Globe and Mail (Letters to the Editor)

Saturday, November 8, 1997

We are shocked by the cruel and vengeful attitude of so many toward Robert Latimer. We have also lost a child to a painful and disabling disease. Our son, Kalen, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma in 1994. His disease returned in 1996, and by August of last year he was unable to walk. He became increasingly disabled from then until his death in late November.
His disability was a terrible frustration to him; he had always been a graceful and gifted child, but that was stolen from him as the disease grew to dominate his life. We loved him passionately and never surrendered or gave up what little hope we could preserve. Disability we could live with; whatever he could still enjoy in life, he continued to enjoy, and we fought for all the good time we could give him.
But there was something else involved as well. He was suffering - physically and psychologically. Bed sores, the pain of growing tumours, the terrible attacks of panic and fear -- we fought to control these as well. And we were prepared, if all that we could do was not enough, to take steps to end that suffering. We are grateful -- more grateful than I can possibly say -- that in the end this choice was never forced upon us. Kalen was able to take morphine -- a miserable drug that made him almost continuously nauseated and completely took away his appetite, but it did control most of his pain. Tracy could not -- her life-threatening seizures made proper pain control impossible for her. We feel nothing but sorrow and sympathy for the Latimers, who had to face this choice within a system that gave them no escape from Tracy's suffering -- ongoing, terrible suffering that they had been unable to control.
The self-righteous representatives of the disabled community shame themselves with their cruel rhetoric. They repeatedly describe what Robert Latimer did as the murder of his "disabled daughter." But the evidence shows it was her suffering, not her disability, that moved Mr. Latimer to his desperate act. They also belittle Tracy's suffering, suppressing any mention of her seizures and the fact that strong pain control measures were impossible because of the antiseizure drugs she had to take. When Professor Margaret Somerville tries to dodge the issue of suffering by advocating better pain control she ignores the real facts in Tracy's case, and in many other cases as well: pain control doesn't always work.
To the Latimers, we send our sympathy and love. Whether the terrible choice they made was right or wrong for their daughter, we must not lose sight of this important fact: Tracy's parents, as well as Tracy, have suffered horribly. No penalty the courts can impose can compare to what they have gone through. And, for us at least, no penalty the courts can impose could have prevented or deterred us from dealing with that choice if it had been forced on us. From the law, Robert Latimer deserves mercy; from all of us he deserves sympathy and understanding.
Kalen died almost a year ago. We miss him as much today as we did then; our suffering continues, as does the Latimers'. As we write this, the loss and sorrow are as fresh and agonizing as they were that night last November. Our hearts go out to the Latimers, together with our hopes that they can rebuild their lives and carry on, remembering and loving Tracy as we still remember and love Kalen.

Bryson and Linde Brown
Lethbridge, Alberta