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California’s Physician-Assisted Suicide Law Requires Doctors to Lie

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Correction: This post mistakenly referred to California legislation to legalize assisted suicide that would have required doctors to list as “the cause of death on an individual’s death certificate” the “underlying terminal illness.” While that provision was contained in a bill to legalize assisted suicide in California, the legislation that ultimately passed into law, during a special legislative session, does not contain that requirement.

California has a new physician-assisted suicide law that contains a provision that is Orwellian. The law permits physicians to prescribe lethal overdoses of medications to be taken by terminally ill patients. The purpose is to prevent the patient from dying from his underlying disease, such as cancer.

The Orwellian provision is that the law requires that physicians lie about the cause of death on the patient’s death certificate. A note about death certificates is warranted. Death certificates (which are filled out by the deceased patient’s doctor) contain a list of causes of death, with the first cause of death listed being the proximate cause of death, with the second and third contributing factors, if present, listed below. It is the doctor’s responsibility to fill out the death certificate. It is an important legal responsibility, and there are criminal penalties for the doctor if he lies on the death certificate.

Except in California. Under the assisted-suicide law, the doctor is required to lie on the death certificate. The California law requires that the doctor list the cause of death as the patient’s terminal illness, and not that the patient died from a lethal overdose.

California’s new law includes the following requirement:

The cause of death listed on an individual’s death certificate who uses aid-in-dying medication shall be the underlying terminal illness.

Note the irony: The purpose of the law is to prevent the patient from dying from his underlying illness, yet the law requires that physicians falsely certify that the patient did die from his underlying illness.

The legal requirement that physicians lie is a tacit admission of the immorality of physician-assisted suicide. If you don’t feel a chill up your spine, you don’t understand what happened in California.

Image: � Andrey Popov / Dollar Photo Club.

Michael Egnor

Senior Fellow, Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence
Michael R. Egnor, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, has served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and award-winning brain surgeon. He was named one of New York’s best doctors by the New York Magazine in 2005. He received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His research on hydrocephalus has been published in journals including Journal of Neurosurgery, Pediatrics, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association in the United States and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

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