Terminally Ill Patients

SEATTLE -- Despite a federal judge's ruling that Washington state's law banning assisted suicide is unconstitutional, it's not clear whether doctors have a green light to help terminally ill patients openly end their lives.If asked tomorrow for medication that would help a suffering, dying patient commit suicide, "I would do it. I'm sure I would," said Harold Glucksberg, a cancer specialist who is one of four doctors, three patients and a right-to-die group that successfully sued the state.

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.

A Baltimore County jury awarded a terminally ill psychotherapist $3.1 million yesterday after deciding that her doctor failed to diagnose lymphoma for three years.The jury deliberated for 45 minutes before finding that Dr. John Mann, a Baltimore County internist, had breached the standard of care for his patient, Lynn Sklar, 52, of Randallstown.The weeklong trial in the courtroom of Baltimore County Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz included medical experts who testified that Mann should have biopsied swollen lymph nodes in his patient's neck when she complained about pain in 1995, her lawyer said.

A nonprofit social services agency that provides food to HIV/AIDS patients and other terminally ill people in the Baltimore area may be forced to turn away 175 of its clients beginning tomorrow because of funding recommendations that have decreased the group's federal support by half. Moveable Feast is set to lose about $165,000 of its annual funding through the Ryan White Care Act because of directives made by Associated Black Charities, the agency contracted by the city to make funding recommendations for charities receiving federal AIDS money, according to Victor Basile, Moveable Feast's executive director.

Columnist Ellen Goodman writes: "There are 'difficult moral issues' ahead. But is this one of them? Is a health care system that offers 'everything' to everyone - hip replacements to terminally ill patients - morally superior? Or suspect?" For article, go to baltimoresun.com/opinion

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration warned the Supreme Court yesterday that a ruling to let doctors aid in suicide would lead to needless deaths across America, ending the lives of many vulnerable people.Predicting that assisted suicide could not be controlled once allowed, the administration advocated power for states to outlaw the practice -- preferably by a total ban, with no exceptions.Any exception, the administration contended, "will lead to the deaths of many persons who are not competent, who are not terminally ill, and who do not make truly voluntary requests for assistance" in suicide.

PEOPLEHospice of Chesapeake names medical chiefHospice of the Chesapeake has announced the appointment of Dr. Russell DeLuca as hospice medical director.Dr. DeLuca will lead Hospice's clinical team and help make key decisions affecting the care Hospice of the Chesapeake provides to terminally ill patients and their families."Dr. DeLuca has been involved with our Hospice for quite some time as an active referral source," said President Erwin Abrams. "His knowledge of disease processes, pain management, and the special needs of patients is impressive and will certainly benefit out patients and families."

IN COLORADO, the mother of a student critically wounded in the Columbine High School massacre goes into deep depression and kills herself in a pawnshop with a handgun.In Ohio, a former state finance director finds he has a bad form of cancer, and dies, instead, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.In the U.S. House of Representatives, members vote 272-156 to make it illegal for doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs for terminally ill patients. No mention is made of guns, one of the principal methods of choice for suicide.

A bitter dispute among board members of Joseph Richey House has been resolved, ensuring that Baltimore's pioneering AIDS and cancer hospice will remain open. The feud - which involved a stalemate between three board members of the Mount Calvary Church and three board members from the Episcopal All Saints Sisters of the Poor - was settled this month through negotiations led by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan. Lawsuits filed by the church and the nuns against one other had threatened the future of the hospice, which the two groups created in 1980 and named after a former rector of Mount Calvary.

A health-care service owned by a group of Maryland Shock Trauma Center physicians is seeking state approval to begin providing hospice services in Baltimore and five Central Maryland counties, including Carroll.Bay Area Health Care Inc., which is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical Center, offers home care to patients leaving University Hospital.The corporation plans to add hospice care to its services.Julie Flaherty, executive director of Carroll Hospice, the existing volunteer hospice service, expressed concern that the proposed service might affect her organization's ability to raise money.