Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.issues,americast.usa-today.issues From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: issues Tue, Oct 13 1992 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 05:19:04 EDT Message-ID: 10-13 0000 DECISIONLINE: Issues & Debate USA TODAY Update Oct. 13, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network Here are some of the issues and topics being debated across the nation Tuesday morning in USA TODAY: Suicide, NASA. TODAY'S DEBATE - ASSISTED SUICIDE: USA TODAY'S OPINION: Death doesn't always come swiftly enough for those who suffer painful, lingering illnesses. Hundreds of thousands of Californians who signed petitions believe the answer is a ballot initiative that would legalize doctor-assisted suicide. If California's Proposition 161 passes three weeks from Tuesday, doctors could not be sued or prosecuted for speeding the death of patients expected to die within six months. Any physician could refuse to participate on moral grounds. Washington voters defeated a similar measure last year. New efforts are under way again there this year, as well as in Oregon and Michigan. Unfortunately, the California initiative ... goes too far. It allows doctors to kill, not just give patients the means to kill themselves. And it poses subtler problems. Who knows, for example, when someone is six months away from dying? Doctors rarely claim such certainty. And is someone so near death a better candidate for assisted suicide than someone with a longer life expectancy but a more painful disease? Laws are an awkward tool for addressing those subtleties, which, ideally, are best left to medical ethicists. So far, doctors lack adequate ethical guidelines to tell them when ... they may help invite death. ... At the very least, a doctor should: Have an established relationship with the patient; do everything to persuade the patient to take another course; insist upon psychological consultation to ensure that depression isn't driving the desire for death; use every means to ease emotional and physical suffering. Doctors also must be more willing to control patients' pain. Even Proposition 161 proponents agree that would diminish the demand for assisted suicide. ... Doctors should approach assisted suicide only with extreme caution. Patients in pain and near death deserve help, but Proposition 161 is a fatally flawed attempt to provide it. OTHER VIEW: PATRICK COX, a Menlo Park, Calif., writer: There is something about the concept of suicide that rebuts rationality. When it is proposed that doctors be allowed to help tormented terminal patients end their lives, otherwise sensible adults set about contriving plot lines for murder mysteries so unlikely and convoluted that they would be laughed at even by schoolchildren. ... Medical technologies are allowing the prolongation of life into realms previously undreamed of - at a price that is both human and economic. Is it right to bankrupt our families or society just to live a few more enormously expensive and painful weeks? When people can be kept technically alive as brain stems in boxes, what is death by natural causes? None of us likes to think of life in terms of dollars or pain. These are unpleasant issues that ... engender aversion and distaste. They strain the fabric of democracy - confusing church with state and setting up bitter strife between those who hold conflicting religious views. ... we must make every effort now to give individuals the right to determine their own philosophies and devise their own policies on this. ... The California terminal illness proposition is an effort to give individuals the power to make their own calculations concerning the costs and benefits of extended life. As critics point out, we must be careful that it is the patient who makes the decision, not the family or the doctor. To that list, however, I would add the press and the state. We must not treat death as the ultimate Berlin Wall, a barrier not to be crossed except by government permission. VOICES ACROSS THE NATION ON NASA LOOKING FOR LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS: NORRISTOWN, Pa., Anamae Morgan, 62, sixth-grade teacher: I think this is wonderful. There are so many things to be discovered. It is quite expensive and our money could be used for other things, but if they find radio signals from somewhere else and we make contact, a lot of things could be discovered. BUFFALO, N.Y., Edward J. Wozniak, 35, accounting manager: It's money well spent. We spent millions of dollars to land a man on the moon, and the benefit was technology. The cost of $100 million for this is appropriate because the government won't subsidize research and development directly, like Germany does. PALATINE, Ill., Laura Weaver, 46, realtor: It's a waste of money. Let's develop our biggest natural resource - our own intelligence and creativity. Let's put the same money into education, teachers' salaries and especially extracurricular programs. They are suffering in Chicago like crazy. ZACHARY, La., James A. Smith, 54, project director: Anything we do in the quest of knowledge should be a high priority. At one time, there were many parts of the Earth we had not explored. If we put a limit on how far we will go in the quest of knowledge, we have stopped our progress. DALLAS, Texas, Dan Paddock, 17, student: Space exploration is useless if we don't have enough money to take care of the problems on Earth, like homelessness. I don't believe there is anything living on any other planets. I wouldn't want my tax money to be used. Issues & Debate Editor: Kate Coughlin. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM