Doctor approved suicide requests

Of the 200 applications for death, Dr. Lawrence Egbert approved them all.

As medical director and co-founder of the Georgia-based Final Exit Network, Egbert in the past four years approved the applications of people who wanted to die because they were diagnosed with terminal cancer.

He approved the applications of people who wanted to die because their bodies were wasting away with ALS or multiple sclerosis.

He approved the applications of people who had not been diagnosed as terminally ill but whose quality of life, in their mind, was no longer worth living.

Egbert, an 81-year-old Baltimore anesthesiologist and teacher affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in an interview Friday that there were times when he rejected people who wanted to die, “but not very frequently.”

He said that in almost every case, by the time a person came forward to ask for help in taking their own life, “they have thought about it very, very thoroughly and for a long time. They have made the decision.”

He said that the group never “assists” in ending the lives of those who want their deaths “hastened.” “The patient does all the work. We do not help. We advise. We have very pointedly said we do not help. It’s illegal,” Egbert said.

In a court document, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it believes the group did cross that line into assisting the death in June of a Cumming man. John Celmer, 58, died of asphyxiation after inhaling helium while two Georgia members of the group were present, the GBI said.

The GBI says the group has a pattern of assisting people in suicides in which a “hood” is lowered over the person’s face, and the person breathes helium until losing consciousness. Death can take 10 or 20 minutes longer.

The GBI alleges that the group breaks state law by holding the hands of the person to prevent struggle or removal of the hood.

In a multistate sting operation, Egbert and Nicholas Alec Sheridan, 60, were arrested Feb. 25 in Baltimore in connection with Celmer’s death because records show they had either contacted him or, in the case of Egbert, reviewed his file.

Thomas E. Goodwin, 63, of Florida and Kennesaw and Claire Blehr, 76, of Atlanta were arrested and charged because, according to the GBI court document, they were present when Celmer took his own life.

Celmer had cancer, but after two surgeries, he was cancer-free at the time of his death, according to the GBI document, which said he was “concerned about his public appearance because of recent surgery to his face.”

Egbert said he doesn’t feel guilty for “hastening” the deaths of about 200 people.

“The only times I have felt guilty as a doctor is if my patient dies during anesthesia, when I was an anesthesiologist during surgeries,” he said.

Since his arrest in Baltimore and two days spent in jail, Egbert said he’s getting “nothing but applause” from colleagues at Johns Hopkins and the Unitarian Church in Baltimore he said he attends —- where, last Sunday, “I got the first standing ovation in the church’s history.”

Johns Hopkins spokesman Eric Vohr said Friday that the university would not elaborate on a statement it issued the week of Egbert’s arrest that the doctor was “an unsalaried visiting assistant professor” since October 2001.

Vohr would neither confirm nor deny Egbert’s assertion that he has taught a class in medical ethics, Patients, Physicians and Society, at the school for the past seven years.

On the advice of his Atlanta attorney, Don Samuel, Egbert would not talk about the Georgia case except to say that he agreed with Final Exit Network founder Derek Humphry that Georgia could be the latest “test case” in the national debate about whether assisted suicide should be made legal, as it is in Washington state and Oregon.

He disputes critics who say certain people who seek the help of his group —- those not diagnosed by medical doctors as terminally ill with less than six months to live —- may be mentally incompetent, and wanting to die may be proof of mental illness.

“All the patients I have dealt with have psychological problems,” Egbert said. “When you have cancer you have psychological problems. If you have Lou Gehrig’s disease, you have psychological problems.”