Saturday, March 1, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
At a news conference to present the "Death With Dignity" report, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa discussed her own experience watching her mother force-fed before she died.
"Empathy and compassion are important in conjunction with scientific and technological developments if we are to provide dying patients and their families with the support they need and want," Del Papa said Thursday.
Joining Del Papa was Assemblywoman Gene Segerblom, D-Boulder City, who said some of her elderly friends have run up enormous medical bills in fruitless attempts to keep them alive.
Segerblom has introduced a bill allowing people to wear bracelets saying they don't want to be resuscitated. The bill, which will be heard Monday by the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee, could help in cases where living wills can't be found, Segerblom said.
The committee also suggested cards linked to a computer database which could provide instructions on a patient's life-sustaining decisions.
Del Papa helped create the task force in August, 1996. Included in the group were health care professionals, hospice workers, patient advocates, religious leaders and lawmakers.
"Many people have had the unfortunate experience of watching and waiting with their loved ones through the dying process. They are deeply concerned about the complex issues of death and dying," said committee co-chairwoman Barbara Thornton, a health sciences professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Committee members stressed that the report is not about assisted suicide, a topic they said was much more controversial. Del Papa said the task force will continue to meet and may discuss assisted suicide at a later date.
Nevada law allows patients to request that no life-sustaining treatments be used and mandates that doctors comply. Two years ago, the Legislature also approved a law instructing doctors to prescribe morphine and other addictive drugs to relieve pain in terminally ill people.
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