The newest legislative proposal for doctor-assisted suicide would degrade the trusting relationship patients have with their providers and would harm vulnerable people ("Minnesotans need end-of-life aid," Feb. 24).
Protecting the choices of a few by legalizing assisted suicide would endanger the health care choices of all.
In February 2020, I joined colleagues across the world by donning personal protective equipment and entering the room of the first patient with COVID-19 symptoms I treated. We knew it was a terrible illness; physicians from China to Italy were dying because of their decision to care for patients.
What kept the nurses, doctors, paramedics, aides and myriad other roles coming to work? An orientation toward life, encoded in the DNA of medicine formed over many cultures and centuries: saving lives and doing one's best for the patient, even at high personal risk.
So, it is ironic and deeply troubling that legalizing assisted suicide is being considered during a pandemic that has forced all of us, particularly front-line medical workers, to show solidarity with the most vulnerable.
If the assisted suicide bill becomes law, it would require that providers who deal with terminal illnesses advise patients about the "treatment option" of ending their lives. Assisted suicide is incompatible with a physician's role as healer. It is a conflict in roles to have a single agent both working toward improving one's condition and counseling death.
The last thing we need to do is support legalization which undermines the foundation of medicine rather than advancing effective end-of-life care.
Instead, we should invest health care resources in ensuring greater access to hospice care, which is currently underused, especially among communities of color. Unfortunately, too many patients enter hospice late in their illness, often during the last week of life, and miss the benefits that such care affords to them and their families.
