Massachusetts Vote May Change How the Nation Dies

Cody Curtis, right, in How To Die in Oregon

Still from Clear Cut Films/IMDB.

This Election Day, Massachusetts is poised to approve the Death With Dignity Act. ?Death with dignity? is a modernized, sanitized, politically palatable term that replaces the now-antiquated expression ?physician-assisted suicide.? Four polls conducted in the past couple of months have shown strong support for the ballot question, although a well-funded media blitz by the opposition is kicking in during the final several weeks and may influence voter opinions.

Oregon?s Death With Dignity Act has been in effect for the past 14 years, and the state of Washington followed suit with a similar law in 2008. Despite concerns of skeptics, the sky has not fallen; civilization in the Northwest remains intact; the poor, disenfranchised, elderly, and vulnerable have not been victimized; and Oregon has become a leader in the provision of excellent palliative medicine services.

But the Massachusetts ballot question has the potential to turn death with dignity from a legislative experiment into the new national norm. The state is the home of America?s leading medical publication (the New England Journal of Medicine), hospital (Massachusetts General), and four medical schools (Harvard, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, and Tufts).? Passage of the law would represent a crucial milestone for the death with dignity movement, especially since 42 percent of the state is Catholic and the church hierarchy vehemently opposes assisted dying. Vermont and New Jersey are already entertaining similar legislature, and if the act passes in Massachusetts, other states that have previously had unsuccessful campaigns will certainly be emboldened to revisit this subject.

The American right-to-die movement began in the 1980s and 1990s with Derek Humphry?s book, Final Exit, and his organization, the Hemlock Society. It was a reaction to a wave of technological advances, including antibiotics, antifungal medications, ventilators, dialysis machines, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, organ transplantation, and intensive care units. Death appeared to be on the run, cure was truly possible, and patients were politely requested to be quiet and allow physicians to heroically perform miracles. And that is when Dr. Jack Kevorkian?the bad boy of medicine?appeared on the scene.

Kevorkian was a revolutionary. He was beloved by patients and their families because of his gutsy intention to overthrow the medical establishment?s prevailing ethos and hubris about dying. Clad in his nerdy, light-blue cardigan sweater, Kevorkian paraded in front of the cameras to show off homemade suicide gadgets and the Volkswagen van he occasionally drove on house calls to help suffering people end their lives. Before receiving an 11-to-20-year sentence for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youck, a 52-year-old Michigan accountant who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig?s disease), Judge Jessica Cooper said, ?You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well sir, consider yourself stopped.?

So let?s fast forward to December 2007, when Cody Curtis was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma. This is an unusual and deadly cancer of the bile duct, the tube that runs through the liver. Depending on the size of the tumor and whether it has spread throughout the body, patients with this cancer are offered surgery, chemoradiation, and sometimes a liver transplant. Even with aggressive treatment, however, cholangiocarcinoma is usually a fatal diagnosis.

On a website called How We Die, Cody wrote with characteristic brio and wit:

It?s interesting how I was diagnosed?for my 52^nd birthday I had gotten four, count them, four boxes of chocolate. And I ate them all. Afterwards I felt (deservedly) awful. I looked up my symptoms on the Internet and decided I was having a gall bladder attack like my father had earlier that year. It was a Saturday night so I didn?t want to go to the emergency room.

But I thought it was really weird, so a few weeks later I went in to see the doctor. She ordered an ultrasound. When I went back to her office to get the results, she looked at me and burst into tears. She said, ?Your gall bladder?s fine, but you have a big mass in your liver.? The tumor was roughly the size of a grapefruit.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=9953517989b6ac778d6f67139a203ded

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