Statement to the House
Health and Government Operations and Judiciary Committees
Re: House Bill 1021 –
“Death with Dignity”
Friday, March 6, 2015
OPPOSE
Main
Concerns:
1. The
legislation does not require doctors to give patients a screening for
depression before providing physician assisted suicide.
2. Patients can request physician-assisted
suicide if a doctor has diagnosed them with a terminal illness and six months
or less to live. Such a prognosis is nearly impossible to accurately
predict.
3. No doctor, nurse, or independent witness is
present when the lethal dose is taken.
4. People will pick up their lethal prescription
at their local pharmacy.
5. There is no requirement to notify family
members that the patient plans on taking a lethal medication.
Thank you, Chairman Hammen and Esteemed
Members of the Committee, for allowing me to share my own experiences with
terminal illness, disability, and my grave concerns about the proposed
legislation with you.
Pain-Free, Not Dead, Ward C, Landstuhl Army Medical Center, December 1981 |
My name is Kerima Cevik. At
age 20, I found myself in ward C of Landstuhl Army Medical Center, blind,
emaciated, in horrific pain, and waiting to die. Ward C was the terminal ward,
and the plan was to administer palliative care while the entire medical team
tried to discern what was causing my eyes to hemorrhage and my vital signs to
fail before I died completely. My family in the U.S. had been told that even if
my parents rushed to Germany from the U.S., I’d be dead by the time they arrived.
The last sound I remembered was the sound of running footsteps and someone shouting,
“I know what it is!" "Hurry!”
When I woke again I was both alive and free of pain for the first
time in a year. I was told I was lucky to survive, but I would be permanently
visually impaired and would probably need to wear prosthetics in one eye. A
year later, my eyes recovered such that no prosthetic or assistive technology
was necessary for me to manage.
At 27, on Incirlik Air Base, a specialist reviewing my latest
tests and x-rays informed me I was in the final stages of Crohn’s disease and
had less than six months to live. He recommended I ensure my affairs were in
order and say goodbye to my loved ones, as they could do nothing to stop the
progress of the disease. I did. Then I obtained a referral to Walter Reed
Hospital for a biopsy and a second medical opinion from another specialist. It
turns out that I was not terminally ill after all. I had been misdiagnosed.
When I was 38, a specialist treating my asthma decided to have x-rays
taken of my sinuses because I was complaining of severe headaches. He
discovered a large tumor under my forebrain. He referred me to other specialists
and they did extensive tests on the tumor. The results of the tests were that the
tumor was benign, a variety of fluid-filled growth that mimics a malignant tumor. It was decided to monitor the tumor to see if
it would expand and impair me further.
Three years later my husband and I learned that after 19 years I
had entered a second, high-risk pregnancy. In the third trimester of my
pregnancy, cerebral imaging showed that somehow the pregnancy had shrunk the
tumor in my brain and it was completely gone. My son and I survived his birth.
I imagine that, after any of those moments when I was deemed
terminally ill, had a piece of legislation such as this one been the law where
I was receiving medical care, I would have met the criteria for assisted
suicide. If my family had believed the initial diagnoses and pressured me, or
had I entered a depression regarding any of these diagnoses, I would have been
dead at 20, or 27, or 38 years of age. I am very much alive at age 53.
Medicine is not an exact science. Those who initially diagnosed me
were not incompetent. They had simply never encountered a patient with my combination
of symptoms who did not fit their diagnoses. No medical professional can accurately
estimate the lifespan of any patient. Thus the inherent risk in basing a law on
the idea of a medical declaration of a limited lifespan.
I am a resident of Montgomery County, and mother to Mustafa Cevik,
a wonderful 12-year-old boy with multiple intellectual disabilities and
nonspeaking autism. Our son is nonspeaking, but over time he developed his own
gestural language in order to communicate his needs. My son has many health challenges. I have a deep
concern that if this bill becomes law, it will expand away from its intended
purpose and become a danger to patients like my son.
The example of the Netherlands is a clear indicator of what
happens when assisted suicide laws exist to be expanded upon. Quoting the
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund’s research into this matter:
“Herbert Hendin documented how assisted suicide and lethal
injections have become not the rare exception, but the rule for people with
terminal illness in the Netherlands."
"Hendin stated in Congressional testimony, “Over the past two
decades, the Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from
euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from
euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and
from voluntary euthanasia to nonvoluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Once the
Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny
more active medical [assistance to die], i.e. euthanasia, to those who could
not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia
to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to
those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do
so would be a form of discrimination. Involuntary euthanasia has been justified
as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not [medically]
competent to choose for themselves.”[106]”
“Hendin has also described how the government-sanctioned studies
suggest an erosion of medical standards in the care of terminally ill patients
in the Netherlands: 50 percent of Dutch cases of assisted suicide and euthanasia
are not reported, more than 50 percent of Dutch doctors feel free to suggest
euthanasia to their patients, and 25 percent of these doctors admit to ending
patients’ lives without their consent.[107] Further, he reported that, for a
thousand people each year in the Netherlands, physicians have ended their
patients’ lives without consulting the patients.[108]”
Our State legislature voted to make physician-assisted suicide a
felony in 1999, and rightfully so. This bill, as it has been introduced, is
very open to the abuses and decline of palliative care happening in the
Netherlands. It makes me fear for our son’s well-being and for the future of
our great State. Our General Assembly is ahead of its time in many decisions it
makes and laws it passes, but this bill is not a step forward. I fear it is a
step off a cliff.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Mrs. Kerima Cevik
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