Feds say target is assisted suicide, not pain control

There are concerns that going after Oregon physicians who write lethal -- but legal -- prescriptions will have a chilling effect on aggressive treatment of pain.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Nov. 26, 2001.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's move to block assisted suicide in Oregon is being viewed by some as another government intrusion into the practice of medicine.

In a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Ashcroft declared assisted suicide is "not a legitimate medical purpose" and authorized federal drug agents to revoke the drug licenses of physicians who prescribe controlled substances -- such as morphine -- for use in an assisted suicide.

State officials are challenging the edict, which could pull the plug on Oregon's Death With Dignity Act.

The law allows physicians to prescribe -- but not administer -- a lethal dose of drugs to adults who have been diagnosed as having less than six months to live. Patients are required to make two oral requests and one written request for drugs and then wait 15 days before receiving the prescription. A second doctor must determine that the patient does not have depression or another mental illness.

Since his decision, Ashcroft has made efforts to reassure doctors that his intent was to prevent the use of controlled substances in suicides and not to prevent their use in general medicine. He outlined his position in a Nov. 6 letter to the Oregon Medical Assn.

"No effort to prevent the use of controlled substances to assist suicide should operate in any manner to deter physicians from prescribing controlled substances to alleviate pain," stated the letter to OMA President Hugh C. Stelson, MD. "I want Oregon's doctors to know that under this decision, they will have no reason to fear that prescription of controlled substances to control pain will lead to increased scrutiny by the DEA, even when high doses of painkilling drugs are necessary and even when dosages needed to control pain may increase the risk of death." [...]