Long shadow of physician-assisted death

April 17, 2015
Mike DeNunzio
San Francisco

Senate Bill 128 pending in Sacramento would permit governmental physician-assisted suicide. Thankfully the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, disabled people, low-income minorities and 46 states wisely oppose “P-AS.” In the 1930s an advanced nation decreed that physicians “grant a merciful death to chronically ill incurable patients.” The first were the mentally ill and handicapped, second were gypsies, and homosexuals; then, certain ethnic groups and finally a religious group. It will happen again. “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

The writer is a retired San Francisco and California Commissioner on Aging Adult Services.

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