FYI

>Received from Jack Freer, Bioethics Bulletin

===============================================================

>Washington Post
>
>Ore. Law On Assisted Suicides Upheld
>
>By William Booth
>
>
>  LOS ANGELES, April 17 -- A federal judge in Portland ruled today that
> the Bush administration lacks the authority to overturn a voter-backed
> Oregon law permitting physician-assisted suicide.
>
>  U.S. District Judge Robert Jones scolded Attorney General John D.
> Ashcroft, saying that the federal government was attempting to usurp the
> rights of a state when the Justice Department announced its intent to
> prosecute doctors who prescribe lethal doses of drugs to their terminally
> ill and dying patients.
>
>  "The citizens of Oregon, through their democratic initiative process,
> have chosen to resolve the moral, legal and ethical debate on
> physician-assisted suicide for themselves by voting -- not once, but
> twice -- in favor of the Oregon act," Jones wrote in his order.
>
>  Jones said that Ashcroft attempted to "stifle an ongoing, earnest and
> profound debate in the various states concerning physician-assisted
> suicide," and that "with no advance warning . . . fired the first shot in
> the battle between the state of Oregon and the federal government."
>
>  Oregon is the only state to have legalized physician-assisted suicide --
> an immensely controversial practice that raises ethical, medical and
> religious questions about the appropriate role for doctors in hastening
> or forbidding what advocates call "an early exit." Today's decision was a
> clear victory for advocates of allowing doctors to prescribe drugs to
> hasten an inevitable death. But this will not end the debate in the
> courts, in Washington and in hospital corridors.
>
>  The Justice Department is considering an appeal, said Robert McCallum,
> an assistant attorney general. It would be heard by the 9th Circuit Court
> in San Francisco, and the process would likely take about 18 months.
> Meanwhile, the Oregon law remains in force, and other states are
> considering similar measures.
>
>  McCallum repeated the administration's contention that "assisting
> suicide is not medicine."
>
>  "Terminally ill patients are among the most vulnerable members of our
> society," he said. "Medical studies make clear that these individuals
> often suffer from undiagnosed depression and inadequately treated pain. A
> just and caring society should do its best to assist in coping with the
> problems that afflict the terminally ill. It should not abandon or assist
> in killing them."
>
>  Oregon voters first approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994, and
> then again three years later after a failed legal challenge.
>
>  Under that law, a patient who seeks a prescription for lethal drugs must
> be shown to be mentally competent and must have, in the opinion of two
> doctors, less than six months to live. Although doctors prescribe the
> powerful sedatives or narcotics, they are not allowed to administer them
> to cause death.If the patient is incapable of taking the drugs without
> aid, a friend or relative may help.
>
>  In the past four years, 91 people in Oregon have chosen to end their
> lives with the help of their physicians, according to records kept by the
> state.
>
>  "The system has worked in Oregon," said Kathryn Tucker, one of the
> attorneys who defended the law in court and the director of legal affairs
> for the group Compassion in Dying Federation.
>
>  Tucker said that the number of patients choosing suicide has been
> relatively low and that there have not been allegations of abuse or
coercion.
>
>  Opponents of physician-assisted suicide decried the court action.
>
>  Burke Balch, a director of the National Right to Life Committee, said,
> "The American people do not want their federal government to facilitate
> euthanasia." Balch said he was confident the decision would be reversed
> on appeal.
>
>  Jan LaRue, a director of the Family Research Council, said, "Medicine by
> definition is the art of treating and curing. Drugs are for curing, not
> killing."
>
>  During the Clinton administration, Attorney General Janet Reno concluded
> that the federal government could not bar Oregon doctors from prescribing
> drugs to hasten death.
>
>  But in November, Ashcroft ordered Drug Enforcement Administration agents
> to pursue cases against such doctors. Ashcroft argued that the lethal
> prescriptions served no "legitimate medical purpose" and violated the
> federal Controlled Substances Act, whose primary purpose is to regulate
> drugs that can be abused, from marijuana to prescription pain killers.
>
>  Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers immediately went to court and
> challenged the "Ashcroft directive," and Jones issued a temporary
> restraining order against Ashcroft in November. Today, Jones ruled again
> for the state, blocking the federal government from pursuing Oregon
doctors.
>
>  Jones said he was not required to rule on the practice of
> physician-assisted suicide, but a narrower point of law -- whether the
> federal government, through the Controlled Substances Act, can seek to
> bar physicians from writing prescriptions to assist in suicide.
>
>  Jones concluded that the Controlled Substances Act, as well as
> legislative history behind the act, did not support the Ashcroft
> directive. The federal government, Jones wrote, is not authorized "to act
> as a national medical board" and regulate how physicians treat their
patients.
>
>  Steve Bushong, a deputy Oregon attorney general who has defended the
> state law, argued that Congress intended only to prevent illegal
> drug-trafficking by doctors under the Controlled Substances Act, and it
> left any decisions about medical practice up to the states.
>
>  Alan Bates, a physician and a member of the Oregon Legislature, said
> today's ruling "allows us to continue to practice medicine without fear
> of losing our licenses." He warned that "once you start telling
> physicians how to handle their patients, you've made a huge mistake."
>
>  Supporters of the Oregon law said a ruling in favor of Ashcroft could
> have had a chilling effect on the care of gravely ill patients because
> doctors might fear that prescribing too much pain medication could invite
> federal prosecution.
>
>  McCallum, the assistant attorney general, made clear that was not the
> intent of the Justice Department, saying that appropriate use of pain
> medications was "one of the most important positive alternatives to
suicide."
>
>  Jones said he understood that society has not settled its mind on the
> question. "My task is not to criticize those who oppose the concept of
> assisted suicide for any reason," Jones wrote. "Many of our citizens,
> including the highest respected leaders of this country, oppose assisted
> suicide. But the fact that opposition to assisted suicide may be fully
> justified, morally, ethically, religiously or otherwise, does not permit
> a federal statute to be manipulated from its true meaning to satisfy even
> a worthy goal."