CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS
"MAKING IT EASIER TO SEEK DEATH THAN LONGER LIFE”
"MAKING IT EASIER TO SEEK DEATH THAN LONGER LIFE”
Gov.
Jerry Brown may not have been aware of what he was doing, but a combination of
his signatures and vetoes on bills passed by the Legislature will make it
easier for desperately ill persons to seek death in California than to attempt
to live longer.
With one of his moves, Brown provided
a bit of a revelation of his inner thinking. The window into his psyche came as
he approved the state’s new “right to die” law, allowing mentally sound
patients in hopeless medical situations to get help in ending their suffering.
Days later, though, he vetoed another bill that would have given terminally ill
patients wanting to stay alive the right to try whatever drug they like, be it
conventional, controversial or experimental.
Brown wrote in a signing message that
he agonized over whether to sign the right to die law, finally being swayed by
thoughts of what he might want if he were ever in a seemingly hopeless, painful
situation. But there was no such introspection in his veto message on the
“right to try” legislation, sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Ian Calderon of
eastern Los Angeles County.
Yes, Brown said, “Patients with life
threatening conditions should be able to try experimental drugs,” but he added
that they should go through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s
compassionate use program, which allows some people access to investigative
drugs.
The trouble is, the FDA’s process
often requires many months, multiple lawyers, plenty of money and/or political
clout. Many terminally ill patients die long before they complete the
application process.
So the window into Brown’s psyche
shows he can conceive of being so ill he’d rather die than fight on, but he
can’t see himself ever being ill, desperate to live and in a situation where no
legally approved drug can help him, but an experimental one might. So much for
the governor’s vaunted imagination.
With his veto, Brown closed a window
that appeared to open once before for the very ill who want to try something
different to solve their problems.
The previous window appeared to open
back in 2000, when then-Gov. Gray Davis signed what was hailed as a landmark
law and potential life-saver for cancer patients. Health insurance companies
were virtually the only dissenters back then and they have since effectively
stymied the measure.
This law, passed as SB37 and still on
the books, is simple in its concept. Patients who qualify for clinical trials
of new cancer drugs should be able to participate in and benefit from those
trials without financial concerns. If a clinical trial is not ongoing in
California, insurance companies would have to cover routine patient costs
associated with participation, wherever in America it was conducted.
This sounded simple in 2000, but
insurance companies routinely refused to pay patient expenses in the first few
years after it passed. The experience of the Burzynski Clinic in Houston, TX,
where more than 20 FDA-supervised clinical trials of a treatment called antineoplastons
have been completed, is typical. That clinic has had many patients from
California, but almost none has been funded by insurance carriers, as the law
intended. (Full disclosure: Columnist Elias has written a book, The Burzynski Breakthrough, now in its
fourth printing, about the antineoplaston treatment and its problems in winning
full government approval.)
The upshot is that the window of hope
Davis opened for patients almost 15 years ago has never been very wide, mostly
because of insurance company resistance.
Now Brown has extinguished the latest
spark of hope for many of the same patients who benefit from the 15-year-old
SB37, and others.
Brown did not quarrel with anything
Calderon said in introducing the latest measure. “Although the FDA approves
most compassionate use requests it receives, it often takes doctors and
patients…months to navigate the process,” Calderon said. “For terminally ill
patients, the waiting period can be a matter of life and death. Patients
suffering from a terminal illness should be able to exercise a basic freedom –
to preserve their own life.”
Former Roman Catholic seminarian Brown
ought to have known that the potentially fatal combination of his latest
decisions runs completely counter to the Biblical commandment written in the
Book of Deuteronomy (30:19): “…today I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may
live.”
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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com
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