PHI-2635 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Assisted Suicide, Primary Care, Pentobarbital
22 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Legalizing patient-assisted suicide, while continuing to ban active euthanasia, would serve only to discriminate unfairly against patients who are suffering and wish to end their lives, but cannot do so because of physical impairment. There is a lingering fear that any legislative proposal or judicial mandate would have to be implemented within the present social system marked by deep and pervasive discrimination against the poor and members of minority groups. The number of genuine cases justifying, pas, active euthanasia, or both, will be relatively small. Patients who receive good personal care, good pain relief, treatment for depression, and adequate psychosocial supports tend not to persist in their desire to die. The social risks of legalization are serious and highly predictable. Rather than propose a momentous and dangerous policy shift for a relatively small number of genuine cases , we should instead attempt to redirect the public debate toward a goal on which we can and should agree on.
