Helium in an 'exit bag' new choice for suicide

Booth Gardner, a former Washington state governor and a Parkinson's sufferer, leads an initiative to legalize assisted suicide in his state

Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, December 08, 2007
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...266405295d&p=3

The right-to-die debate, which divided Canadians in the early '90s, is expected to split voters next year in Washington state where a popular former governor is spearheading a ballot initiative that would legalize assisted suicide.

Booth Gardner, a former two-term governor who has suffered the effects of Parkinson's disease for more than 14 years, wants Washington to adopt the 10-year-old Oregon law which allows physicians to provide dying patients a lethal dose of narcotics.

The 71-year-old veteran politician and heir to the Weyerhaeuser timber fortune has told reporters that "this will be my last campaign."

Suicide is something that preoccupies Gardner. He's declared his intent to end his own life when he can no longer tolerate what Parkinson's is doing to his body and mind.

A political action committee called It's My Decision is preparing to collect the 224,000 signatures required to get the assisted-suicide measure on the ballot in the November 2008 elections.

Gardner was the Democratic governor in 1991 when a similar ballot initiative was defeated narrowly 54 to 46 per cent. The death-with-dignity measure was at the time the most expensive in the state's history.

But Gardner wasn't a participant in that debate and could barely recall it in recent media interviews. Back then death was far from Gardner's mind. He was a robust governor who could run marathons and climb mountains.

A few years after the 1991 ballot fight, Gardner developed Parkinson's. The progressive disease has regularly left him physically debilitated and depressed -- and thinking of his own final exit.

Supporters of the assisted-suicide measure are hoping that Gardner's profile will help them bridge the narrow gap that kept them from victory in 1991.

"Booth is a very well-liked former governor who is a strong spokesperson for this measure and brings a great deal of credibility to the campaign," said Christian Sinderman, a spokesman for the It's My Decision committee.

Gardner intends to speak strongly and often for the ballot initiative -- even though it would be of no use to him.

The proposed right-to-die law -- just like the law in Oregon -- would only involve terminally ill people. Parkinson's can mean a life of incurable suffering but it is not considered terminal. You don't die from Parkinson's.

Oregon was the first and only American state where physician-assisted dying is legal. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was approved by voters in 1994 and 1997. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Oregon's law in 2006, blocking the Bush administration's attempt to punish physicians who help hasten the death of terminally ill patients.

Under the Oregon measure, two physicians must declare that the patient has no more than six months to live and does not suffer from any mental disorder. The patient then makes a written request for a prescription from his physician for life-ending medication.

If the request is authorized, the patient must wait at least 15 days and make a second oral request before the prescription is written. Participation by physicians is voluntary and protected from liability.

Since the Oregon law took effect in 1997, until the end of 2006, 292 people have asked their physicians to provide them a lethal dose of drugs, an average of just over 30 a year.

A University of Utah-led study on the Oregon experience found that people who received a doctor's help in dying averaged 70 years old and 80 per cent were cancer patients.

The Washington measure is expected to be vigorously opposed the Catholic Church, evangelical churches and some disability groups.

"We are opposed to assisted suicide and any legalization of the ending of life by other than natural causes," said Greg Magnoni, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle. "We believe in the protection of human life from conception to natural death."

Also opposing Gardner's campaign is Duane French, who heads the Washington chapter of Not Dead Yet, a national advocacy group for the disabled.

"We think it would put people with disabilities at risk," French said. "The leading proponent of the measure is Booth Gardner and he doesn't have a terminal illness, he has a disability."

Physician-assisted suicide refers to the doctor providing the means for death, typically medication. The lethal drugs are administered by the patient, not the doctor.

Euthanasia generally means that the physician -- or someone else -- ends a dying or incurable ill person's life through lethal injection or by another means.

Assisted suicide is illegal in every American state, except Oregon, and in Canada. Three European countries have legalized the controversial practice -- the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.

The Netherlands legalized physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2002 for both the terminally ill and also for those (like Gardner) who suffer from incurable diseases.

The right-to-die debate in Canada has been dormant since 1993 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in a 5-4 vote that Sue Rodriguez did not have a constitutional right to assisted suicide.

Rodriguez, a Victoria woman who suffered from the terminal Lou Gehrig's disease, gave the issue unprecedented exposure when she asked members of Parliament: "If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?"

She committed suicide in 1994 with the help of an anonymous physician. Former NDP MP Svend Robinson, a champion of Rodriguez's cause, was also present.

As Canadians followed Rodriguez's tragic struggle to end her life, they were also torn by the case of Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who killed his severely disabled daughter, 12-year-old Tracy, in 1993.

Latimer was convicted of second-degree murder in 1994 and sentenced to life. His story made headlines this week when he was denied day parole by the National Parole Board.

Latimer's mercy killing is a classic case of euthanasia, which is different from the assisted suicide sought by Rodriguez and now former governor Gardner in Washington.

While Latimer's case clearly divided the country, recent polls indicate about 75 per cent of Canadians support assisted suicide.

Federal politicians have been loath to raise the issue, although former justice minister Irwin Cotler, a Liberal, said in 2005 that Canadians should revisit the issue. But a plan to look at what is being done in other jurisdictions died when his party lost the 2006 federal election.

Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde has a private members' bill in Parliament, which would allow assisted suicide for a person with a terminal illness or someone experiencing severe physical or mental pain, yet who is mentally lucid when the request for death is made.

But right-to-die activists expect the bill will suffer the fate of most other private members' bills and die on the order paper.

In Canada, assisted suicide remains a federal matter and can only be changed by Parliament or the Supreme Court -- not by some provincial ballot initiative similar to the one expected in Washington.

Kwantlen criminologist Russel Ogden expects the thorny issue will return to the public spotlight as the baby boom generation ages. "We are now in a state where our bodies are outliving our minds. The prospect of dementia is frightening for many elderly people," Ogden said.

"So the desire to avoid that will probably be in the minds of a lot of people."

And if politicians and the courts decline to legalize assisted suicide, Ogden said, "many people seeking an end to their suffering will take the matter into their own hands or engage the services of right-to-die activists."

dward@png.canwest.com