Albert speaks on issue of physician-assisted suicide

By CRAIG KAPUTA

Reporter Contributor

There are no codified legal instructions in place concerning physician-assisted suicide, he told a June 17 UB Senior Alumni Series luncheon, adding, "very strong social norms discourage it."

Albert said: "Medical acceleration of death is a practice which the legal system currently condones, because the prosecutors don't prosecute and the doctors don't flaunt it."

The obvious exception, he noted, is Jack Kervorkian.

Albert said legal protocols for physician-assisted suicide would amount to "a tidy legal fix," replacing the compassion that characterizes the practice today with dispassionate logic.

He noted that there are several problems inherent in trying to legislate assisted suicide.

Among them is the lack of consensus about who should be considered competent enough to make a self-determination decision. Albert questioned whether a person in pain or weakened by illness is capable of making a sound judgment.

He also discussed the ambiguity surrounding who would be eligible for assisted suicide under any proposed law. He described a person who has a terminal illness, suffers intense pain and has a month left to live as a likely candidate. But he questioned whether assisted suicide would be appropriate if an individual is not in pain or isn't mentally sound.

Another concern about physician-assisted suicide, Albert said, is that condoning suicide could discourage people from striving for life. He recommended guarding against the potential effects of this mentality, since "suicides have a cascading, or bandwagon, effect."

The myriad of possible circumstances creates a situation that makes any attempt at legislation "very difficult," observed Albert. Noting that "no state makes attempting suicide a crime," he described social norms as the only real deterrent to attempting suicide.

These norms are enough to satisfy the U.S. Supreme Court, which Albert described as "chastened" on deciding such issues by the fires that erupted under it over the abortion issue. The Supreme Court ruled on abortion nearly a quarter century ago and is still haunted by its decision today.

Albert speculated that the abortion legacy provides ample justification for the Supreme Court to walk softly when dealing with assisted suicide. He reasoned that "the court will return assisted suicide to the states...in short, it will not hold that there is a constitutional right."

Regardless of whether or not there exists a constitutional right to physician assisted suicide, it is still done.

Albert discussed its use by an amalgam of individuals: people with terminal illnesses and constant pain, Alzheimer's patients who seek a pre-emptive suicide before mental deterioration sets in, and families of unconscious or incompetent individuals, people whose medical costs represent what Albert called "non-trivial sums of money."

Asked how widespread the practice is, Albert said, "It's common for doctors and families and patients to agree on using pain killers, even when there is a risk of accelerating death....Sometimes they even go a little further."