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S.Y. Tan and Norman Goldstein, both professors at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, discussed with host Randall Roth where the physician's duty to dying patients should end. Both guests supported hospice care and living wills as means by which patients can ensure they receive comfort rather than unwanted intervention at life's end. Their disagreement centered on physician-assisted suicide: Goldstein, who identified with the Hemlock Society, argued that physicians should be able to take a more active role in helping terminally ill patients end their lives when requested. Tan, who also holds a law degree and chairs a hospital ethics committee, contended that legalizing active mercy killing would erode trust in living wills, expose vulnerable patients to abuse, and risk the pattern documented in the Netherlands, where an estimated thousand people were euthanized without having explicitly consented. Bud Smiser, a columnist and former editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, called in to urge families to discuss end-of-life wishes before any crisis arose. Kenneth Fifer, a minister from Ann Arbor, Michigan, described accompanying a patient through a Kevorkian-assisted death and argued that suffering beyond physical pain could justify physician assistance.
Transcript
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Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
