My Very Abridged Letter to the NEW YORK TIMES

Readers of SHS will recall my disgust at the appalling column by Jane Brody referring her readers to groups that promote and indeed, may also assist in suicides.

I wrote a letter in response to that column and spent a very frustrating morning yesterday trying to keep it from being eviscerated in the editing process. The editors (of the Science Times section, I think) claimed that I was wrong to refer to “assisted suicide” in the letter (quoted in full, below) since, under their definition “assisted suicide occurs when a third party gives drugs or some other assistance to someone who would otherwise be incapable of taking their own life.” This is ridiculous as it would mean, for example, that since none of Jack Kevorkian’s victims were unable to take their own lives that he never assisted a single suicide—a point I made in our exchange. Needless to say, all of my attempts to prove that the editors’ definition was false and unduly constrained went for naught.

Anyway, here is my original letter:

I was stunned and appalled that Jane E. Brody would write a column—and that the New York Times would publish it—referring people to groups that apparently assist suicides. Not only did Brody promote assisted suicide, including for those who are not terminally ill, but she explicitly discussed one technique of self destruction, assuring potentially suicidal readers that it does not cause unpleasant sensations. Brody and the Times have crossed the line from advocating a change in the law about assisted suicide, to promoting the act itself even where it is currently illegal. That was hardly responsible journalism.

Now here is the letter that as it appeared in today’s paper:

Re “Terminal Options for the Irreversibly Ill” (Personal Health, March 18): I was stunned and appalled that Jane E. Brody would write this column, and that The New York Times would publish it. She explicitly discussed one technique of self-destruction, assuring readers that it does not cause unpleasant sensations. That was hardly responsible journalism.

I appreciate the Times running my letter, and I gave my permission for this abridged version to appear because I was a faced with either saying very little or saying nothing at all. But this minor event illustrates the pronounced problem that people with views like mine have getting our perspectives presented fully and fairly in the MSM. Indeed, it is a classic example of how we are continually constrained in what we are allowed to say in such venues, when, that is, we are allowed to say anything at all.