Word: lamm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Perhaps Colorado Governor Richard Lamm did not phrase his statement very tactfully when he said, "Elderly people who are terminally ill have a duty to die" [MEDICINE, April 9]. For his critics, however, I have this question: Do the terminally ill of any age benefit from having the agony of death prolonged indefinitely by the use of artificial means...
WHEN COLORADO GOVERNOR RICHARD LAMM said recently in an oft-misquoted speech that "we have a duty to die and get out of the way with our artificial hearts," he was not advising that anyone put a ceiling on the life span of a useful human being. What he was referring to are the questions raised by the extraordinary and expensive advances of medical technology, and the fact that society must attempt to allocate its resources in the most ethical and fair way. He wasn't suggesting that old people exit en masse, but rather that it is time...
Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm said in a controversial speech last month that terminally ill people have a duty to die so that society can use its resources to improve people's lives instead of prolonging their deaths...
However infelicitous his phrasing, Lamm was praised in some quarters for broaching one of the most sensitive issues of the day. Medical technology has become increasingly successful at keeping frail and withered leaves on the tree long after nature would have let them fall. Today, 80% of Americans die in hospitals or nursing homes, generally in the course of receiving some sort of medical treatment. Doctors no longer speak of death by "natural causes." Because physicians have the capacity to extend life, they often feel obliged to use it, observes Dr. Bernard Towers, who helps direct a U.C.L.A. program...
Because of the attention such cases have received in the past few years, many hospitals and states have begun to set guidelines so that life-and-death decisions are not made rashly in the heat of the night. By playing the gadfly, Governor Lamm may have promoted further discussion, and clarification, of a troubling ethical issue...