An In the Loop item (May 28) incorrectly implied that Kevorkian-style active euthanasia-where a physician administers a lethal drug cocktail to a patient-is legal in Oregon. In fact, it is not: Under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, a doctor may prescribe a lethal dose of legal medications to a terminally ill patient only under strict conditions. Among the conditions are that the patient be certified mentally competent and given six months or less to live by two doctors, pass a waiting period and be able to take the medication unaided. Jack Kevorkian would have been prosecuted even on the left coast.
DEBRA ERICKSON / Chicago
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EDITOR’S NOTE: While Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act forbids Kevorkian’s kind of “active euthanasia,” doctors, nurses or family members in that state have in a number of cases reportedly helped patients take the lethal drug and not faced prosecution. The act actually says nothing about the patient being able to take the medication unaided, and therein lies a central issue that it fuzzes over: What happens when someone suffers from a disease like end-stage ALS and lacks the neuromuscular control to take the medication? To say no one can help patients take the drug is to set up two classes of terminally ill people, those who have movement and can thus be allowed to end their own suffering, and those who lack such movement and therefore must accept their pain to the bitter end.
THANKS FOR THE UPDATE on Jack “The Dripper” Kevorkian. You might imagine my surprise when I discovered that Kevorkian “shares an 8-by-12-foot cell with another inmate.”
Who was the genius that decided to put Kevorkian in a cell with another inmate? Another inmate who may very well contemplate taking his own life some day. What were they thinking?
I can just hear it: “Uh, excuse me, perhaps I may be of some assistance?”
GARY E. KUTA / Manteno
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