Letters to the Editor

AMA opposes physician-assisted suicide

To the Daily:

The Oct. 27 editorial entitled "Freedom from Pain" misrepresented the policy of the American Medical Association regarding assisted suicide. The editorial stated the AMA "supports assisted suicides."

In fact, according to AMA policy H-270.965 entitled "Physician-Assisted Suicide", the AMA" strongly opposes any bill to legalize physician assisted suicide or euthanasia, as these practices are fundamentally inconsistent with the physician's role as healer."

In addition, the editorial correctly, but incompletely, quoted an AMA policy (H-140.966 Decisions Near the End of Life) which states that "Physicians have an obligation to relieve pain and suffering and to promote the dignity and autonomy of dying patients in their care. This includes providing effective palliative treatment even though it may foreseeably hasten death.

More research must be pursued, examining the degree to which palliative care reduces the requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide." As the complete quotation shows, the AMA recognizes a distinction between hastening death as a consequence of palliative treatment versus euthanasia or assisted suicide.

The goal of palliative treatment is to relieve pain, while the goal of active euthanasia or assisted suicide is to end the life of the patient.

Therefore, the AMA supports the dignity of patients and the relief of their pain and suffering, but opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide. The Daily should be more responsible when invoking respected organizations to support its editorial opinions.

Elizabeth McKenna

University staff

Hazing doesn't build character

To the Daily:

Branden Sanz would have you believe that the only way to ensure sufficient character in organization members is to beat it into them ("To haze or not to haze? That is the question," 10/29/99). Sanz would have you believe that treating others with respect is weak.

Here is a novel thought: If you want strong character in your organization's members, recruit people with strong character. If you feel you must beat character into your new members, then you will recruit only the weakest. It is that simple.

Let's disabuse ourselves of another thought: Hazing does not build organizational unity and trust. Say I join an organization and go through several types of cruelty along the way. When I become a full member, am I going to suddenly trust the people who have been hazing me? Am I going to suddenly feel a common bond? No. Just as Sanz did, I'm going to take out my anger on the next new class. There's no unity, just retribution. The only thing hazing teaches a person is how to haze.

High standards and hazing are not the same. Challenging as my own academic program is (and we all grumble about our programs occasionally), at the end of my time here, I will have a completed dissertation and good experience in research and presentations. Organizations that truly teach new members about organizational history and values in positive ways build lasting management experience and leadership ability in their new members. (Let me tell you, positive can be quite challenging.)

There is no good product that comes from hazing. Nothing about being hazed makes you a stronger person, a greater leader or a person of character. Rather, you are marked as one who was weak enough to take crappy treatment and stick around for more. It takes more strength to leave a hazing situation than to stay.

Malinda Matney

Rackham student

Reorganization will not hurt education

To the Daily:

In the Daily's editorial, "Slash no more," (10/28/99) it wrote, "Engler has never been a friend to education, and students at the University know this better than most."

First of all, it gives little evidence to support this ridiculous statement. The Daily criticizes Engler for transferring adult education to the Department of Career Development.

Doesn't the Daily think that career development and adult education are linked? The Daily criticizes Engler for transferring authority of state assessment tests to the Department of Treasury.

Students who pass many of these assessment tests are granted money for college by the state of Michigan, in a program Engler started.

But the Daily would never go out of its way to give him any credit for that. Because of this new program, there is now a strong relation between state assessment tests and the Department of Treasury. Therefore, Engler is not eliminating any programs. He is specializing them so they can become more efficient.

The Daily even wrote, "no jobs are eliminated - only transferred." Therefore, your editorial is one of ignorance. Even though the Michigan Department of Education has gone from 2,058 employees in 1989 to 417 today, has anybody lost his or her job over it?

There are no statistics of inefficiency or lower test scores given in the Daily's editorial to prove its ridiculous statements. Therefore, I see this editorial of yours as nothing more than an uninformed attack on Engler and his efforts to make education in this state more efficient.

Patrick Sloan

LSA junior

Campus needs more abuse education

To the Daily:

I am writing in response to the recent article about Speak Out ("Survivors to give accounts of abuse," 10/26/99). I would like to thank Kerry Larkey and Derek Steele for speaking so candidly about their experiences (or lack thereof) with domestic violence and sexual assault.

I am writing in response to Larkey's remarks, which were very acute.

She said that she did not hear much about domestic violence, although she had friends who had been assaulted by strangers.

Unfortunately, Larkey probably does does know someone who has been abused by a friend or intimate partner - but she doesn't know about it.

All of us know someone who is a survivor of sexualized violence, although the survivor may not disclose it to us.

One week before this article appeared, there was a lecture on campus by a woman named Andrea Cooper, whose daughter, Kristen, committed suicide after being sexually assaulted.

Kristen told only a few friends about the assault, and did not receive the support from that she needed to survive.

Andrea's case is tragic, but not unusual. Survivors of acquaintance rape and assaults (especially sexual assaults) in intimate relationships may be hesitant to tell friends, family and coworkers about the assault.

There are many reasons why survivors may not come forward. They may feel too ashamed, betrayed or afraid to come forward.

They may have experienced firsthand the way family, friends and professionals can mistreat survivors and blame them for the assault. They may have witnessed these hostile responses to other survivors (in Florida, for example) and decide not to take the risk. And on an individual level, even our closest friends and family may decide not to disclose a sexual assault to us because of the subtle cues that we send - perhaps we make victim-blaming statements, or sport misogynist T-shirts.

Everyone needs to know how to respond to someone who discloses that they have been assaulted, or how to help friends who may be involved in abusive relationships. SAPAC offers workshops and informational brochures on how to respond to these situations that can be picked up from their office or from informational tables.

There are also a lot of resources available on the Web - www.umich.edu/~sapac/ and www.mcadsv.org.

We all need to be aware of sexualized violence - sexual assaults, dating and domestic violence and sexual abuse - because it affects all of us.

Anna L. Phillips

LSA senior

11-01-99