This is a letter to the editor published in the Dayton Daily News on April 30, 1996.

Assisted suicide, euthanasia would put us on slippery slope

In the April 8 editorial "Society easing toward some assisted suicide," the Dayton Daily News supported the position that the decision concerning physician-assisted suicide "ought to be an individual one, between the person and the doctor." The editorial went on to say, "The law, however, can and should set the rules and conditions very tightly, especially in instances in which the terminally ill person cannot express a wish."

I contend that the rules and conditions would not and could not be set very tightly if physician-assisted suicide were made legal. At first, "equal protection under the law" would be stretched to cover difficult cases, then utilitarian values would be used to support convenience.

Assisted suicide assumes that the patient can initiate the terminating process after it has been set up by someone else. If assisted suicide is legalized for patients capable of initiating the process, the courts, using the "equal protection" principle, will require that euthanasia be offered to patients not capable of initiating that process, when they request it.

Since the practice of "substituted judgment" has been recognized widely, euthanasia soon will be authorized when requested by the family of patients who are unable to give consent, whether unconscious or demented. As our society becomes accustomed to the practice, euthanasia will be granted to healthy, but depressed people. A liberalized interpretation of "substituted judgment" will be used when euthanasia is requested first by the families of persons with mental illness, retardation, or other handicaps; and later, by the families of persons who are old and infirm, but mentally alert. Finally, some physicians will decide that a patient's "quality of life" is "poor," and they will request authorization to kill the patient in spite of objections from the patient or from the patient's family.

Most of these things are already happening in the Netherlands.

Byron C. Hall, Jr.