The morning mail - From Journal Sentinel readers

BILL WOULD DEPRIVE TERMINALLY ILL OF RELIEF

Congress is considering a bill, the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act of
1998, which would keep the terminally ill from receiving adequate doses of
painkillers. While this bill is meant to prevent physician-assisted
suicide, it would have an adverse effect on end-of-life care.

It requires that in instances in which a patient using physician-prescribed
narcotics dies, the incident be investigated. The Drug Enforcement
Administration will have to question the patient's grieving family to
divulge information to an investigator about the most private of family
matters -- the circumstances of a loved one's death.

While the bill is being proposed ostensibly to prohibit dispensing of
narcotic drugs for the purpose of hastening death, a laudable goal, the
legislation will seriously impair a physician's ability to prescribe
narcotics in doses necessary to overcome a terminally ill patient's pain.

The burden would be on the physician to prove to the DEA that the drug was
needed to relieve pain, not hasten death. Even if a physician were
ultimately exonerated, the damage would be done. A physician would be left
with no choice but to question how effectively he or she could treat other
patients in the future.

These patients represent the sickest of the sick and deserve to get the
best care possible. If this bill were passed, it would stop the
profession's progress in its tracks. The American College of Physicians --
American Society of Internal Medicine opposes this legislation, which will
have an adverse effect on end-of-life care.

Mahendr S. Kochar
Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology
Medical College of Wisconsin

Checked-by: Richard Lake