would like to preface my remarks with one disclaimer. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine, on the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Additionally, I serve as Medical Director of our in-patient hospice and palliative care unit. Moreover, I serve on the board of our local hospice organization, Hospice of the Piedmont, where I also serve as Associate Medical Director. Though my work with these organizations has greatly enhanced nd deepened my commitment to the care of the terminally ill, I in no way claim to speak for or on behalf of any of the institutions for which I serve. The opinions expressed below and in my written testimony are entirely my own.Ladies and gentlemen of this committee, I am a physician who spends a significant part of his working day caring for terminally ill people and their families. It is work which I find ennobling, enriching, rewarding, and -- unfortunately -- sorely underrepresented in my profession. I come in contact almost daily with desperately ill people, with poorly managed symptoms, turning to our profession for help in their final days and weeks. It is these very patients -- the terminally ill, those in desperate pain, the isolated na marginalized on our society -- whom proponents of assisted-suicide would now have us "aid" toward what is painted as a painless, merciful, and -- let us be honest -- economical end.Everything that I have learned in acquiring the skills of my profession, all that my patients have taught me, everything that I believe as a naturalized citizen of this country, convinces me that this would be a public experiment with devastating consequences for the least protected in our society: the aged and infirm, the demented and those just this side of dementia, people with AIDS, women of color, the indigent and stigmatized who populate the clinics of our public hospitals (such as my own), and who teach me on a daily basis how tenuous and hard-fought th...
