I feel for you that you have had several family members die of cancer. Maybe it is something genetic with a tendency towards cancer, inability for morphine and other pain meds to work, etc. I would not wish the pain on anyone but the initiative does not say that a person has to be experiencing excruciating pain but only that they have to be depressed enough to want to die. That is not a high enough threshold in my book.

They are in so much pain, and have to have more and more morphine to be able to stand the pain, and even then, they are in incredible, screaming pain . . . until the kidneys shut down, as a direct result of the morphine.

I-1000 just shortens the inevitable result, at the choice of the patient.

Having seen this tortuous cycle play out several times over the last few years, I’m not going to play. When the pain starts to get too bad . . . I’m saying goodbye. On my terms. Because I’ll have planned.

You and your family, however, will be tortured . . . even when wishing, crying, begging to die. As has happened to several of my family members.

If the medical profession can give and take life at will, who needs an omnipotent God. We can crank out and anoint as many as we need from our medical colleges and universities.

We are all terminal. Pending death is a condition of our physical life. What is sacrosanct about a 6 month estimate by a medical professional? My brother had a couple of those estimates more than fifteen years ago, but he was not desperate or hopeless and he lives. My mother had a couple of those estimates from doctors at Western State Hospital in 1993, but we were not desperate or hopeless, and once we got her out of Western State Hospital, she lived eleven more years.

Desperation and hopelessness are a condition of mind that can result from many situations in life. Should we treat the condition or expand the use of the proposed solution, medically assisted suicide? If we value life, we should treat all of the patient’s needs in all phases of our lives. If we continue to devalue life, sadly, there are no limits on the use of expedient solutions.

But is the requirement that you get 2 physicians to ‘sign off’ on your suicide any kind of safeguard if there are doctors out there willing to sign off for a referral fee? How long should they have to talk with a person before they can ‘diagnose’ a need for suicide?