Final Exit

The Most Difficult Decision

This is the scenario: You are terminally ill, all medical treatments acceptable to you have been exhausted, and the suffering in its different forms is unbearable. Because the illness is serious, you recognize that your life is drawing to a close. Euthanasia comes to mind as a way of release.

The dilemma is awesome. But it has to be faced. Should you battle on, take the pain, endure the indignity, and await the inevitable end, which may be days, weeks, or months away? Or should you take control of the situation and resort to some form of euthanasia, which in its modern-language definition has come to mean "help with a good death"?

Today the euthanasia option--or the right to choose to die--comes in four ways:

Passive euthanasia. Popularly known as "pulling the plug," it is the disconnection of medical life-support equipment without which you cannot live. It could be a respirator to aid breathing, a feeding tube to provide liquids and nutrition, or even the sophisticated use of certain drugs to stave off death. There is not likely to be much ethical or legal trouble here provided that you have signed a Living Will and also a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care--they are also known as Advance Declarations--that express your wishes. (More on these later.)

Self-deliverance. Taking your own life to escape the suffering. This method does not involve any other person directly, although a loved one or friend should ideally be present. It is legal in all respects, and widely accepted ethically.

Assisted suicide. You get lethal drugs from somebody else, usually a physician, and swallow them to cause your death. It is legal for you to do so, but at present it is a felony for the person who supplied the drugs or took any action physically to help you. Despite the present criminality of assistance, this procedure is gaining increasing ethical acceptance. In 1996 two U.S. appeals courts ruled in favor of

Derek Humphry, president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO!) and founder and executive director (1980 1992) of the National Hemlock Society, was a newspaper reporter for 35 years, working for many British journals. During his 14 years with the London Sunday Times, he began to write books on racial problems, law enforcement, and civil liberties. In 1978 he moved to the United States to work for the Los Angeles Times. The international acceptance of the story of his first wife s death, Jean s Way, now considered a classic account of rational assisted suicide, launched his campaign for the right to lawful physician aid in dying. In 1980 in Los Angeles he and friends formed the Hemlock Society, the first such group in North America. From 1988 to 1990, Derek Humphry was president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies. He lives near Eugene, Oregon.

Until there is a law which would allow physicians to help people who want a Final Exit, here is Derek Humphry s book, fittingly named, to guide them.
--Betty Rollin, author of First, You Cry and Last Wish

An honest, clear, compelling book.
--Dr. Frederick R. Abrams, physician and ethicist