For many years now patients have been encouraged to be actively involved with their physicians in end-of-life issues concerning how and where they expect to be treated. At the end of a meeting, the patient leaves with a signed copy of those wishes, assuring that all skill will be used to assure those decisions. The patient is in control then and henceforth. Thus the trusting and nurturing physician-patient relationship is maintained … and strengthened. We must treat individuals approaching death with as great a force as we care for individuals with reversable illness.

The American College of Physicians and The American Society of Internal Medicine do not support physician-assisted suicide as it would greatly undermine that vital, trusting patient-physician relationship which is of caring and, when possible, of healing. It would lessen the value we place on caring for the sick,for what it bestows on both the caregiver as well the ill. We must all make the journey of life together for that journey forms us all.

Please vote NO on Initiative 1000.

Wylie Vracin, M.D.

Coupeville