Physician-assisted death: time to move beyond Yes or No

Rebuttal: Is physician-assisted death in anyone's best interest? Yes.

YES Dr St Godard argues1 that physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia (PASVE; I will avoid any suggestion of a euphemism) are not in anyone’s interest. Ultimately, his arguments rest on a subjective definition of compassion, and a personal view about the role of medicine and suffering. I respect his arguments, but I do not feel that any of them justify a societal ban on PASVE. Compa...

Genetically Modified Food: Yes or No?

radical iort, yes or no?

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Continuous deep sedation until death: palliation or physician-assisted death?

Published literature has not discerned end-of-life palliative versus life-shortening effects of pharmacologically maintaining continuous deep sedation until death (i.e., dying in deep sleep) compared with common sedation practices relieving distress in the final conscious phase of dying. Continuous deep sedation predictably suppresses brainstem vital centers and shortens life. Continuous deep s...

Pheochromocytoma: yes or no?

A 76-year-old woman was admitted for cardiac decompensation, hypertension, and renal failure. To explore her chronic hypertension, urinary fractionated metanephrines were quantified. Fig. 1A shows the chromatogram of the patient’s urine, and Fig. 1B shows the chromatogram of a calibration standard. A very large methoxytyramine peak was observed (Fig. 1A, black arrow). The peak signal was satura...