In June 1997, the Supreme Court decided that statutes proscribing physicians from providing lethal medication for use by competent, terminally ill patients do not violate the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution. The Court returned the question of physician-assisted suicide to the states, but did not foreclose future review of state laws that may be too restrictive of car...

Many doctors fear that, if they write reports for patients who are planning an assisted death (I prefer “medically assisted rational suicide”1), they risk a General Medical Council hearing or even a criminal charge for assisting suicide. The defence societies urge extreme caution. Not being on the medical register means that, although I am qualified to write such reports, I can ignore the GMC, ...

If physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia is legalised in the UK, this may be the work of GPs. In the absence of recent or comprehensive evidence about GPs' views on either legalisation or willingness to take part, a questionnaire survey of all Welsh GPs was conducted of whom 1202 (65%) responded. Seven hundred and fifty (62.4% of responders) and 671 (55.8% of responders) said that they did not ...

This Note explores Congress’ attempts to restrict Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act by enacting two the Lethal Drug Abuse and Prevention Act of 1998 (”LDAP Act”) and the Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 (”PRPA”). It explores constitutional decisions concerning physician-assisted suicide and those which tend to show that the Supreme Court demonstrated federalist leanings during this time. The Not...

The slippery slope argument has been the mainstay of many of those opposed to the legalisation of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. In this paper I re-examine the slippery slope in the light of two recent studies that examined the prevalence of medical decisions concerning the end of life in the Netherlands and in Australia. I argue that these two studies have robbed the slippery slope...

BACKGROUND In Switzerland, right-to-die organizations such as Exit Deutsche Schweiz offer suicide assistance to their members. However, there is limited knowledge of the impact that witnessing assisted suicide has on the post-traumatic stress severity or the grief process of family members. Low perceived social acknowledgement may affect mental health. METHODS A cross-sectional survey of 85 f...

therefore administers the lethal substance. In physician-assisted suicide (pas) on the other hand, a person self-administers a lethal substance prescribed by a physician. To date, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg have legalized euthanasia 1,2. The laws in the Netherlands and Luxembourg also allow pas. In the United States, the states of Oregon and Washington legalized pas in 1997 and 19...

The word euthanasia evokes emotions, regardless of the way it is used. When pronounced, instead of a rational discourse, separate camps of irreconcilable proponents and opponents are drawn up. Both fight for dignity, liberty, autonomy, rights and humaneness. Few debates in the area of health care result in such polarization of opinions as euthanasia. While for some people euthanasia is a manife...

Background Physician-assisted suicide is a controversial issue and has sometimes raised emotion-laden reactions. Against this backdrop, we have analyzed how Swedish physicians are reasoning about physician-assisted if it were to be legalized. Methods participants We conducted cross-sectional study 819 randomly selected physicians’ responses from general practitioners, geriatricians, internists,...