That Would Not End, you might want to think about what may be the single worst piece of legislation kicking around in the lame-duck Congress. It's a bill that would discourage doctors from providing pain medication to dying patients. Given the Orwellian name of the Pain Relief Promotion Act, the provision is intended to accomplish just the opposite. It says that if a doctor prescribes pain medication that leads to the death of a patient, that physician can be prosecuted as if he were a drug dealer. Whatever their intent, Nickles and the bill's other supporters are engaging in the most cruel sort of Big Brotherism.
Studies show that pain medication is consistently underprescribed.
Doctors don't know how to measure the pain their patients are in. The terminally ill are sometimes afraid to ask for pain relief for fear of becoming addicted. Ask hospice workers or doctors and nurses who spend their time working with dying patients, and they'll tell you about all the people who spend their last days and hours suffering needlessly. There's a trade-off. This is an awful choice that must be made by patients, families, and doctors all the time.