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  3. On a November day in 1999, Frederick Miller, terminally ill with lung and brain cancer, ate a bowl of apple sauce laced with bar

On a November day in 1999, Frederick Miller, terminally ill with lung and brain cancer, ate a bowl of apple sauce laced with bar

admin2010-05-09  58
问题     On a November day in 1999, Frederick Miller, terminally ill with lung and brain cancer, ate a bowl of apple sauce laced with barbiturates (巴比委酸盐). Ninety minutes later, with his wife Nora by his side, the 52-year-old died peacefully.
    That scene occurred in Portland, Oregon, where since 1997 it has been legal for a doctor to prescribe a fatal cocktail of drugs to patients who are terminally ill. But that law, the Death with Dignity Act, has been hotly debated for most of its existence. In 2001 John Ashcroft, then attorney-general of the United States, claimed that prescribing drugs to end life was not a "legitimate medical purpose". This started legal skirmishing (小冲突) that landed the Oregon law before the Supreme Court. But for the moment the option to take one’s own life, with a doctor’s help, stays open. On January 17th the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Oregon could keep its assisted-suicide law.
    The decision depended largely on whether states or the federal government should control how doctors do their work. The majority of justices decided that states should. But for most people, including the dissenting (持不同意见的)judges, the legal technicalities were secondary to the bigger question of whether doctors ought to help people end their lives.
    Opponents of Oregon’s law insist that it is simply legalized murder. Others see the law as appropriate, even enlightened, giving dying patients a much-needed choice when heroic medical procedures cannot help. "It’s not as if physician-assisted suicide isn’t happening elsewhere in the country," says Timothy Quill, a doctor and professor at the University of Rochester in New York. "But in Oregon it’s out in the open, so you don’t have patients asking questions in secret, and doctors giving advice in secret."
    Another supporter, Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics (生物伦理学) at the University of Pennsylvania, says there is no evidence that Oregon’s law has been used to "kill" anyone: "Critics have been desperate to find someone who took fatal drugs and was imhalanced or not terminally ill but they haven’t been able to." He points to the prudence exhibited by Oregonians, with only 238 people using prescribed drugs to end their lives.
    For those who use Oregon’s law and their survivors--such as Frederick Miller’s widow, Nora the Death with Dignity Act simply makes sense. Her sister recently died of cancer in Florida, an experience more painful and emotionally wearing than Frederick’s planned death. "When Rick died he was calm and comfortable," says Ms Miller, who now lives in Phoenix. "When he took the drugs his body was ready, and he fell deeply asleep almost immediately. I just hope I have that option, if I need it, when the time comes."
What is the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、How to prescribe drags to patients who are terminally ill
B、A legal skirmishing between the Oregon law and the Supreme Court
C、A controversy over the Death with Dignity Act in Portland, Oregon
D、A debate over physician-assisted suicide in the U. S. A.
答案C
解析 文章从一开始就用肺癌和脑癌晚期患者Frederick Millerx选择平静地结束自己的生命一例引出围绕《尊严死亡法》的争论。以后各段均围绕这一主题展开讨论，故C为正确答案。
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