MSU experts available to media on assisted suicide

Legal Experts 

Paul G. Arshagouni, assistant professor of law and director of the Health Law Program, Michigan State University College of Law. In addition to being a lawyer, Arshagouni is an M.D. who served as a physician and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine. He can discuss the details and technicalities of this issue from both the medical and legal perspective. He can be reached at (517) 432-6902 or arshagouni@law.msu.edu.

Michael Anthony Lawrence, professor of law at Michigan State University College of Law, says "The proper response for the high court in this case would be to uphold the lower courts' determinations that with the Death With Dignity Act, the people of Oregon were within their rights to regulate the medical profession, an area of traditional state concern. The underlying point is that states are always free to grant citizens greater measures of freedom and liberty than the baseline required by the U.S. Constitution; never, however, may states grant less freedom. He can be reached at (517)432-6905 or michael.lawrence@law.msu.edu.

Clayton Thomason, assistant professor, family practice and Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. Also has a law degree and a degree from Yale Divinity School. He served as chair of the Michigan Governor’s Commission on End-of-Life Care. He can be reached at (517) 353-0772, Ext. 462, or clayton.thomason@ht.msu.edu

Ethicists

Judith Andre, professor, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. She can be reached at (517) 355-7553, andre@msu.edu.

Howard Brody, physician and medical ethicist, says “The ‘laboratory of the states’ should, in the end, allow us to decide on the basis of hard facts whether or not PAS (physician-assisted suicide) is a good public policy.” Brody also is University Distinguished Professor of family practice at Michigan StateU niversity and the former chair of the state of Michigan’s Death and Dying Commission. He can be reached at (517) 353-3544, Ext. 427, or brody@msu.edu.

Leonard Fleck, professor, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, served as staff ethicist for the Michigan Governor’s Task Force on Access to Health Care, and was an adviser to the Clinton Task Force on Health Reform. Fleck says “(The Jan. 17 Supreme Court ruling) makes sense because it is consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1997. That ruling said access to physician-assisted suicide was not a constitutionally protected right (hence, not a matter for resolution at the federal level), but it was a matter that could be legislated by individual states (and nothing in the constitution spoke against legalization of PAS by individual states). Oregon passed by ballot initiative (with 60 percent of the voters approving) their PAS law. The U.S. attorney general who brought the case was clearly trying to interfere in the practice of medicine, and clearly has no right to do that. Worse still, the suit was brought by the attorney general for essentially ideological reasons. That represents an abuse of governmental power, clearly contrary to the liberal foundations of our society. In order to have a presumptively legitimate basis for opposing PAS in Oregon, one would have to cite a ‘public interest’ that was threatened. One could say, for example, that there was a serious risk of abuse that could not be effectively prevented. But the actual facts of the matter are that there has been very close supervision of the use of this law and no documented instances of abuse. Roughly 20 to 30 individuals in Oregon for each of the past six years have used this law to end their lives with the cooperation of their physicians. This would not appear to rise to the level of abuse that would warrant some form of state intervention, especially at the federal level.” He can be reached at (517) 355-7552 or fleck@msu.edu.

Hilde Lindemann, associate professor, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. Lindemann says “(The Jan. 17 Supreme Court ruling) is morally correct (I can't speak to the legal issues because I'm not a lawyer), especially in light of the fact that more and more deaths are negotiated between health care provider, patient and patient's family. The trouble with the wonderful advances in biomedicine is that we can keep patients alive in far worse shape than we used to. Hospitals, which are where dying patients have to go if they want medical assistance, are designed for high-tech, acute-care, lifesaving interventions. Because these interventions tend to be "owned" by different subspecialties (pulmonologists do the lung stuff, cardiologists do the heart stuff, neurologists do the brain stuff, etc.), patients don't get recognized as dying until the subspecialists agree that damage to their particular organ is irreversible. Which is to say, we aren't dying until doctors say we're dying. It's to avoid that mess that patients ask for physician aid in dying. And as it doesn't seem likely that the American way of death is going to be reformed anytime soon, the least we can do is give patients some control over the time of their dying.” She can be reached at (517) 353-3981, hlinde@msu.edu.

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