclusive jail house interview this week.Instead, Michigan lawyer John DeMoss, who said he thought Dr. Kevorkian and his attorney Geoffrey Fieger were lying, abusing the justice system and wasting taxpayers' money, went to court yesterday and plunked down $2,000 cash to make the "suicide doctor" a free man."I've been a lawyer for too long.