The Choice to Die with Dignity

Dressed in a light-blue shirt and a navy shawl-neck cardigan, Steve Goldenberg walked slowly up to the podium. His short white and gray hair stood on his frail body. With his shoulders a bit hunched up, he began to raise his right hand close to his neck as he looked down on his prepared speech. He read in a shaky and hoarse voice, which was only audible when he had his hand pressed against his throat. At times it sounded as if he was gargling in his throat, preventing his voice to properly enunciate any words. He paused often but kept talking. He wanted to make sure his message was clear. He should have a choice to die a peaceful death.

Goldenberg, 55, is a terminally ill patient who is one of eight men and women who have filed a lawsuit against the New York State Supreme Court in order to clarify whether a physician can legally provide and assistant terminally ill, mentally competent patients with aid in dying. The plaintiffs are a group of eight men and women that includes four physicians, a nurse, and the not-for-profit organization End of Life. They announced Wednesday morning at Debevoise & Plimpton in midtown Manhattan that they just filed a lawsuit against the New York State Supreme Court.

Goldenberg was diagnosed with HIV in 1989, which advanced into AIDS six years later. Since then, he has experienced a life filled with endless series of medical crises. He had to have toes amputated, is unable to swallow solid food, has had many episodes of pneumonia, and has larynx cancer with obstructions in his throat.

“Aid in dying” is the widely accepted term in law and medicine that describes the practice of a physical prescribing medication to terminally ill, mentally competent patients who choose to achieve a peaceful death by ingesting a pill.

“I want my doctor to care for me as I die as he has so incredibly did during my life with AIDS,” Goldenberg said. “I want to have some control, choice, and dignity as I conclude this life and fight against my AIDS-related diseases.”

Sara Myers, 60, another plaintiff in the case is living through her fourth year with ALS, Myers is paralyzed and becoming more and more dependent on the assistance of others for her daily needs. She is in a wheelchair and wants to end her life while her emotional and intellectual capacities remain intact.

“I want every day in my life to matter,” she said. At one point in the press conference, she had to stop and take a moment to compose herself. “I want to live my life being aware, able to love, and to be loved consciously.”

Terminally ill New Yorkers who are desperate to end their pain and suffering have no other option but to starve themselves as their most peaceful route to death, according to the four physicians involved in the case. But the patients aren’t the only ones that suffer; the doctors that treat them do as well.

“I’m allowed, as a physician, to prescribe the most difficult treatments — painful, disfiguring, awful treatments… in the interest of helping [my patient] stay alive if he wants to,” said Dr. Howard Grossman, an internal physician who specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender medicine and HIV care. “But,” he continued, “If he comes to me and asks for aid in dying — if he’s had it and it’s done — I’m really supposed to abandon him.” Grossman has two choices to offer his patients: starve and dehydrate or induce a coma with pain medication. He says these are legal but not what he wants to do.

Dr. Judith K. Schwarz, a nurse and consultant for end-of-life decision-making, said that her patients were often disappointed when informed about New York’s laws.

“I had to work really, pretty hard to keep a desperate patient from taking steps to kill themselves in an often violent manner, because they were so desperate,” Schwarz said.

New York’s Assisted Suicide Statute states that promoting a suicide attempt and intentionally helping someone commit suicide constitutes as felonies of manslaughter in the second degree. However, the plaintiffs argue in the filed lawsuit that “aid-in-dying does not constitute ‘intentionally causing or aiding another person’ to attempt or to commit suicide.’” If it did, the application of the statute “would violate the Equal Protection and Due Process provisions of New York’s constitution.” They have a right under the New York State Constitution to decide how they will die.

The only way that patients like me will be assured of choice at the end of life is recognition by New York state that physicians providing aid in dying to mentally competent, terminally ill patients who request such aid will not be held criminally liable under New York’s Assisted Suicide Statute,” said Myers.