Whatever one thinks of assisted suicide–and my position is abundantly clear to anyone following this blog for more than a day or two–when it is undertaken, the death certificate should so state. But the Washington law legalizing assisted suicide legally requires doctors to falsify death certificates by stating the cause of death as the underlying disease. That is not only false, but it makes tracking the procedure difficult, if not impossible. (Besides, on occasion, the person diagnosed with six months to live, would not have died of the affliction).
A bill has been introduced to at least make honest men and women of death doctors. SB 5378 would require that when assisted suicide is the cause of death, it be so listed on the death certificate.
Assisted suicide corrupts law and medicine. This is one example. I support the change. But I’ll bet assisted suicide advocates will oppose. The last thing they want is true transparency.
April 27th, 2011 | 5:46 pm
There’s no reason at all not to do this. This smacks of hiding statistics and shielding abuse from accountability.
*waits for HW to post here disagreeing with you*
HistoryWriter Reply:
April 28th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
@Dblade,
I love reading BS generalizations like “[a]ssisted suicide corrupts law and medicine.” It must really impress people who know nothing about either, and whose thought processes are limited to catchy slogans and 10-second sound bites.
That said, it makes absolutely no difference to me what terms are used to describe the cause of death, as long as the end result is that the patient exercised his right to end his life on his own terms.
Death certificates often use the format Cause of death: “X as a result of Y” (e.g., “strangulation as a result of hanging). I would imagine a proper rendering in the case of an assisted suicide in Washington would be: “cardiac arrest as a result of barbiturate overdose” or something similar; although, from the sound of Wesley’s concern he might be happier to see the word “SUICIDE” stamped on the death certificate in big red letters, in a latter-day take on Hawthorne.
HW
April 28th, 2011 | 1:04 am
[...] First Things (blog) [...]
April 29th, 2011 | 3:04 pm
[...] Wesley J. Smith tracks a WA assisted suicide bill which “legally requires doctors to falsify death certificates by stating the cause of death as the underlying disease. That is not only false, but it makes tracking the procedure difficult, if not impossible.” [...]
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