Advantages
of the Premature-Death Approach to the Right-to-Die
Prevents
Attempts
to Ban the Right-to-Die
Using Drug-Laws
The US government attempted to overturn the Oregon
Death with Dignity
Act
by use of federal drug-control laws.
The Attorney General of the United States
claimed that Oregon physicians were misusing drugs.
Only physicians can prescribe controlled substances.
And the drugs Oregon doctors were prescribing
were never intended to cause death.
Therefore, these physicians were guilty of violating the Controlled
Substances Act.
They were distributing drugs illegally.
The US Supreme Court ultimately decided in favor of
Oregon,
noting that such an interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act
was well beyond anything intended by Congress.
The legislators thought they were
proscribing the illegal use of recreational drugs,
not making laws to direct what doctors could prescribe.
Other countries of the world might not see the same
outcome.
If doctors in less developed countries
—which
might be operating within more religious cultures—
were permitted to prescribe drugs to cause death,
such practices might easily be overturned
by means of laws intended to control drug-trafficking.
And even in the United States,
there will be attempts to change the federal laws concerning drugs
to prohibit drugs that are licensed for health care
from being used to cause death.
Individual states might also attempt to use such
drug-control
legislation
as a means of undercutting the practice of physicians prescribing drugs
for the purpose of bringing the patient's life to a peaceful and
painless end.
Such ways of trying to prevent the right-to-die are
useless
if the primary law permitting wise life-ending decisions
is focused around preventing premature death.
Then the opposition will not focus on the means of death—controlled
substances.
But they will have to examine each case to see if death was wisely
decided or not.
Were the most appropriate safeguards fulfilled?
If not, then it is possible that someone caused a premature death.
And that person or those persons should be tried
under the law against causing premature death
and (if found guilty) be punished appropriately.
Laws against causing premature death
focus on the harm or benefit to the patient
rather than the particulars of how death might be achieved.
Created March 30,
2007; revised 3-31-2007; 2-1-2008