Testimony Deacon Alan Rastrelli M.D. PAS Bill 1135 2-6-2015
Thank you for allowing me to bring my concerns regarding the physician assisted suicide bill 1135 before this
honorable committee. My name is Dr Alan Rastrelli, and I have been a physician for nearly 36yrs, working the past
13 years in the critical but rewarding field of Hospice and Palliative medicine.
Under this law, a patient will ingest a prescribed overdose of a medication with the intention of causing his or her
own death. This, by definition, is suicide-- the same act we are desperately trying to prevent for those who have such
a feeling of hopelessness, such a fear of death, such a fear of living, that they want to end their life by their own
hand. This term is strategically missing from the language of Bill 1135.
Allow me to review the rhetoric by those in favor that is misleading the public with false premises:
The former Hemlock society changed its name to Compassion and Choices in order to soften their decades-long
promotion of assisted suicide and euthanasia and this large organization is spending millions to get these laws into
many states.
Compassion: To borrow from the Textbook of Palliative Medicine: To end the life of a person through physicianassisted suicide cannot be an act of true compassion, because such an act would eliminate the very object of
compassion: the person! Instead, as providers, true compassion is to use our skills to palliate the person’s
sufferings- not only their physical pains, but also the emotional, spiritual and psychosocial pains that inevitably
accompany patients nearing the natural end of their lives. And we should do this in a way that truly respects each
person’s life and dignity through what I call ‘intensive caring’.
This law is championed with the cry for the Right to Die. This is a non sequitur, because I do not believe anyone in
the past, present or future has or ever will be denied death. Thus the government does not need to provide a new
right that has never been infringed upon to begin with.
CHOICE AND FREEDOM: Everyone already has the freedom to choose to end their life, and the means to do it quickly
and comfortably, without the need of a physician prescribing their death. There are numerous “recipes” provided
by Compassion and choices on how to do this. The methodology is already in hand. There is no medical expertise
needed to ingest an overdose of medication that will end your life—unfortunately, it happens intentionally and
accidentally all too often.
Physician assisted death, or Physician aid in dying is another attempt to couch the undeniable act of suicide that
occurs when a patient takes a deadly dose of a medication. In fact, however, these phrases describe what physicians
are asked to do when a patient is imminently facing the end of their life. The healing profession is indeed expected
and entrusted with the sacred privilege of assisting their patients through their death, through the dying process.
Patients and families can CHOOSE to forego life sustaining measures that may only burden them for no benefit; they
can decline receiving interventions that prolong the dying process in order to allow a natural death in the comfort
of their home, surrounded by loving family and friends, assisted by devoted health care providers.
Physicians and nurses are to help the patients as their life is ending, NOT end their life by an unethical act.
From my perspective, this is not a Republican, Democrat or Libertarian issue, nor a religious issue—it is a societal
and an ethical issue. The dangers of euthanasia and assisted suicide to society…to the trust in the profession of
medicine as healers… was addressed in 400BC by the Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates when he
exhorted physicians who had succumbed to unethical practices, to take this oath: “The regimen I adopt shall be for
the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment, and not for their hurt or for any wrong. I will give
no deadly drug to any, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such…” Today, we need to rededicate ourselves
to these principles, and please vote against this bill.
Thank you