DEATH AFTER INDIGNITY

Your Government Is Playing Doctor Again

To be born, said Victor Hugo, is to be condemned to death, "with an
indefinite reprieve." With that cheery thought to lubricate the
imagination, imagine for a moment that your own time is at hand.

Clear and unequivocal prognosis? Check.

Death not merely likely, but imminent? Check.

Second opinion affirms earlier prognosis? Check.

Financial affairs in order? Check.

Last will and testament on file in the right places? Check.

Health-care directive in force? Check.

Relatives notified, consoled, reassured? Check.

Painkillers prescribed? Check.

DEA certificate of approval in hand? Check.

Prescription filled? Che-- Wait a minute! How did the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration get involved in this?

They're not involved. Not yet. But if Attorney General John Ashcroft finds
a way around a temporary restraining order, Nov. 21 will be the date on
which the federal government becomes an active participant in decisions by
you and your doctor regarding your possession of painkillers that could
hasten or cause death.

Ashcroft's hope is to undermine a state law that has withstood court tests
and two trials in the court of public opinion: Oregon's Death With Dignity
law. But if he succeeds, he will have done far more than that.

Many physicians, threatened with revocation of the license to write
prescriptions, will be more guarded in their use of painkillers --
especially, although not exclusively, in cases involving patients who are
terminally ill and in unremitting pain.

This would be bad enough if Ashcroft's initiative were in service to some
high principle. The reality is that people are going to suffer terribly and
unnecessarily because the administration has decided to pander to the
so-called Religious Right, which thinks it sees something religious and
conservative in having the almighty central government barge into the
doctor's office and substitute its moral judgment for the medical judgment
of doctor and patient.

There is no other way to enforce Ashcroft's edict, you know. The government
cannot stand at a distance and determine which cases are being managed in
accordance with its wishes and which are not. It must oversee every case
involving federally approved painkillers, and order autopsies on every
patient who has suffered and then died.

There is, of course, a coward's alternative: sow a bureaucratic minefield
in the paths of all those who manage pain -- and then leave it to them to
pick their way through, if they dare.

Which course do you suppose Ashcroft has in mind?