Recently a heated controversy has emerged within the medical community and among legal and ethical professionals over an account in The Journal of the American Medical Association, published in Chicago, of the “mercy killing” of a young cancer patient by a hospital resident. The Cook County State’s Attorney office has subpoenaed the records pertaining to the article from the Journal, including the name of the physician who wrote it. (This doctor, who published the article anonymously, also administered the fatal injection.) The AMA has filed a motion to block the subpoena. The complete text of the article follows.
The call came in the middle of the night. As a gynecology resident rotating through a large, private hospital. I had come to detest telephone calls, because invariably I would be up for several hours and would not feel good the next day. However, duty called, so I answered the phone. A nurse informed me that a patient was having difficulty getting rest, could I please see her. She was on 3 North. That was the gynecology unit, not my usual duty station. As I trudged along, bumping sleepily against walls and corners and not believing I was up again, I tried to imagine what I might find at the end of my walk. Maybe an elderly woman with an anxiety reaction, or perhaps something particularly horrible.
I grabbed the chart from the nurses station on my way to the patient’s room, and the nurse gave me some hurried details: a 20-year-old girl named Debbie was dying of ovarian cancer. She was having unrelenting vomiting apparently as the result of an alcohol drip administered for sedation. Hmmm, I thought. Very sad. As I approached the room I could hear loud, labored breathing. I entered ark saw an emaciated, dark-haired woman who appeared much older than 20. She was receiving nasal oxygen, had an IV, and was sitting in bed suffering from what was obviously severe air hunger. The chart noted her weight at 80 pounds. A second woman, also dark-haired but of middle age, stood at her right, holding her hand. Both looked up as I entered. The room seemed filled with the patient’s desperate effort to survive. Her eyes were hollow, and she had suprasternal and intercostal retractions with her rapid inspirations. She had not eaten or slept in two days. She had not responded to chemotherapy and was being given supportive care only. It was a gallows scene, a cruel mockery of her youth and unfulfilled potential. Her only words to me were, “Let’s get this over with.”
I retreated with my thoughts to the nurses station. The patient was tired and needed rest. I asked the nurse to draw 20 mg. of morphine sulphate into a syringe. Enough, I thought, to do the job. I took the syringe into the room and told the two women I was going to give Debbie something that would let her rest and to say good-bye. Debbie looked at the syringe, then laid her head on the pillow with her eyes open, watching what was left of the world. I injected the morphine intravenously and watched to see if my calculations on its effects would be correct. Within seconds her breathing slowed to a normal rate, her eyes closed, and her features softened as she seemed restful at last. The older woman stroked the hair of the now-sleeping patient. I waited for the inevitable next effect of depressing the respiratory drive. With clocklike certainty, within four minutes the breathing rate slowed even more, the became irregular, then ceased. The dark-haired woman stood erect and seemed relieved.
It’s over Debbie.
Reprinted by permission from The Journal of the American Medical Association, January 8, 1988, Vol. 259, No. 2, p. 272. Copyright (c) 1988, American Medical Association.