Word: treatment
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Across the country, physicians upset by the story criticized the unnamed resident's action. "Euthanasia is practiced," says Washington Internist Jon Wiseman. "But usually it's done in a more passive kind of way, by withholding treatment -- not by putting someone to sleep like a dog." Do doctors commonly make that kind of decision alone? "No one talks about that kind of stuff," he says. Manhattan Internist Eric Cassell, who prefers not to pass moral judgment on mercy killing, believes that if it does occur, it should be only because the "circumstances are impossible to change or bear -- not merely...
Lundberg's own position reflects the A.M.A.'s posture on euthanasia: physicians may withhold life-sustaining treatment under certain circumstances, but should never intentionally cause death. Most physicians concur, though some acknowledge that the line is often hard to draw. Perhaps the harshest indictment of Debbie's treatment comes from doctors who maintain that morphine, used properly, could have kept her comfortable. Her regular physicians, not the hapless resident, believes Minneapolis Neurologist Ronald Cranford, are the "real criminals" for having failed to prescribe adequate medication for her pain. But if the dose required to bring relief also happened to hasten...
...disagree that drug abuse is a deadly evil. But the growing AIDS juggernaut, New York health officials argue, is deadlier. As many as 60% of the city's 200,000 addicts now carry the AIDS virus; only 35,000 are in drug- treatment programs. One result: growing numbers of women of childbearing age in the city are infected -- most of them through intravenous drug use or sexual contact with users. Says City Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph: "The IV drug user is the gateway to the heterosexual population." That threat to public health persuaded Axelrod to permit an exception...
...assumptions about hard-core drug abusers. "The junkie is not educable," declares Father Terence Attridge, director of the substance-abuse program for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. "You have to get addicts off needle use. It's the only way." Others dismiss such assertions. "Addicts do want treatment," contends Dr. Robert Newman, a founder of drug-treatment clinics and president of Manhattan's Beth Israel Medical Center. "It's wrong to think that as a group they don't care about their health." In fact, demand for IV drug-abuse treatment in New York increased after the news...
...needle-exchange programs in the Netherlands, Scotland and Australia tend to encourage that view. Since 1984 an estimated 70% of the 15,000 drug addicts in the Netherlands have registered in treatment programs, which allow health authorities to maintain regular contact with them for AIDS testing and counseling. The underlying strategy of New York health officials is similar. Says Commissioner Axelrod: "Our needle-exchange program has nothing to do with needles and syringes. The needle gets the addict in so we can educate and counsel." Still, some wonder if the project will even begin to curb the AIDS epidemic among...