Word: lethal
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Harvard evened the score with its own lethal power play just over halfway into the frame...
...doctors admit to being willing to administer so-called terminal sedation, raising drug levels high enough to induce a fatal coma. Others simply increase morphine doses until the patient stops breathing. In 1998 the New England Journal of Medicine published a physician survey showing that when patients asked for lethal prescriptions, 16% of doctors complied, albeit quietly. "Aid in dying happens in every state," says assemblywoman Patty Berg, co-sponsor of the California bill. "We need to bring it out of the closet, impose legal safeguards and careful oversight...
...spurring them to take extra training in complex pain management and encouraging them to refer patients to hospice care earlier than before. And, while critics feared that HMOs, insurance companies or relatives might subtly encourage suicide because it is cheaper than treatment, only 3% of those who took the lethal prescriptions cited financial considerations as a reason, according to state surveys of their doctors. The reasons most gave: "losing autonomy" and "less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable...
Despite the comparative ease with which the suicide statute has become a part of mainstream medical care in Oregon, many patients seeking lethal drugs still have to shop for a doctor. Catholic hospitals and even some nondenominational ones forbid their physician employees from writing such prescriptions. While a general survey found that 51% of the state's physicians support the act, only 34% say they would be willing to be the one writing the prescription. Instead, many refer patients to Compassion in Dying, a local nonprofit that can recommend willing doctors. That is the group Lillian Sullivan, 77, turned...
...years ago, Sullivan, a retired bookkeeper, received a diagnosis of ALS--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease--which paralyzes and eventually suffocates the patient. She asked her Portland doctors to prescribe lethal medicine, but even as her condition has deteriorated and her pain has increased, they have refused to discuss it. "They are young," she says. "They don't understand the pains of the elderly." She has a date with a new doctor this month but fears that by then her muscle constriction won't allow her to swallow--and self-administering the drugs...