Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Ultimate Freudian Legacy

The Supreme Court and physician-assisted suicide--the ultimate right.

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide later this year whether to let stand decisions by two appeals courts permitting doctors to help terminally ill patients commit suicide. The Ninth and Second Circuit Courts of Appeals last spring held that state laws in Washington and New York that ban assistance in suicide were unconstitutional as applied to doctors and their dying patients. If the Supreme Cou...

Physician-assisted suicide.

Medical professional codes have long prohibited physician involvement in assisting a patient's suicide. However, despite ethical and legal prohibitions, calls for the liberalization of this ban have grown in recent years. The medical profession should articulate its views on the arguments for and against changes in public policy and decide whether changes are prudent. In addressing such a conte...

Physician-assisted suicide.

On election day, November 14, 1994, Oregon voters elected a physician, Dr. John Kitzhaber, as their governor and, simultaneously, granted physicians the legal authority to help people end their own lives. By passing Ballot Measure 16,1 the voters decided that a physician may, at a patient's request, prescribe a medication "for the purpose of ending his or her life in a humane and dignified mann...

Physician-assisted suicide and federalism.

ALS and physician-assisted suicide.

Patients with a new diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may struggle with uncertainty about progression and the realization that they will lose key functions and how they will ultimately cope. Eventually, most lose abilities to talk, walk or transfer, swallow, and feed themselves, and are increasingly dependent on others. Thus, the diagnosis creates a complex psychodynamic and exis...