Last week, a New York man living with brain cancer, J.J. Hanson, held a news conference in Albany to talk about why he opposes medical aid in dying as an end-of-life option for terminally ill adults.
Fortunately, Hanson has responded well to surgery and chemotherapy treatment. On a recent appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, his wife, Kristen, said: "The reason that we felt we needed to speak up and share our story is...we've seen that you can beat the odds." They want to save people who would "just accept" a dire prognosis.
For the first time, lawmakers in Albany are giving serious consideration to bills authorizing medical aid in dying as an end-of-life option in New York. Pending bipartisan legislation would allow terminally ill, mentally capable adults to request and receive medication to die gently in their sleep, if their dying process became unbearable. The bills set standards for the medical practice and stipulate safeguards, including that the terminally ill person must drive the eligibility process and take the aid-in-dying medication themselves, if they decide to do so. Legislative backing and popular support among voters (77 percent) for the End of Life Options Act are great enough that opposition has become vocal.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media tend to present emotional issues in black-and-white terms, and end-of-life options certainly fall into this category. People hear two simplified "sides" of a question: either "this" or "that." Listening to the Hansons, you would think a person either chooses to fight cancer and win, as Hanson apparently has done, or they choose to give up and die, as he and his wife incorrectly suggest Brittany Maynard did in November 2014. The message is that treatment and survival is for fighters, medical aid in dying is for quitters.
But Brittany was no quitter. At 29 years old, she moved her family from California to Oregon to gain control over her approaching death from brain cancer. As the tumor took its toll of excruciating headaches, seizures, and imminent loss of sight, speech, movement, consciousness, and life itself, Brittany decided to stop this cruel devastation and die peacefully while she still could. Far from giving in to her disease, she refused to allow its vicious destruction of every shred of her life's meaning.
Cancer comes in many forms, with many degrees of ferociousness and velocity. Sometimes modern medicine can beat it back. Stories like Hanson's are, indeed, joyous celebrations. But often, and sadly, cancer continues a relentless course in spite of every effort to cut it out, irradiate it, or poison it into remission. People die of cancer, and not because they didn't try hard enough to cure it.
Brittany did not make a different decision from Hanson. She made the same decision, to undergo aggressive treatment. But it didn't work. That doesn't make her weak, or a quitter. It just means life dealt her a lousy hand. Given that hand, Brittany determined to make the best she could of it.
People who are comforted to know medical aid in dying is available if they need it are also committed to fighting their disease when there's a chance to cure it or slow its progression. The Hansons present a false choice of treating disease or submitting to death. That kind of thinking is seductive. It supports our delusion that we are different from those who die of cancer, and that difference will save us. But it does a grave disservice to those unlucky enough to have fought bravely, long and well and died anyway.
Of course people hearing they have a terminal illness want to beat it. If they can't beat it, they want to slow it. If they can't slow it, they want excellent pain control and comfort care. If hospice cannot control pain and other symptoms, they want a peaceful escape from suffering, hopefully at home, in the arms of their loved ones. Why would a benevolent government, or a compassionate politician, or a fortunate cancer survivor, want to deny them that?
Coombs Lee was a nurse and physician assistant for 25 years who coauthored the nation's first law authorizing medical aid in dying, the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. She is an attorney and president ofCompassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy organization.
This op-ed was originally published by The Albany Times Union.
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