TIM O'BRIEN: Robert Schwartz, who had waged a long and painful battle against the AIDS virus, finally decided to surrender. After an emotional farewell to family and friends, Schwartz ended his own life by swallowing 90 capsules of Seconal, a lethal drug prescribed by his own doctor. He died within minutes.
Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...
O'BRIEN: It was all legal under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, which allows doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients in carefully defined circumstances -- legal, but still controversial.UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST: In the name of God our Creator ...
O'BRIEN: Conservatives in Congress had long opposed the Oregon law, among them, John Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri. When Ashcroft later became Attorney General, he formally challenged the law, arguing it conflicted with the Federal Controlled Substances Act that dangerous drugs like Seconal may only be used for a "legitimate medical purpose," and suicide, concluded Ashcroft, "is not a legitimate medical purpose."
Hardy Myers is the Attorney General of Oregon:
HARDY MYERS (Attorney General, Oregon): I think the respect for states' rights kind of is stronger or weaker depending upon whether the action the state is taking is one the particular administration in question likes.
O'BRIEN: Ashcroft expressly reversed the policy of the previous administration and his predecessor, Attorney General Janet Reno. Reno had said, "There is no evidence Congress ... intended to displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession."
Mr. MYERS: We've got a straightforward effort to regulate the doctor-patient relationship at the most intimate level because of the intention of the use of the drugs. Now that is bringing the federal government into the very -- the most foundational level of the practice of medicine.O'BRIEN: While Oregon argues Washington has no business dictating how medicine is practiced in this state, the Bush administration says the state's Death with Dignity Act violates federal drug laws. What seems to be driving this case, though, is not so much that legal question, but rather the moral question: Is it right?
GREG YADEN: These are the antibiotics and antivirals; I take these in the morning and in the afternoon -- those are the two that I take twice a day -- the rest of these are ...
O'BRIEN: Fifty-nine-year-old Greg Yaden takes about a dozen different drugs daily, ever since an unforgettable afternoon last year when he passed out in a supermarket checkout line. Healthy all his life, Yaden was diagnosed with acute myologic leukemia.
Mr. YADEN: It's destroyed my bone marrow. I have absolutely no -- certainly no, no immune system. Based on science, based on medicine, I have absolutely no chance.O'BRIEN: Yaden says he wants to live but knows he will soon die. After consultation with his doctors and his family, he applied for and was granted a prescription that could hasten and ease the way.
Mr. YADEN: No one has ever tried to talk me out of this. No one. They've all been very supportive, but I've also been real open with them so that -- you know, "I'm not doing this because I'm depressed, I'm not doing this because I'm tired of living. I'm not doing this -- the only reason is that I'm dying anyway. And if I can have a little dignity at the end. ..." And they all agreed with me, so we're all doing pretty good. We're all doing pretty good.
BARBARA COOMBS LEE (Co-CEO and President, Compassion & Choices): Suicide is very, very much a misnomer. And it is pejorative. It's demeaning; it's really insulting to people who are dying of cancer -- who are facing a very grim death, who do not have the choice to live, who would take that choice gladly if it were given to them, who are merely trying to choose the least worst death -- to call them suicide.
Mr. DOERFLINGER: For society to amend its laws to say, "This is a special case where we're going to say taking your life is socially acceptable and a good thing [and] we're going to help you do it" is something that demeans all of us.
Dr. RASMUSSEN: For an oncologist, if somebody dies but dies well -- with good control over symptoms, in the setting of their home, with their family, where they have remained in control of their lives until the very end -- then that's a good death. And that is something to celebrate. For a medical oncologist, that's a success.
