Medical Ethics | Physicians Should Be Permitted to Assist in Suicide

No one trusts the dying to know what they want. The U.S. Supreme Court found dying patient have no right to decide for themselves to cut short their suffering by asking their doctors to prescribe an overdose of sleeping pills or painkillers. According to the court, it is not a decision for patients and doctors, but for state legislatures, most of which have laws on the books prohibiting doctor-assisted suicide. Unless states change their laws, dying patients are to march on like good soldiers, denied this most desperate of choices.

The Supreme Court missed the point: Dying can be...

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