It may be true that "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," but it is not true for many other things that would smell as sweet - if only they were given a true, descriptive name rather than a false one.

A case in point is "assisted suicide." This term is too often used by people who might be better informed. Why not use the more exact term "physician aid in dying?" Compassion and Choices, a group dedicated to the proposition that when one is irreversibly ill with a terminal disease, one should not be forced to continue suffering when he knows full well that his life must end in the days ahead. He wishes to save himself, his loved ones, and society at large from the misery and huge expense of needless and prolonged suffering.

Aid in dying in such circumstances can't really be called suicide when reality and medical knowledge say that an individual's life span is about over, and nothing will change that fact. Suicide is a more apt term when one is younger, perhaps young enough so that there is reasonable hope that a cure will be effected, or when by any informed judgment the person could live many years in good health and happiness.

We assist our pets when they are suffering too much in a terminal illness, and we help them in their hour of need because we love them and see them as family. We don't get prosecuted for cruelty to animals.

In a recent New York Times story, these facts stood out: Nearly a third of Americans over age 85 have dementia, half need help with at least one practical, life-sustaining activity. The author's 77-year-old mother was on duty more than 80 hours a week and her own health was declining fast with the impossible burden of caring for an 85-year-old man. Was this pure love, or was it torture for both of them? They both felt that a greater love should have been physician-assisted end of life.

They asked that his pacemaker, installed when he was 79 and without informed

consent, be turned off. The doctors refused. Both parents continued their forced suffering.

It's true that some people feel that life is a "gift" that every person must be forced to continue to "live" when they would have died naturally in the olden days before we had pacemakers and all the wonders of modern medicine, which to many of us become barbaric in practice. But should these people drive end-of-life care?

Another unsustainable consideration: Big money is made by those who profit from keeping people alive against their wishes and beyond a natural lifetime. The medical profession, including doctors, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers and other medical professions, recently spent $545 million on lobbying. Researchers estimate that 20 to 30 percent of Medicare's $510 billion budget goes for unnecessary tests and treatments. And $24 billion is obtained worldwide by the cardiac-device industry, thereby also subsidizing hospitals. The manufacturers' profit margins for cardiac devices is close to 30 percent.

It's time to stop listening to people who have a profit motive in advocating we must keep existing when our life is really over, even when we vehemently wish for the end.

It's time to stop listening to those whose own religious views say that all the rest of us must suffer even when we and our loved ones are too tormented at the end of life.

It's time to stop calling end-of-life decisions "assisted suicide," when it is clearly closer to a natural end than to the present artificially rigged life prolongation.

And it is time for all common-sense Montanans to see that the next Montana Legislature protects our right to privacy as stated in our 1972 Montana Constitution - including our right to privacy between each of us and our physician when we each know our lives must end soon, that it should be assisted, not prolonged.

Mary Vant Hull, 82, lives in Bozeman and is a member of Compassion and Choices in Montana.

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