On CBS, Darthmouth Professor Slams 'Death With Dignity' Laws

Matthew Balan | October 20, 2014
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[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]

From the 19 October 2014 edition of CBS's 60 Minutes:

ANDERSON COOPER (voice-over): Doctor Ira Byock is a Dartmouth professor, and head of the Providence Health Care System's Institute for Human Caring...He is strongly opposed to laws like Oregon's.

DOCTOR IRA BYOCK: There's certain things that people aren't supposed to do to one another as absolutes. They are not okay. Doctors killing patients is not okay.

COOPER: But shouldn't people have the ability to – to determine the – the – when their life is no longer worth living?

BYOCK: You know, when a physician is involved in a suicide, it's a social action.

(...)

BYOCK: I think that this case is emblematic of how we are failing elders, chronically-ill people – vulnerable people in America.

COOPER: Failing how?

BYOCK: In so many ways. We are – you know, not treating people's suffering....

COOPER: Barbara Mancini would say, well, if – if Pennsylvania had the kind of laws that Oregon now has, which would have allowed her father to – to get some – some medicine that could have ended his life – whether he chose to use it or not – that would have at least given him a sense of – of peace.

BYOCK: So, what we're saying to Mr. Yourshaw is, we're not going to treat your pain. We're not going to train your doctors to counsel you. We're going to basically ignore you. But don't worry, because if the time comes when you're feeling hopeless, we can write that lethal prescription. In – in what world is that a progressive, positive development?

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